In news you may have missed, AU’s women’s basketball program is currently on a 13 consecutive win streak, the second-longest winning streak in the program’s history. With head coach Megan Gebbia – recently inducted into the Frederick County’s Sports Hall of Fame – at the helm, the all-women staff and team has risen to the top of Patriot League standings. We’d like to take the time to highlight these student-athletes for their tremendous work in repping the Eagles – despite a generally apathetic student community.
Players do not enjoy the liberty of full academic breaks. They maintain full-time course loads and involved community roles while also putting the University on their backs and dribbling us all the way to the top of Patriot League standings.
Title IX paved the way for gender equality in participation of university sports, opening up previously closed-off opportunities to women who had sincere interest and raw talent in de facto male-dominated spaces. It is then entirely inequitable for the men’s team to receive disproportionate coverage and support from the University and campus community, especially considering simply how well and how hard our femme student-athletes work.
The Eagle staff would like to break the unhealthy attitude that has captured the student body. The American University femme student-athlete community is strong, smart (the team’s cumulative fall semester GPA was 3.30) and sensational. While American University is not a sporty school, we are a community. We are a community only as strong as the bonds we form and the support we show. So, recognizing that the student body has not lived up to its commitment to our student-athletes, we would to issue a sincere pledge of support, coverage and congratulation.
Regardless of outcomes, The Eagle is rooting and pulling for women’s basketball, femme coaches and administrators and all other femme student-athletes the consistently demonstrate what it truly means to be an AU Eagle. We look forward to our staff-wide trip to a game, which we’re planning before the end of the season.
All hail the mighty AU Eagles!
-E
opinion@theeagleonline.com
