By Kelsey Rogers, Asst. News Editor
I’m definitely a person that is always filled with self-doubt. You could tell me a million times that I’m capable of doing something and I would just push it to the side, rationalizing any and all of my achievements to just getting lucky. Only one thing has been a constant variable throughout my life: I wanted to write. I wanted to write anything and everything that I could get my hands on. It has been the only thing that has kept my feet relatively on the ground.
Despite that, the doubt doesn’t miraculously melt away. It lingers over my head after every story or assignment. I have to take a step back and reflect: is this the path I’m meant to go down?
My destination became more clear once I realized what I actually wanted to write about once I received my degree. I had been doing a little bit of everything to get my feet wet, but I didn’t have something that was inherently my own. It wasn’t until I finally admitted to myself what I wanted to do that I felt more solidified in my future than I ever have: sports. I finally found something that would make me tick.
The doubt didn’t kick in until I was completely blindsided by people questioning my capabilities. It wasn’t because of the strength of my writing, but because I’m a woman.
I love my family to death, but the looks I receive when I tell them about my plans makes my heart sink. They would ask me if I “even knew enough to do that” and it wasn’t until I did a sports broadcast on the radio for an entire hour, arguing back and forth with three men that I finally seemed to prove myself to them. Even then the only response I got was “we didn’t know you knew that much compared to the guys,” as if me speaking about sports on my own wasn’t enough proof.
I’m not afraid to argue. I’ll do my research and analyze statistics and players until I’m blue in the face if that’s what it takes to prove myself to be a decent reporter. But I want to be critique based on my skill set and not my gender; I want to be analyzed for my commentary and knowledge in the same way that man sitting beside me is.
This needs to be adopted for women everywhere trying to make their way into sports media. Women are not some variation of humans that are incapable of understanding sports and learning the ins and outs of the industry. Asking women to name the entire roster from 1982 and the names of their pets doesn’t prove that you know more than us. It just proves that you’re afraid of women invading your space that you claim is “no girls allowed” like children writing signs in crayon for a clubhouse made of soggy cardboard.
Women belong in sports, whether you deem us worthy enough or not. We’ll persevere through the obstacles you throw our way, but that’s not the point. We shouldn’t have to overcome more hurdles than you just to be ranked below you.
Women are equally as capable. As a woman hoping to enter the field, I’ve never been more motivated to tackle a situation head on. But this shouldn’t be the case, and it doesn’t work for everyone. The path needs to be paved for the generations of journalists to come, so young women don’t have to question if they should take the leap into sports reporting because “sports is a guy’s thing.” Sports are not restrictive to one gender; anyone who wants to watch and analyze is capable of doing so.
Women belong in sports, and we’ll still be here regardless of anyone trying to stop us from doing so.