The specific crisis in an organization I will be talking about today has definitely not finished running its course but has definitely taken the steps to make things a little better. In the current NCAA tournaments, there were A LOT of inequities between the men and women’s teams. Women’s basketball has continued to grow year after year but the disrespect has stayed the same. The NCAA has consistently given the men’s teams plenty of resources, support, and attention while only giving the women’s teams just enough to get by. In the most recent tournament, a popular player from the University of Oregon, Sedona Prince, went viral on all platforms for exposing how different the food, weight rooms, and gift bags were between the men and women teams. The weight rooms were drastically different (Will attach photos below). The women got a single rack of dumbbells and a few yoga mats when the men got a state-of-the-art facility weight room. If you can’t see the disrespect here, you are the problem. When the NCAA was confronted, they said there was not enough room to give the women a full weight room. Sedona Prince was quick to expose the NCAA in a TikTok(which reached all platforms) showing the enormous amount of space they had that was not being used. Only then did the NCAA provide them with equipment for a weight room. On multiple platforms from multiple athletes, the food given to both teams was shown. The women got little bags of sandwiches or what looked like to be hotel food, while the men received steak dinners. Again, if you can not see the problem, you are the problem. Players from all teams, both men and women, posted gift packages they got from the NCAA out of excitement. After seeing all these posts, the women teams come to realize they got NCAA gift packages with a couple of items where the men’s teams got full-out March Madness gear and packages. Only after the women’s team voiced their thoughts were they given a few more items. Women teams should not have to fight this hard to be looked at and treated equally. These teams are collegiate level and deserve the same amount of respect as everyone else. Every single person on any team has worked extremely hard to be in the spots they are in and to play in the tournament, and their work deserves to be recognized equally. Sedona Prince risked a lot by speaking out about the NCAA, but she only helped the movement move forward. She not only brought awareness to people on all social media platforms that may not be basketball fans, but also used her platform to create a positive community and even pull in new fans. She encouraged other players and fans to speak out and voice their opinions about the inequities and to continue fighting for what they believe in the future. Sedona Prince is definitely someone I will be keeping up with and can’t wait to see what else she sticks up for and brings awareness to in the future. GO DUCKS!

I am attaching a link where you can watch some of Sedona Prince’s TikToks explaining the weight room differences.

Video: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/03/19/ncaa-womens-basketball-tournament-weight-rooms-facilities-unequal-orig-mg.cnn

Below,  you can also see  pictures of some of the inequities I mentioned above. 

Weight Rooms, Food, and Packages