Girls Basketball Team Kicked Out Of Boys League Championship After Defeating Boys Teams

Null User Object@programming.dev to News@lemmy.world – 734 points – Girls Basketball Team Kicked Out Of Boys League Championship After Defeating Boys Teams
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A 6th grade girls team from Kentucky was set to go for the year-end championship tournament, but was told they were banned due to fears boys teams might 'retaliate' if they lost to the girls team.

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That's not why they were kicked out. The coach lied, to get them playing in the boys league, since they were so good.
So of course they got kicked out. What you expect the league to do?

He explained:
"In November of 2023, Next Level and Larry McGraw deceptively registered a girls team into the 6th grade boys league and under the gender listed as MALE."
"We entered them into the league assuming they were a boys’ team as conveniently no roster was ever provided."
"Subsequently, their first game was filled in by a boys 6th grade Next Level team because they played the 6th grade boys Cincinnati Royals team - coached by myself, so there was no reason to suspect anything different."

He continued:
"It wasn’t until late January/early February that several teams from the 6th-grade division started traveling down to Kentucky to play their scheduled games, that it became apparent that the Next Level team was, in fact, a girls team."
"Several complaints from coaches and teams were filed because of this deception."

Social media users, however, saw SWOB's statement as deflecting from another issue, one that accused the league of trying to keep their feelings from getting hurt in the event the boys were defeated by girls.

that is some selective bullshit

Seriously. What this tells me is that 70+ people either didn't read the article or they just really have a thing about mixed gender sports. You quoted only the pathetic backpedalling lies he said to try to further justify his actions. BUT FIRST AND FOREMOST he said this (the man you are quoting, Sunderland, is the president)

The city-wide basketball league, Southwestern Ohio Basketball (SWOB), made the call because they believed that 11 to 12-year-old girls and boys competing against each other on the court could pose a liability risk leading to violence, even though the girls team had been winning 7-1 all season without incident.

IT IS WHY THEY WERE KICKED OUT.

It wasn’t until late January/early February that several teams from the 6th-grade division started traveling down to Kentucky to play their scheduled games, that it became apparent that the Next Level team was, in fact, a girls team.

You're telling me it took multiple games AND teams for them to become "apparent that it was a girls team " ??? And become a problem. But only until they got far enough because maybe they wouldn't and then SWOB could avoid PR problem all together.

this is a reminder to read the fucking article people

You might come up with a similar conclusion as me, or completely opposite. But OP is patently false and deceptive with their quote and definitive ruling on it, claiming the headline is deceptive! Fuck that.

You might have quoted the wrong part. This is what you're looking for:

Doing this 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues.”

Also it looks like the guts of the article is the media statement here:

https://www.swohiosports.com/

It's a daft thing to say, and just pours fuel on the conflagration, but it does reveal some insights into the character of the guy.

"Either you agree with me or you hate women" is a pretty silly opening argument...

Why not, Israel seems to be doing fine with this kinda opening

So if I understand it correctly, it's a boys only competition, not an open competition. And since these girls were so good, they wanted to be able to compete against the top teams, so they pulled of a superb ruse to be able to do just that, in the process upsetting some men who don't want to compete against girls for reasons, especially if they end up losing. That's going to make a good sport movie one day.

Many (most?) sports have a top "open" competition that anyone can enter and then several restricted competitions (age, sex, handicaps, ...), but even if you qualify for one of the restricted competitions, if you're good enough, you can still play in the open competition. Except in bible belt country apparently, no girls allowed in the top competition.

He also said it wasn't unheard of for a girl to play on a boys' team or for a girls' team to compete against boys.

It sounds like it's not a boys only competition. It's not entirely clear whether this quote is just referring to in general or this specific league, but based on the context the latter appears to be the intended reading.

These are 6th graders. There's no "top" competition for 6th graders at all, which is why this is a region specific league, and most of the sports are divided into boys and girls divisions at those ages.

Why is it divided by sex?

I can only speak about my nation's club football (the world kind, not the us one): the normal competition is open to anyone, with smaller competitions for other groups. Those smaller competitions have discriminatory rules for entry, but players that meet those criteria, can still chose to play in the normal competition if they want to. The "normal" competition has many more brackets than the smaller competitions because there's just way more players, which also means that if you want to play vs the best, that's where they are. It's the same principle for all ages.

I can imagine that at one point the football competition in my country had similar "no girls allowed" rules, but when I grew up in the nineties, the football competition that I played in was already mixed.

I don't know. I didn't go to school near Ohio, but my state had some sports divided by sex and some not at that age. In my area, it seemed to be largely that the popular sports were divided, and the less popular sports were not.

The way to change it is either to ask for it to be changed by the existing organizerd, or form a new league if they won't, and enough parents want that.

That's a whole different kind of sucky.

I'm completely bumfuzzled about this.

Even if you are technically right, you are morally wrong. They should be allowed to register in that league, and if they weren't then the coach lying about their gender was the correct and moral thing to do.

Crazy to watch people twist themselves in knots bending over backwards to try and excuse sexism.

But I don't even think you are technically right. All those quotes stink like excuses and BS.

In the statement on their website, Sunderman literally quotes himself telling McGraw that the girls couldn’t play because if they beat a boys team in the playoffs then the boys might get frustrated and physically retaliate, causing a liability issue.

He didn’t say they couldn’t play because they registered as a boys team. That was more of a supporting anecdote presented because of social media blowback.

The way I see it, when you're a sports executive, you have two options in this situation: 1) exclude the girls' team because "dem's the rules" or 2) let them play because seeking out the boys' competition will help them develop into a stronger team.

Personally, I think 1) is a weak choice, especially when arguments like "someone could get hurt" are both ripe with misogynistic sentiment and refuted by the games played without incident.

It wasn’t until late January/early February that several teams from the 6th grade division started traveling down to Kentucky to play their scheduled games, that it became apparent that the Next Level team was, in fact, a girls team. Several complaints from coaches and teams were filed because of this deception.

At that point we allowed the team to finish the regular season schedule, but would move them into a girls’ tourney at year end.

This is a direct quote from the Southwestern Ohio Basketball website.

They allowed the girls to play until the end of the season in the boy's category, so your take on it is incorrect.

So the article is wrong, but this still doesn't make it OK. The article should have just been accurate. That would have been nice.

The headline is misleading. What I pulled was from the article.

What was in the article is that the girls team was kicked out of the league when the only game left was the championship game. You'd think if it was just the "no girls allowed" issue that would have been dealt with much earlier...

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