Despite many challenges and a constantly changing schedule due to COVID, the Regis Girls Varsity Basketball team made an impressive run in the State Tournament culminating an appearance in the state championship game at the Broadmoor World Arena this spring. This is a continuation of the success the program has demonstrated over the past several years; however, the condition of their home court does not reflect this success.

With an all-time 162-19 home court record, making it to the state championship is an expectation for the girls’ basketball team. While the Regis Boys’ Varsity Basketball has also realized some success in making it to an elite eight Cinderella story season in 2020 and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen this past year, they have still not realized the consistent excellence shown by the girls’ program in recent years. Under the 1972 Title IX law, sex-based discrimination in schools or programs are prohibited and schools are required to provide equal athletic opportunities to male and females at the high school and collegiate levels.

With the unequal treatment of women’s teams recently seen in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, Regis, alongside schools nationwide, need to better reflect the equality they preach to their students, rewarding and advertising each athletic team fairly for their successes.  During the NCAA basketball the lack of an adequate weight training area, media area, meeting space and player swag bags were an embarrassment compared to what the men’s team were afforded.

While the girls’ varsity basketball team record is consistently better than the boys’, the facilities the girls receive are worse. In the 2019 offseason, air conditioning was finally installed into the Girls Division gym. The weight rooms, locker rooms, and coaches’ rooms in each gym also reflect these inequities, not dissimilar from the NCAA basketball controversy. The coaches’ room in the girl’s gym is simply the gym storage closest with a desk stuffed into it, while the boy’s coaches’ room is a separate room attached to the gym where a desk fits comfortably. Regis places great pride into their athletic programs, but this pride is not always reflected in the facilities for the girls, even with their consistent success.

The poor advertisement in the Regis community for the girls’ varsity basketball team directly results in attendance disparities. Neither the faculty or students are clearly informed of both the teams’ success and upcoming events. After returning to class following the State Championship game, the majority of my classmates and teachers were not aware that we even played in the Championship game or the overall accomplishments the team achieved during the season. The successes of all programs and groups in the Regis community should not only be advertised equally but celebrated at a similar level.

While many claim these inequities faced by women in athletics are due to the difference in the levels of talent, success, and competitiveness, evidence shows otherwise. Many athletes, from the Regis girls’ basketball program, have continued their careers at the collegiate level, including Jada Moore, at Kansas State University, as well as Fran Belibi, at Stanford University in the past two years. As only 1.3% of female high school athletes continue their basketball careers at the Division I level, the talent seen in the Regis program is impressive and the success of the program strongly defies these statistics. We should be rewarding and celebrating this success.

In the Regis community, inequalities can be seen in a broader perspective with the overall building differences. These overall inequalities are endured by female athletes in all different grade levels and across all the various athletic teams. These disparities continue into the basketball programs, where the girls’ basketball teams continue to experience these inequalities despite the program’s incredible success. All schools, no matter their athletic success or level, need to work to correct the inequities females are faced with daily, especially those they are faced with in athletics. The solution to this nation-wide problem must begin in our own community and unless action is taken, the inequities will not continue to take place and have an adverse effect on our female student athletes for years to come.