The NCAA issued a response after an Oregon Ducks women’s basketball star said there was a disparity between the men’s and women’s weight rooms at the height of the March Madness kickoff.
Oregon Ducks forward Sedona Prince compared the weight equipment and space offered to men participating in the tournament with accommodations for female players in a viral video on Twitter. The men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments are taking place in bubble environments due to COVID-19, with the men’s team in the Indianapolis area and the women’s team in the San Antonio area.
“If you aren’t upset about this problem, then you’re a part of it,” she said.
The men’s weight room offered a larger space and more equipment for players to train, Prince’s video showed.
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NCAA senior vice president Lynn Holzman responded to the criticism on Thursday.
“We acknowledge that some of the amenities teams would typically have access to have not been as available inside the controlled environment,” she wrote in a statement.
Let me put it on Twitter too cause this needs the attention pic.twitter.com/t0DWKL2YHR
— Sedona Prince (@sedonaprince_) March 19, 2021
Prince’s video depicted a single table and weight rack for her team, compared to multiple different weight racks scattered across a larger room for male players.
“Now, when pictures of our weight room got released versus the men’s, the NCAA came out with a statement saying that it wasn’t money, it was space that was the problem,” Prince said.
She panned her camera across the women’s weight room, showing a mostly empty side of the room.
Her video garnered thousands of likes and prompted a response from Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry supporting her complaints.
The NCAA’s statement added that “the original plan was to expand the workout area once additional space was available later in the tournament.”
The association is committed to being more accommodating to women’s teams and is “actively working to enhance existing resources at practice courts, including additional weight training equipment,” it said.
It was not immediately apparent whether the NCAA upgraded the women’s training facilities following the viral complaint Thursday.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the NCAA for comment but did not receive a response.
