I’ve talked about being a student-athlete in this column before and my experiences being a woman in competitive sports. Overall, I have loved swimming at Stevens for the past three years. Despite being a tech school with little focus on athletics, the Stevens sports teams are all very good. I don’t have exact numbers, but if you read the sports section of The Stute, you’ll see constant announcements of conference sweeps and NCAA titles from whichever teams are in season. One thing I haven’t heard anyone talking about is the crossover between the gender ratio and athletics.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not complaining that the girl’s teams are at a disadvantage. The women’s teams hold up in competitions and have earned plenty of titles for all the hard work they’ve put in. Still, I don’t think that a lot of people consider how the gender ratio affects athletics. With a gender ratio of 70:30 men to women, Stevens has over double the amount of men than women. Very few schools have similar setups, however we compete with schools that have even gender ratios. Based on a quick Google search, I found that there are roughly 240 female varsity athletes and 360 male varsity athletes. The official Stevens athletics website says that we have 12 men’s varsity sports teams and 11 women’s varsity sports teams. So, while we almost have an even number of teams competing, we only have two thirds of the people to fill those slots for the women’s teams.
Something unique about the women’s and men’s swim teams is that we mostly function as one team. We have one coach, go to competitions together, and we train together. Because of this, I’ve gotten to see how the two teams have dealt with filling our rosters. On one side, the women’s team has struggled to fill our 18 person competition roster. If we can’t fill our roster, we inevitably lose points against teams with more girls. If anyone gets sick or can’t swim for any reason, we are left with an extra empty spot that we can’t fill. The men’s team, on the other hand, regularly has five or more extra memes. If something happens and someone on the scoring roster can’t swim, there’s always another boy who can take their spot.
I’m not sure, but I imagine that other women’s teams are having similar problems. We have fewer walk-ons because there are fewer women in the general student body. I’d imagine it’s also harder to recruit women for Steven’s athletics because we are primarily known as an engineering school, a less popular major for girls to pursue. This doesn’t just affect our ranking, it can affect our funding, too. When teams win the conference championship, they also win money, which can be used for gear or training equipment. Teams with deeper rosters, like the men’s teams, have a competitive edge over smaller teams. Most schools in the country have more women than men, giving them a competitive edge over the Stevens women’s teams. Again, I’m not complaining. I chose to go to Stevens and I loved participating in Stevens athletics, but it’s interesting to see how the Stevens ratio plays out in different areas of campus.
