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.
Regardless of the prejudice angle in this story, I feel bad for the girls for being excluded from possibly winning the championship, especially when they were performing well.
Honestly curious about the downvote on that comment?
Don’t worry about it, some people just throw downvotes around everywhere. You could make the least divisive post possible that everyone universally could agree is correct and still get a downvote, so it’s best to just ignore it. This is especially true on news communities, infamously the preferred hunting grounds of many a troll.
Thanks for replying. I’m honestly not worried about it, just really curious. I like to know if there’s something missing in my perception of the comment I made, basically.
I figure my comment hasn’t been noticed unless I have the validation downvote.
Fair enough, but it’s just so weird.
Like what is that? Just some automated system response, making sure there’s always at least one downvote on anyone’s comment?
I’m being facetious, but you get my point. It’s just so out of left field, it just makes you wonder.
I posted a screenshot of my Linux desktop in a thread about Linux desktops. Got several upvotes and one downvote. Don’t know.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Either you agree with me or you hate women” is a pretty silly opening argument…
Damn even stretch armstrong couldn’t reach that far
Why not, Israel seems to be doing fine with this kinda opening
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:
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.
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I find this to be a common problem on Lemmy.
LoL. Lemmy is definitely feels over reals so far. And my feeling appreciates that.
Didn’t you read the title of the blog post? Of course they’re evil!
The headline was accurate. Read the article.
Oh, great idea, but I was just guessing, I don’t read articles, only what other people think, and then I just go with that.
The headline is correct, but it doesn’t tell the whole story was my point you absolute doofus.
Did you read the article (and linked statements) or not? The league stated the reason the girls couldn’t play and that reason that a boy might not be able to handle avoiding hitting a girl if they lose. None of this would be an issue if the girls weren’t winning. I don’t buy for a second that nobody noticed all season that they were losing to girls.
You mean the blog post on “comicsands.com”?
And this erudite take by “Prez, a social media user on X (Formerly Twitter)”, who “didn’t buy it”?
Yes, I did! Multiple times, unfortunately!
It’s ridiculous to be so ready to fall for populist propaganda when you just happen to be on the self-congratulatory team, but the mode of thinking is the exact same as employed by MAGA freaks.
Your lack of critical thinking makes you just as bad as them.
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…
Did you read the article? I think you should. I’m not being snarky, promise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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That’s a whole different kind of sucky.
I’m completely bumfuzzled about this.
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The true tragedy here is not giving prepubescent children anabolic steroids.
Whats that say about how the boys have been raised? And this just reinforces that.
I doubt they had anything to do with it.
I sort of realize that if I was on a team of guys and learned that we were going to face a team of girls, it’d be a lose-lose scenario. Either we beat up a bunch of girls trying their best, and “celebrate” over defeating a group that has (on average) physical strength disadvantages, OR we’re mocked for losing to girls.
The premise of most athletic competitions would be that it’s a fight on generally equal footing. Either way that becomes imbalanced, it can perhaps ruin the feeling. Still sucks that the girls didn’t get to demonstrate themselves there.
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I don’t want to be an old man, but if you hit a girl when I was in 6th grade, you were an instant social pariah. Everyone would beat your ass.
Kicking them out doesn’t solve the problem. They’d just blame the girls instead of being introspective. Let one of these loser little boys throw hands and learn really fucking fast that the meanest, hardest hitting monster on this planet is a pissed off 12 year old girl. When he’s getting his hair ripped out a fistful at a time, he’ll understand why he lost.
Yeah a lot of boys forget that girls don’t fight “fair”. Due to societal pressures on women to surpress heir emotions, when it comes time to fight that’s it. Boys are taught by society fighting is normal and even is encouraged in how they play.
6th graders generally don’t fight fair. They don’t generally fight well at all.
The typical fight between 6th grade boys is every bit as much of a slap fest as the typical fight between 6th grade girls.
6th grade boys haven’t hit puberty yet. Given that these girls are kicking their butts at basket ball I’ll assume they slap harder than the boys do.
