On Thursday, Oregon Women’s basketball player Sedona Prince shared a video of the insane disparities between the women’s and men’s weight rooms at their respective NCAA tournament bubbles. “So for the NCAA March Madness, the biggest tournament in college basketball for women, this is our weight room,” she says, showing off a tiny dumbbell rack. “Let me show y’all the men’s weight room,” she continues, panning to a massive, warehouse-sized gym full of high-quality equipment. Her video was meant to call out the lack of respect and attention paid to women’s sports when compared to men, and people were quick to realize that it was completely unacceptable.
On Friday, retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods reached out directly to the NCAA on Twitter, saying that their team had gotten truckloads of equipment to send to the women’s March Madness bubble, and they were standing by waiting to deliver it.
“We acknowledge that some of the amenities teams would typically have access to have not been as available inside the controlled environment. In part, this is due to the limited space, and the original plan was to expand the workout area once additional space was available later in the tournament,” said NCAA Women’s Basketball Vice President Lynn Holzman.
Fans and players alike have since called out other discrepancies that they noticed within the bubbles, including men and women getting different food and different types of daily COVID-19 testing. This is definitely a developing story, so hopefully we’ll get more information on the NCAA’s plan soon.
[Via]