By ALLI SCHIEBER
Editor-in-Chief
Seward County softball team made it to the semifinals and are down with the bases loaded against their rival team, Hutchinson Community College.
Ashley Low is up to bat.
Smack! She hits a grand slam winning the game.
This is a core memory for Northwestern’s head softball coach Casady Webb as that game happened during her first year of coaching.
“I was bawling standing on third base,” Webb said. “It was really cool because she is such a good kid too.”
Low now plays volleyball for the Rangers but she also played Softball for Webb here as well.
When Webb was growing up, she remembers always being at the baseball field with her dad and brother.
So, she decided to play softball.
Webb said she always wanted to be a high school teacher and coach growing up and she never thought about coaching college until she was in college.
Women’s sports are something that for years have often been overlooked. That is changing now and has been changing for a few years now.
Teams such as the University of Oklahoma’s softball team are starting to form a dynasty and make an impact on girls in their sport and other sports as well.
A lot of times in women’s sports they do not have other women to look up too in their sport, so they look up to girls on their high school teams or girls that are in college, but their games are harder to watch due to them not being broadcast live.
However, more and more we are seeing women’s sports on television or streaming services making it more easily accessible for girls to have a favorite player they look up too outside of college or high school.
Women have always been dealt the shorthand when it comes to sports though.
The NCAA was established in 1906, but women were not allowed to play sports until Title IX was signed in 1972. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs or federally funded activities.
Since men’s sports have been around so much longer it is more established and men have more athletes, they can look up to growing up in any sport.
For basketball there are people such as Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan that thousands of boys have looked up to for generations. For football they have people such as Tom Brady, Jerry Rice and Barry Sanders that have changed the game and boys are inspired by. For hockey there are people like Wayne Gretsky and Sidney Crosby. For baseball there is Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.
Women’s sports have not had that at such an extreme level, but that is changing with people like Caitlin Clark, Simone Biles and Serena Williams.
Freshman softball player, major from Enid, Katelyn Bezdicek said is it bad that she cannot think of a softball player she looked up to growing up. Although Bezdicek did not have a softball player to look up to growing up there are many young softball players that have that now. This is due largely to Division 1 softball and the dynasty that is the University of Oklahoma softball team. OU softball has won six of the past 10 NCAA softball championships.
The Women’s National Basketball Association has also played a huge role in changing the game for women’s sports. The WNBA was founded in 1996 50 years after the National Basketball Association was founded.
Since it being founded the WNBA has had many athletes that people look up too, but women’s sports has been harder to follow and watch as they usually are not covered by national brands such as ABC or CBS.
Within the past year, however, more and more WNBA games are being broadcast nationally. According to CNBC as of June 10th the WNBA was averaging 1.3 million viewers per game which was triple of last year’s average of 462,000. With that more women’s sports are being watched in person as well. Even if people go to games to watch a player like Caitlin Clark, they often end up going to more WNBA events because they have fun.
Nicole Koehn said that she has friends and coworkers who have never been to a Minnesota Lynx game, but they were playing the Indianna Fever and Clark was there, so they went and ended up going back the next week when they aren’t playing the Fever.
Women’s basketball has changed significantly even at the Division 2 level. At NWOSU, last year many fans watched the women’s basketball game but would leave for the men’s when traditionally it is the opposite.
This had to do with the success that the women’s basketball team had last year but could also be because of the effect the WNBA has had on sports within the past year.
Keely Hussey, a junior from Okeene said that she got into basketball at a young age because her parents both coached high school basketball. Her mom even coached her growing up.
Hussey also said that she likes playing basketball at the collegiate level because everyone is there for a reason not just to play basketball but to win, as well.
Basketball is not the only sport that has been changing. Hockey also has a new league that started last year, Professional Women’s Hockey League started in 2023 and has six teams.
The teams recently have given the six teams name as they were previously just named after the state they are located in. Women’s hockey has had several professional leagues that have not succeeded but the PWHL has already proven to be successful with their inaugural year.
Koehn said the PWHL’s biggest thing is wanting to pay the athletes more, so they so not have to have another job. They do not think that they should have to worry about how they are going to pay rent like it has been in the past. The PWHL league also believes in building a future.
“They want it to be as much of a sustainable league as possible, so that way little girls can have the same dream of a little boy and be like I want to be in the NHL I want to be a PWHL player,” Koehn said.
Another thing that has changed sports is blogs and social media profiles that lean towards women’s sports. One of these accounts is Sports Girls Club, Girls Club is a multi-platform, community for women and girls in sports.
Girls Club is successful on social media with over 100k followers on Instagram. They post facts about sports and athletes in a fun and trendy way. Girls Club is only a few years growing as it started in February of 2022.
While they post trendy content and about athletes who are trending to help with views, they believe that women’s sports are here to stay and finally getting recognition they deserve.
“In the world of women’s sports, it will only go up from here,” said Girls Club head of media, Jenna Stickel.
There has also been a shift in women’s sports where we are seeing more of a generational talent in women’s sports like we have seen in other sports in players like Steph Curry and Connor Bedard. Caitlin Clark is one of those talents for women’s sports and although the media says there is a stigma between newer players who are building the sport up and older players who have not gotten a lot of the recognition the players have in the past.
“5 years ago, you wouldn’t have heard about Caitlin Clark,” Koehn said. “Now you are in the same sense of like you are hearing about the Connor Bedard’s.”
Northwestern starts their season in January. During the fall they practice, scrimmage other teams and have a “World Series.”
During the “World Series” they divide the team up into a red and black team they then play games like a regular softball series would. Photo by Alli Schieber.
