Friday, February 8, 2013

2/05 Celebrating National Girls and Women in Sports Day


            The second Brown Bag of this semester’s series featured a great panel of presenters who led discussions on the personal experiences of women athletes and coaches at Colgate. They touched on the history of women in sports and the opportunities that Title IX has afforded them personally and for women in athletics as a whole. The panel featured Vicky Chun, Director of the Division of Physical Education, Recreation and Athletics, Ann-Marie Guglieri, Senior Associate Athletic Director, and  Chelsea Jones, Assistant Men's and Women's Tennis Coach. It also featured two student athletes, swimmer Cammie Kirby '16, and softball player Natalie Siedhof '13.  I really enjoyed hearing the different perspectives on the panel and learning about current issues that could improve women’s experience in sports. These issues included having to perform femininity on the field and stereotypes about women athletes. Suggested solutions included providing a wider array of uniform choices for athletes, being mindful of homophobic, transphobic, and sexist language, and responding appropriately and continuously to incidences of hate speech. I was surprised to learn that the athletic department at Colgate is unique in that it has a woman athletic director. It's remarkable that Colgate is one of eight colleges in the nation with a woman as the head of athletics, and is the only college with an Asian-American woman as the director.  While it is great to see that women are able to advancing in the field of athletics, it is also a testament to how much more progress there is to be made. Please come out to celebrate National Girls & Women in Sports day and to support the women’s basketball team this Saturday beginning at 4 p.m at Cotterell Court! You can also  celebrate LGBTQ awareness by supporting the men’s basketball team in their Colgate Against Hate game next Saturday!

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