I can now proudly say I’m officially The Whit’s sports editor. 

Sports for me has always been a place of comfort. I was the little girl growing up who was a tomboy. I wore boy’s athletic wear to school everyday, refused to wear my hair up, and wouldn’t wear dresses until I was 10. Little me was constantly outside playing some kind of sport, whether it was softball, basketball, or numerous street hockey games with my dad.

Being the oldest daughter, I always joked that I was the son my father never had. And yes, it is true in some ways. I look, act, and even like the same beverages as him. I was never interested in the so-called “girly” hobbies, I was content watching football with him on the couch. 

I unfortunately didn’t amount to much of an All-American athlete, but the culture around sports was the medicine that got me through some of the darkest times in my life. Writing about them as a journalist was the medium that connected me to a space that felt like home. It’s where I discovered I truly belong.

While to some, this position may appear to be a mere milestone, to me, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

We are all living amidst a time when hate and sexist pushback against women is on the rise. It seems our current presidential administration is more concerned with how they can persuade women to have more kids rather than giving us personal autonomy and just downright basic human respect.

Being the news editor this past year, I was honored and proud to work with a majority female editorial staff. The power within women is something that cannot be overshadowed and now finding myself stepping into a male-dominated industry, the significance of a female sports editor has never been greater.

Society’s engrained view of women as inferior has made feminism ever more rampant, but this doesn’t mean that women like myself feel confident all the time. For a while things can be going well. You are confident in your work, you feel the respect of your peers, and you are able to go on with life unaware of your biological sex. 

But, it’s moments or overt sexism that snap you back to society’s cruel perception of women and makes you realize, even when it seems like we are finally being seen as equal, we’ll always have an uphill battle to climb. 

I started having these moments when I first began to break into the sports world. 

One of my side jobs is I’m a member of the merchandise staff of the Philadelphia Eagles where I sell Eagles gear on game days. A man came up to me asking to buy an Antonio Brown jersey one day, pointing to the AJ Brown kelly green one behind me. 

For those who are unaware, Antonio Brown has not played in the NFL since 2022. I explained this to the man who kept fighting back, assuring me that I was wrong. And I wasn’t, Antonio Brown played for four NFL teams in his career, but he was never an Eagle. After a quick back-and-forth conversation, he finally stopped, laughed, and said to me with a smirk on his face, “Congratulations, you passed.”

Would he have played that mind game with me if I was a man? Probably not. But it’s jerks like him that make you realize that women still have a long way to go when it comes to being taken seriously in sports. It’s sadly something that my fellow hard-working women in sports CaM at Rowan have to deal with, and it can destroy your self worth if you let it.

Not all men think this way. In fact, I’ve been lucky enough to find multiple male friends in sports CaM who truly value and respect women. But, no matter how much time has passed, sexism will always have a place in our world. It’s up to women like myself to rise above all the negativity in our pursuit of greatness.

As I begin my new journey as sports editor, I can’t help but feel empowered to be a woman breaking into a dominantly male field. The little girl who grew up playing street hockey with her dad would be proud of how far we’ve come. And I hope that over my next two years in this position, I only see the numbers of women in sports CaM at Rowan continue to grow. 

Because women shouldn’t let a few crappy men have them question whether or not they belong in sports. They do, and they’re needed now more than ever.

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