The Chronicle

Amber Kuehl
Sports Editor


      In the summer and winter Olympics combined, there are 41 sports. Those 41 sports do not include breakdowns such as gender or team sports versus individual. If it did, the number of sports would be far greater than 41. 

      Of the 41, only the equestrian teams in the Olympics are co-ed. Men and women compete head-to-head.   

      This division in athletics may cause friction between the sexes and inequality in sports and not just because athletics are considered to be a man’s world. Some “women’s” sports, such as dance, disapprove of men who want to join. 

      There’s not much to tell about the history of women and professional sports. Women created the All-American Girl’s Professional Baseball League during World War II, but it disbanded after the men returned home from war because people didn’t want to watch women play ball if men were available.  

       Another league for women’s baseball was formed in the early 1990s, but it was dissolved in 1998. Women tried to keep a professional volleyball league alive, the Women’s Professional Volleyball Association, which was also dropped in 1998.  

       The most notable among women’s professional sports are soccer, softball and basketball. In Chicago there is a women’s soccer team, the Chicago Red Stars, a basketball team, the Chicago Sky and a softball team, the Chicago Bandits.  

       The Red Stars are part of the Women’s Professional Soccer League, along with seven other teams. The Sky is part of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). There are only 12 teams in the WNBA, including Chicago. The Bandits play in the National Pro Fastpitch. There are only five teams in this league, including Chicago. 

        Of course, those are just team sports. Women are free to compete in individual sports such as tennis, bowling and golf, among others.  

        How many professional men’s sports are out there? To name a few, there’s the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, and the National Football League. Men receive more publicity, more support and better pay than any of the women’s professional sports. The men’s leagues also are better represented in society. 

         This issue isn’t something that recently reared its ugly head. The Olympics began in ancient Greece around 776 BC. Women were not officially a part of the Olympics until they were held in France in 1900. They were only allowed to participate in tennis and golf. Since then, women have slowly begun to compete in the same sports as men, but rarely ever against them.  

           This leads to the belief that women are too delicate to play rough sports, or simply incapable of playing as well as men.  

          Female athletes are still trying to catch up to the popularity of their male counterparts. If sports advocates take the time to learn about female sports leagues, there’s a chance that more sports could become professional for women, the same way that men are involved in professional sports.  

          The big sports information providers like ESPN and Comcast Sports Net should welcome any opportunity for more business. Women’s leagues would love the publicity and the sports TV, radio and magazines could lure in more viewers, listeners or readers. It’s a win-win situation. 

          The leagues themselves need to get the word out about their teams. If they have winning teams, specifically in the Chicago area, they should be advertising and promoting their stuff to interest a wider number of people. If teams do something cool and fun, people will talk about them, and word of mouth is the best form of marketing. 

           People need to promote women’s leagues. If the media hypes up these leagues, it is likely that more girls will want to be involved in sports and go on to play them professionally. 

             Changes need to happen early in children’s lives. Young girls need to take up sports that are predominately male, such as baseball or hockey. Sure, girls can pick up softball and play on their high school girl’s softball team, but it’s not the same as baseball. Both softball and baseball have their difficulties and their similarities, but they are still different. Women’s softball is fast pitch and the ball is bigger. In baseball, there are a variety of pitches and a baseball is small compared to softballs. 

              If a girl wants to play baseball, she should be able to. If a boy wants to play softball in high school over baseball, he should be able to. I’m willing to bet that if schools or athletic facilities promoted different sports, they would get more willing participants. 

              No one, especially children, should be restricted. It’s unfair to deprive a child of their will to play a sport. 

              Even at CLC there are restrictions. There is no men’s volleyball team but there is a women’s team. Women play softball at CLC and men play baseball. 

              The stereotype that only men can like, and play, sports needs to be eradicated. Women can talk sports with the best of men, and there are some men who just don’t like sports. Men who don’t like sports are just as normal as those who do, same as women who like sports are normal and becoming more common in today’s society.