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For great justice

Officials Attempting to Kick Female Golfer Off Her All-Male High School Team… Because Reasons

by Susana Polo | 11:01 am, September 13th, 2012


16-year-old Sierra Harr was given some bad news last year: despite having played on state title-winning girls golf team at her high school her freshman year, in her sophomore year there were not enough players to field a team. The girl’s golf team was being disbanded, and she was given a choice of competing in tournaments as an individual or moving to another school entirely. But the third-ranked female golfer of her age in Idaho felt that a team environment was too important a part of the high school golf, and applied to be allowed to play as part of they boys team.

This is the point where you might assume that the title of this post becomes relevant. But you’d be wrong.

The Idaho High School Activities Association granted her permission to play on the team so long as she qualified every week, and Harr (and her 2.2 handicap) helped the team to win another state championship. She says:

The boys on my team treated me as an equal, and if any of my competitors disapproved of my golfing with the boys, they were gracious enough to keep their opinions to themselves and treated me with respect. The only negative reactions I received were from a few opposing coaches.

Those opposing coaches, it would appear, are now lobbying to keep her off the team. Because… it’s unfair that she can also compete in girls individual tournaments? Association President Greg Bailey puts it another way:

There aren’t any villains here. We try to look at things from a fairness perspective, fairness for that individual athlete as well as fairness for the other athletes involved. The question is, is she bumping out a boy? And if she wins in the competition, did she bump out a boy in the other school district?

I think it’s safe to assume that Bailey would not feel the need to ask this question if Harr was a boy. After all, being “bumped” out of a competition by a competitor that performs better than you did is actually one of the central defining qualities of a competition. Under Title IX, schools are required to provide female athletes equal access and equal opportunity to pursue the experiences that are afforded male athletes. Dennie Smyer, golf coach at Declo High School, part of Castleford’s league, agrees with Harr’s stance that playing individually is a different experience from playing on a team, and that her place, for now, is with the boys’ team. Harr isn’t the only female high school age golfer in the country who’s playing on the boy’s team because her school cannot field a full girls’ team.

The IHSAA told the Associated Press that it’s looking to craft better rules that would allow for Harr (and further female golfers who do not have a girls’ team at their school) to stay on her team, while “preserving fairness for others.”

(The Associated Press via Yahoo! News.)

TAGS:


  • http://twitter.com/Super_Widget Joanna

    All I see here are a bunch of sore losers.

  • Adam R. Charpentier

    Integration is perfect and wonderful…handicaps are not. If she qualifies without a handicap, great. If not, then every boy that doesn’t qualify without a handicap should be given the opportunity to qualify with one. The final scores should also reflect handicaps.

  • Adam R. Charpentier

    Lots of dislike for me, but no explanation for it. What’s wrong with perfect equality? Without any other explanation, I have to assume that I’m getting dislikes because handicaps are fair when they’re helpful but unfair when they’re not helpful. Equality…to a degree. A helpful degree.

  • http://twitter.com/GroovyKitty GroovyKitty

    Everyone gets a handicap in golf, it’s not based on her gender. 2.2 is ridiculously good, it’s barely a handicap at all and most of the guys she is playing with probably have much higher handicaps. I don’t know how high school handicapping compares to normal handicapping, but the average is 15-20.

  • http://twitter.com/GroovyKitty GroovyKitty

    A quick google tells me that most high school competitive golfers have a 6-8 handicap, so yeah, she is definitely well above the qualifying threshold and she is probably competing against a lot of boys who have bigger handicaps than she does.

  • Adam R. Charpentier

    Hah! Okay, nevermind, I apologize completely. I’m not a golfer and I’ve never golfed, so the suggestion that someone was receiving a handicap stood out to me…I had it all wrong. I figure everyone should have an equal chance…

  • Anonymous

    “We try to look at things from a fairness perspective, fairness for that
    individual athlete as well as fairness for the other athletes involved.
    The question is, is she bumping out a boy? And if she wins in the
    competition, did she bump out a boy in the other school district?”

    So it’s unfair if she wins because she’s better than some hypothetical boy at golf? Riiiiight.

  • Anonymous

    Maybe they wouldn’t be so sore if they cut down on the amount of masturbating they do …

  • Ashe

    Haha. They’re telling us they’re just trying to be fair? By discriminating against a girl and looking at her success as a negative because a poor boy might have not gotten picked exclusively for once?

    I think that’s a song on ‘NOW! That’s What I Call Double Standards’.

  • http://www.wordflow.webs.com/ Invisible_Jester89

    All I see are a bunch of coaches angry that a girl beat their guys. Who probably sucked anyway. So no, I have no pity for you jerks.

    Let her freaking golf. She’s causing no harm. This doesn’t even make sense from an anti-female standpoint – if you think girls shouldn’t golf because they’re girls, wouldn’t that be because they would drag the team down or be unable to compete with males, and NOT because the girl in question is doing better than your own guys?

  • Anonymous
  • http://www.facebook.com/GingerSquirrel Harriet Jane Lawrie

    It’s just like ‘She’s the man!’

  • Ryan Gatts

    Those guys are just being big whiners, and I think if she’s on the team, she should be able to play.

    But could one of the boys join a girl’s team and compete in their league? That would be weird… Should we just mix all golf teams, maybe? I don’t know the break-down of average skill by sex, but what if mixing the teams meant that no girls got to golf because they were out-competed? Would it be worth the potential loss of players in order to achieve sex equality? Does it work like that? (I don’t know much about golf…)

    Sorry about all the question marks. I don’t mean to make a case for reverse-sexism, just that sports are weird.

  • Ryan Gatts

    herp a derp. I completely forgot about title IX :P

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