Women should be embraced more in sports, not alienated

A female coach in a male sport is a rare phenomenon, but not as obscure in Arizona. With the new female coach for the Arizona Cardinals, Jen Welter, and the female coaches here, we may be ahead of the so-called gender game. It seems that women in positions of athletic authority face prejudice every day, but this is not true for our school.

When Perry’s female strength coach Joelyn Boone was growing up, she faced the gender prejudice: her school “had a boys weight room, and girls were not allowed,” she remembered. Despite growing up around the discrimination between the sexes, she never saw her gender as a barrier. “You can’t listen to people telling you you can’t do something. Male or female,” Boone commented.

Now, our football players treat Coach Boone as if she is just another one of the guys — as they should. Female coaches are no less of a coach than their male counterpart. Principal Dan Serrano knows the authority Boone has over weight training, “she has national certifications. She knows her stuff,” despite her gender.

Men have coached female sports for as long as women have been playing sports. Women have coached female sports for as long women have coached.  Why are women coaches for male sports so rare? It should not be some big spectacle when a women coaches male sports.

In regards to the new female leading the Cardinals, this big leap for them is very progressive for women who are striving to coach, like Welters, for a professional team. While this should have been accomplished years ago, and never should have been an issue, this is a positive step toward gender equality in the professional-sports area.

Unfortunately there still are many other gender issues in the pro-sports world that have yet to be noticed by the majority of their fans. For instance, the World Cup tickets for the men’s soccer team were $1,980 as compared to the World Cup ticket prices for women’s soccer at $165 for the category 1 final round ticket price for American fans. The difference in the expense for the tickets shows the priority and demand for each gender, proving that men’s sports are more praised than women’s in America, despite how much better the women’s American team performed compared to the men’s team.

The gender issues in America are seemingly coming to an end, but there are many more aspects of the issue that need to be fixed before it anything is truly “equal”.