NCAA criticized over disparities between men’s and women’s basketball tournament amenities
The NCAA is holding it’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments inside two bubbles due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The men’s tournament is at venues in Indiana, while the women’s tournament is held at sites in Texas.
But the amenities available for the women is in stark contrast to the men, according to USA Today.
Stanford sports performance coach Ali Kershner highlighted the difference in the workout areas of the two tournaments with an Instagram post.
In it, a split photo showed the men having various weight equipment at their disposal, while the women only had 30-pound dumbbells and yoga mats as options to use.
There is also a discrepancy between the meals for the teams in the men’s and women’s tournaments, too, according to social media posts from Oregon’s Sedona Prince and Houston director of sports performance Alan Bishop.
Bishop unveiled Thursday night on Twitter the Cougars had a spread of chopped salad, grilled asparagus, potatoes au gratin, lobster mac and cheese, petite filet, bread pudding, cheesecake and carrot cake.
Meanwhile, Prince’s post on TikTok showed her and her teammates having a meal of Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, vegetable medley and a brownie, and their disgusted reactions to tasting the Salisbury steak.
That led to WNBA and NBA players commenting on social media about the inequity between the two tournaments as well as NCAA vice president of basketball Lynn Holzman issuing a statement on the workout space differences.
“We acknowledge that some of the amenities teams would typically have access to have not been as available inside the controlled environment,” Holzman said in the statement. “In part, this is due to the limited space and the original plan was to expand the workout area once additional space was available later in the tournament. However, we want to be responsive to the needs of our participating teams, and we are actively working to enhance existing resources at practice courts, including additional weight training equipment.”
