In light of International Women’s Day, the topic of adding more sports has been the subject of conversations, and girls want to have their voices heard about the issue.

As we lead into the 2024 spring sports season here at Lake Shore, a problem has occurred. The girls at Lake Shore have noticed the limited amount of intriguing girls’ sports options. 

Junior, Genny Zelinski, said, “I kept emailing Bowers to ask about Golf or Tennis, and he kept responding that he would let us know; But, I’ve emailed him 5 times and he hasn’t.”

In an earlier email exchange, Bowers said, “It would have to first start as a club sport. Financially, responsibility would be on the students(parents).” 

This brought up the issue of how it is believed that boys have a larger sports budget than girls.

Julia Pearl said, “My mom tried to get field hockey into the school, and they had a meeting set up for it, but it had to be canceled and had never been rescheduled.”

This is a disappointing missed opportunity, as it would have been a nice sport to be added along with the addition of tennis. These chances that are being missed, can cost a lot to Lake Shore schools. The disregard for the attempt to bring these makes it even harder and it is a chance people want and what others don’t want to take. 

Junior Ava Kozak said, “I don’t think that the school advertises girl’s sports as much as boys.”

With the different types of sports being added it seems to be more suited to the guys’ choices of the athletic department rather than the girls. There are always opportunities to be had which are now being missed.

Kozak, Zelinski, and Pearl all went on to say how disappointing of a situation it is to not be viewed as important enough to have these things run. Kozak said, “They mostly only support boys sports.”

Zelinski followed and said, “Girls’ sports are not valued as much as boys’ sports.”

This being said in multiple different interviews, shows just how many people have actually thought this. This is not just a problem that girls in High School have to deal with, it is seen to be similar to college and professional sports and sports teams.

With more support from other students, staff, and parents the girls here at Lake Shore hope to gain support and help to get girl’s sports on the schedule.