Katie James and Joey Vila, pictured above, play for Roosevelt’s bowling and football teams
The new women’s bowling team has attracted attention from the student body, specifically from male students who wish to participate. The one thing on students’ minds: why isn’t there a co-ed or men’s bowling team?
Ryan Boyle, senior at Roosevelt, says, “I’ve heard a rumor that there are a few people that would want to participate in a men’s bowling team.” He continues, “If there was a men’s bowling team, I would consider [participating].”
One of the main reasons that the team was created was to even the number of boys’ and girls’ sports in the state. Ryan Sherlock, Roosevelt’s athletics director, says that, “[the team] got created because it was a Title IX issue; they were trying to create another girls sport that would match the same number of boys sports that are in the state.”
Title IX is a federal civil rights law passed in 1972 that states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
A significant effect of the act was the increase in women’s participation in high school athletics after its passage. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the percentage of student athletes that are female has increased from just under 8% to over 42% nationwide in the 50 years since the act was passed.
Though the increase in participation is substantial, there remains a gap between boys’ and girls’ participation in high school sports. In the 2018-19 school year, 4.5 million million male students participated in high school athletics nationwide while only 3.4 million female students did.
The team was added in order to balance women’s and men’s high school athletics at the state level and nationwide, not necessarily at Roosevelt. Roosevelt has 18 women’s sports and only 16 men’s sports. This is because football is male dominated, while cheerleading, volleyball, and now bowling are girls only.
While the team wasn’t created to balance out the number of sports played by each sex at Roosevelt, part of its intention was to increase girl’s participation in athletics as a whole. Sherlock confirms this, saying, “I think that they’re just trying to create more opportunities for girls to participate in athletics.”
The effort to get more women involved in sports seems to be successful at Roosevelt. The number of men and number of women athletes are very similar, within 20 students, says Sherlock. He notes that Roosevelt has “one of the highest female athlete participation numbers in the entire city.”
For boys who wish to participate, Sherlock says that “there’s always a chance to add a sport, whether it’s a boys or girls sport. There just has to be some push for some interest.” So, maybe a men’s bowling team is something we’ll see in the coming years.
