Female athletes are better prepared for the game of life after playing sports. See why

Women’s college basketball will be heading soon to the March Madness finals, regardless of who ends up as champion, every female player on every college team will have matured as a result of being part of a team and competing on the floor, win or lose.

Strategizing with other team members and competing to beat their opponents, women become more independent and confident, healthier, smarter, and have greater self-esteem when they leave high school or college and no longer play a sport. Whether they take a job at a Starbucks or at a law firm, women athletes are better prepared for the game of life.

Yet, as a society, we don’t provide the same support for or investment in the girls and women who play as we do for boys and men from elementary school on up to college. Why not?

“Why not” is the question Ole Miss women’s basketball Coach Yo McPhee-McCuin was really asking when she recently shamed the Oxford community, students and alumni for not attending her team’s games. Coach Yo, as she is often called, has been building a strong team for the university over the past six years that could result in a championship.

She said after a 11-point victory against the Florida Gators, "How does a team that goes to the Sweet 16…not have an average of 5,000 people in the stands? How? You know what it is? It's the lack of value. And it needs to change."

It absolutely needs to change in more ways than just game attendance, though we know the bigger the crowd, the better the team plays and the more money the universities make, as well as the college athletes themselves through NIL (Name Image and Likeness) payments.

Some college alumni, mostly men, donate to recruit and grow men’s sports. Women’s? Not so much. The same is true for the NCAA.

Football star Brett Favre desired a women’s volleyball stadium built at the University of Southern Mississippi. His daughter plays on the volleyball team. Favre asked two former Mississippi governors for financial support for the stadium, and somehow ended up with money from a taxpayer-funded program, appropriated specifically for low-income families, mostly poor women with children. Obviously, building a stadium does not match the immediate needs of poor mothers.

Why didn’t he get the money for the volleyball stadium from Southern Miss alumni? Perhaps it was because Favre couldn’t find the donors for his dream of a women’s volleyball stadium. Perhaps donors to men’s sports don’t give as much to women’s sports. Perhaps we don’t take women’s sports seriously enough.

And, most importantly, perhaps we don’t appreciate the impact sports has on a girl or young woman as she matures. I played basketball from elementary school to one season as a Lady Rebel at Ole Miss in 1976, when women’s basketball was taking off, not long after Title IX passed Congress, requiring colleges and universities to offer women the same sports’ teams and funding as men. Through Title IX, I received a scholarship, but my abilities were not as good as my teammates, and I quit after a season.

What I didn’t quit doing was building the confidence I needed to become a journalist and later a press secretary for political candidates and elected officials. I have no doubt that playing ball gave me the ability to fight for a win, whether in sports, at a newspaper or in politics.

The vast majority of women players won’t end up on a professional team or become a coach, but the skills, the emotions, and the confidence formed from playing sports, whether it’s basketball, volleyball, golf, or tennis, will guide players on how to be strong businesswomen, doctors with bedside manners, and/or caring, smart mothers and wives.

That is the missing value that Coach Yo speaks of. It’s not about winning a championship every year. It’s about giving women opportunities and showing respect for what they do, win or lose. In overtime, two Mississippi women’s basketball teams, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, battled it out aggressively, leaving Ole Miss with a win and fourth place in the Southeastern Conference. Mississippi State is fifth. The battle continues in the March Madness finals.

Brett Favre and other fathers and mothers of daughters who play in elementary, secondary schools and colleges should join Coach Yo and other women coaches in calling for sports fans to attend games, for sure, but also to give and get donations from alumni to support the girls and women in their lives.

We are doing it for men and boys. Let’s do the same for girls and women.

— Karen Hinton, author of Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men & Power, was a reporter for the Jackson Daily News and served as press secretary for a number of Democratic politicians.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Female athletes better prepared for game of life after playing sports