The sports world is dominated by men. Look at NBA ratings versus WNBA ratings (the WNBA averaged 213,000 viewers for regular season games in 2013 according to Sports Business Journal, while NBA TV alone averaged nearly 400,000 views per game for the first week of the NBA season this year, according to an NBA.com press release). Then read about sexism female sports reporters deal with regularly. It won’t take you long to find a story.

Varsity girls basketball player senior Mallory Thompson has experienced this sexism throughout her time playing basketball, including at Westside.

“All the time I get comments about ‘No one is going to come to you guy’s game,’ and ‘[Women’s basketball is] a joke,’” Thompson said. “You’re attempting to do something guys can [supposedly] do better, and that just sucks because I’ve put just as much work in as other people do…”

Since Thompson’s father runs a boys and girls basketball camp, she has had opportunities to refute these ideas by playing against boys who assume they are better than her simply because they are boys.

“I’ve always played against guys, and guys often think that I can’t beat them in one-on-one because I’m a girl, and that’s not OK,” Thompson said. “So I would be like, ‘Alright, let’s go,’ and sometimes I’d beat them and sometimes I wouldn’t, but I love the sport just as much as them and sometimes my physical ability is not as strong as the guy’s, but that doesn’t mean I don’t work hard, doesn’t mean I don’t do other things like that. They just lower what I can achieve because I’m a female.”

Thompson thinks there are misconceptions about girls basketball leading to this sexism. She said there is an idea that girls basketball is sloppy and unskilled and therefore unentertaining. But go watch a game. Fans will find otherwise.

“I would say come see one game and tell me that we don’t put on just as much of a show [as guys do],” Thompson said. “Yeah, we don’t dunk. We can’t. But, our Westside team especially, we always [fight] to the end. There’s always a close game.”

Thompson is not saying that girls basketball is the same as boys. She knows there are physical differences. Even so, she is saying it is better in some ways.

“I think that, being a part of a girls team, we’re super strong on team work and not being a ball hog or things like that,” Thompson said. “I think that, just from my experience, being on a girls basketball team is about togetherness and doing things for the next girl and not just yourself.”