They’re probably taller than the boys, too which plays into them beating them at basketball since height is such a big advantage and girls tend to hit their growth spurts earlier.
but if you hit a girl when I was in 6th grade, you were an instant social pariah. Everyone would beat your ass.
And this is why male violence against women is non-existent, children.
There is a whole world out there to pay attention to and you’ve taken the performative utterances of tweenage boys desperately trying to become men as evidence to deny everything else. WTF?
FWIW, the ones who were shouting the loudest are absolutely the most likely to be dominating, coercing, and hitting their female partners now. They’re performing masculinity because they don’t know what it is and that terrifies them.
And because the world is dominated by these frightened little boys, we punish girls and women for the violence of men and boys. This story is not an outlier, it is the fucking story.
“For their safety” :vomits:
Typical “alpha male” response
More sources that go into depth on what happened and the fallout …
https://www.rawstory.com/next-level-basketball/
https://www.wvxu.org/sports/2024-03-04/kentucky-girls-basketball-team-banned-southwestern-ohio
And maybe this is why the girls were shut down … On Feb 28 in an event in Alabama the girl’s team, who were forced to play in the boy’s league, won the championship but the trophy went to the losers instead.
Thanks for those extra links, when I saw that site’s address I thought “is this another onion?”
Next Level Girls Basketball is a youth team based in Wilder, Ky., that coaches girls from the 3rd grade level through high school. The team’s highest level players are competing for scholarships to play in college, but many others are there just because they like playing basketball.
I’d like to know the age of the competing teams. These were sixth year level students, the first game was played by, as I can make out from the article, a stand-in team of 6th graders (boys).
I’d want to know if they only met other 6th grade teams after that, or what the age composition of both teams were, because I feel like that could potentially be a factor.
"Subsequently, their first game was filled in by a boys 6th grade Next Level team … 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."
Y’all Qaeda strikes again.
God damn Talibangelicals and their Shakira law.
Hymns don’t lie 🎶
Better to prepare those boys for all of the ass-whoopings women will serve them in their future professional careers, no?
How about policing the boys’ damned behavior for one fucking time in their lives, then?
Sorry, but boys-will-be-boys. So we have to ban girls from competing, because we literally cannot continence telling any of our precious little superstars to cut that shit out.
They’d have to not agree with the behavior in the first place.
That’s 11 years old.
Okay let’s hear all the excuses for 11 year olds needing to be super competitive and separated by gender.
At 11, girls tend to be taller than boys. So all that estrogen is providing them with a competitive advantage.
Then they should make 2 leagues: one where everyone is allowed to participate, and another one where only boys can participate, so they can win too. Just like we have with every sport’s women’s league.
Of course the prizes in the boys-only league should be lower since they play in a less competitive league.
Of course the prizes in the boys-only league should be lower since they play in a less competitive league.
Sadly, the way these things tend to work is that a handful of patriarchs make all the rules, from who gets to play to what goes in the prize pool.
We should have two leagues based on skill. Not gender or sex. We can still create space to have awards and prizes based on gender or sex to ensure everyone is recognised if necessary.
Which we care about… Why? Is there some million dollar prize for 11 year old basketball I’m not aware of?
Then you can’t have it both ways when they get to high school. Or are you saying Girl Sports shouldn’t exist? If a girl can’t compete in high school basketball against boys, then too bad?
School sports shouldn’t be competitive in the same way. It’s not the point of student sports. That’s for learning to operate in a team, learning social dynamics, building hand-eye coordination, and physical fitness.
But this wasn’t a school league. So for apples to apples, yes once they reach high school age in private leagues they should be grouped by ability.
cue counterstrike audio: “Terrorists Win”
Sounds like the boys forfeit and the girls won
Sunderman should have kicked them out for lying, not out of “concern” for the potential behavior of boys. As soon as he made that claim he went into the wrong. If the boys can’t behave properly then kick them out. It’s like how a gal shouldn’t have to worry about being raped because of what she is or isn’t wearing or doing or not doing. We’re telling females what to do or not to do and not males what to do or not do.
