Discrimination in Sports

We've all heard the story! A poor kid grows up in the tough part of town. Life's rough, but the kid has a dream. "One day", the kid says, "I'm going to get out of here. I going to be the best football or basketball, baseball or hockey player in school, and I'll win a college scholarship. Then I'll go PRO! Nice story, right? Well, the plot varies and very few kids actually become professional athletes, but ONE element of this story remains the same...the kid is almost always a guy!

Turn on the TV set. Have you ever noticed the difference between men and women's college basketball games? Go beyond the details, like smaller basketballs, longer shot clocks, and the way the players move on the court! Look at the crowds. Men's college games are usually packed with cheering fans, waving banners, and wearing team colours. Women's games draw smaller crowds, though the fan's devotion remains as strong. Men's games draw bigger crowds! This may be because schools put more emphasis on the achievement and skills of their men's teams. Move your attention now, from the stands to the scoreboard. While men's teams often have tough sounding names like "Bulldogs", "Demons" and in our case "Eagles", the women's

However, it's not only women that are being made to feel underrated compared to the men's, also the colored people in the communities are also made to feel this way...as if they're not good enough because of the color of they're skin. It shouldn't be about only skin deep issues...but it is! The best way to describe this issue is through the words of Magic Johnson:

Feminists and sports psychologists often claim that women are trivialized in the sports page. Over recent years, gymnasts have been called pixies that play in a toy-town sport. A tennis player the statute of Arantxa, Sanchez-Vicario is tagged a little girl, women finalists are described as second-rate men, and Hayley Lewis is labeled a princess of the pool. No one calls tennis player Andre Agassi a little boy, or Wally Lewis a Footy dad, or Kieren Perkins a prince of the pool. No sportsmen are subjected to the same standards. On the playing field, sportsmen have been allowed to indulge in violence, sexism and racism, in a way never permitted in other walks of life. Sportswomen by contrast still have to conform to stereotypes that have been challenged and discredited in other realms!

you just cheer for the athletes that they made this commitment.

Supposedly women athletes have to look pretty all the time, or be called butch. They can lose in the commercial sense, if the sportswoman puts performance ahead of appearance, she can be discounted in the competitive world of sponsorship, where conforming to the ideal female form can mean the difference between fame and fortune, or obscurity and financial insecurity.

The way to ensure that all parties are treated equally is to have the same standards apply to both men's and women's sports. The gender of the sport should be irrelevant when making decisions about whether to make changes to the national tournament. If a spor