St. Agnes’ Sports

Girls’ Sports are notoriously underrecognized and underappreciated at SSSAS and throughout pop-culture today. This was most recently notable in the drastic differences of support for the Girl’s Basketball Invitational and the Boys Sleepy Thompson tournament. We, Anne Belevetz and Calysta Lee, felt as though the completely disparate amount of promotion and lack of student and faculty support cannot be overlooked and was worth a conversation. That conversation follows.

Anne: You know the expression “blood boiling?” Well, I think I experienced a true blood boil on Wednesday, November 30th. After waiting at school for two hours after my practice ended, the Championship Girls Invitational Basketball game was here. Following Seminary Hill Cup and the discussions around girl’s sports being less supported than boys sports, I hoped for a bigger crowd at the girls basketball game. Unfortunately, the show out was disappointing.

Calysta: In all honesty, I felt confused. I saw a good amount of excitement from the students during the day. I heard plenty of senior girls going around asking, “Are you going to the girls invitational tonight?” and so I expected to see at least those girls at the game, but I did not. Thinking that I would be one of many Saints to attend the games, I went with my friend, Maggie McAree, dressed in theme for Tuesday’s game. 

I’ll admit, I was embarrassed. We were two of maybe 9 students in attendance. We sat with two other senior girls, Zoe Coval and Lauren Irish-Maldonado, while a couple underclassmen boys sat on the other side of the court. A few minutes into the second period, some of the boys basketball team members showed up and sat together behind the bench. On Wednesday night, I was only slightly less disappointed. After desperately trying to gather support for our girls basketball team throughout the day, I was hoping I had properly guilted some students into attending. Unfortunately, I had not. 

Anne, you were sitting with Olivia Pla, Ethan Thompson was sitting with his friends, and Reneé Jenkins attended with some of her friends. About halfway through the game, some members of the boys basketball team arrived again, followed by Gabby Lipsky and Mikki Taye. 

Why am I able to list just about every student in attendance of the girls game but would not even be able to begin to do so for the boys game?

Anne: On Thursday night, the gym was packed for Sleepy Thompson. Anyone there could tell you there was barely enough room to stand, contrasting the girls game where the bleachers were practically empty with only about fifteen students and some parents. 

We all know Sleepy Thompson is a HUGE event that gets lots of coverage, which it deserves, but that shouldn’t take away from the attendance at the girls games. Some students stated they couldn’t make it out to the girls games because of homework or practices.

This is where yet another scheduling issue comes into play. According to the SSSAS Sports Calendar, Boys Ice Hockey and both Boys and Girls Swim & Dive had games or meets on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday and Wednesday were the nights of the girls tournament BUT on Thursday and Friday nights there are no upper school games besides the Sleepy Thompson games. This is similar to the issue with the games scheduled during Seminary Hill Cup. I’m sad we won’t be there to see it but I have high hopes for more inclusive scheduling in the coming years, I also hope that support for the girls teams increases dramatically. 

Calysta: I know some of the senior girls had decided themes, but in the Instagram post on @saintshypesquad, there was no mention of the girls’ themes until you, Anne, had gone into the account and edited the caption. After I saw that, I decided to check the @sssasathletics account. While there were 14 individual posts for the Sleepy games, there were only 4 posted for the Girls Invitational. 

Anne: Typically when Sleepy is won, students and teachers alike go wild.  I saw zero of this excitement for the girls championing their tournament. 

Calysta: This obviously can’t be credited to their skills, considering they won their first game 46-2 and the second game 50-24.  The argument that nobody wants to see a bad team play simply doesn’t apply here. I was thoroughly impressed by their skills and ability to work together as a team. 

Anne: My final thoughts concern the issue of faux support. So many students agree that they want to support female athletes at this school and I didn’t see any of them at the Girls Invitational. 

I’m sick of the excuses. It seems like anyone is willing to adjust their schedule for a Sleepy game or football game but not a soul will rearrange their schedule to support our girls who took the spot of champions during this tournament.