Iowa to Become First Power Five Institution to Add Women’s Wrestling
- Thread starter Blair Sanderson
- Start date
Are there any women on the national scene that might be candidates to compete for the Hawks?
Not the first time I've said this, but I wouldn't complain if this brought some more dollars in (or brought them in faster) for the new facility.
Not the first time I've said this, but I wouldn't complain if this brought some more dollars in (or brought them in faster) for the new facility.
They'll start with the other smaller schools that have women's wrestling: KIng Coilege, Simon Frasier, and the rest. Mostly NAIA schools.
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Her current status, anyone? Were Blades to move to Iowa City and compete with the backing and tutelage of the University of Iowa, it would be a huge boost to women’s’ wrestling in Iowa. Much has been made of the financial reward available to athletes with recently NCAA permitted Name, Image and Likeness regulation. Blades could do very well financially in Iowa.
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An edited quote from earlier posting. Kennedy Blades enrolled in the University of Iowa would be huge statement. Anybody up-to-date; status?
Really good news from the University of Iowa / Iowa athletic department. Young athletes throughout country will hear this message.
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An edited quote from earlier posting. Kennedy Blades enrolled in the University of Iowa would be huge statement. Anybody up-to-date; status?
Really good news from the University of Iowa / Iowa athletic department. Young athletes throughout country will hear this message.
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Blades is IzzyStyle and has been forever. Mark Perry and Izzy are close and so are Tony Ramos and Izzy.
I’m excited to see this, and hopeful it is a spark to get some other schools on board. Preferably ones that have rivalries in men’s wrestling, too. Paired duals would be most excellent.
Barta just saved his job, no need for him to worry about the four men’s programs that he cut….”for lack of funds”.
There’s now 100 women’s varsity teams and “most” are actually NCAA - 48 NCAA schools, 40 NAIA and 12 junior colleges.
For an idea of how emerging sports go to championship sports, look at the makeup of women’s bowling and beach volleyball. Once it hits championship status, it’s a national collegiate championship, not technically not D1 since it’s all one division.
If you’re into that kind of thing …
You’re right about the funding. But, generally speaking most female sports are full ride/ head count meaning they don’t usually get partial rides. Non-FB or MBB men’s sports are often partial schollies. Thus, it’s likely the female side has more spend specifically for scholarships.
Iowa Women's wrestling will end up being the most attended of all women's sports at the University. Mark it down.
I'm sure once Penn State adds one, they'll be sure to sell the idea that their program will be more f**...........
You're assuming that women play sports, or desire to play collegiate sports, at the same rate as men.
Let's put aside scholarships for a minute. Why does it at all follow that athletic slots should be proportional among groups? This was actually an argument in the lawsuit against Harvard by the Asian-American students who felt they were being discriminated against in the admissions process. They asked why proportionality should matter in some areas, like racial groups being admitted to universities (or gender for athletic slots), but not in others, like percentage of Asians who get athletic slots or receive athletic scholarships, which is typically far below their representation numbers, especially at top universities. It's a fair point. And actually, they might not even seek out athletic slots at the same rate as they do admission, but the students who felt discriminated against were right to call out the clear hypocrisy of random proportionality tests.
Truthfully you could group students almost any way and find disproportionality. Heck, I'd be willing to be that in-state residents are way underrepresented at public schools in athletics. Or what about tall vs short? The iterations are endless.
Are slots in other areas at universities balanced for gender proportionality? What about competitive groups in the arts like Orchestra, Choir, Dance, etc.? Balanced by gender? Should they be?
Just Donated my new golf clubs money to carver circle in support of this decision! Go hawks!
A question that I am sure Jordan Peterson would love to discuss. While not a topic I want to debate to deeply on social media, I would say you raise some interesting questions. I can only state my opinion.
I am not usually for government interference and mandates to force change in this country, but Title IX was sorely needed at the time and still is.
Imagine having 2 or 3 girls in school and part of your property tax money is going to fund sports that only boys are allowed to play, none of that money is allotted for your daughters. This was the case just before I started school in the mid 70's.
Fast forward a few years and I got to see my HS daughter play 3 sports per year and love every second of it and I got to see her go to college and continue playing and now post college she runs and is training for a marathon.
Had she never been introduced to sports, she may never have reached these level and never found this passion and skillset within her.
So if we are talking about creating equal spots for men and women I think it's still needed because when we didn't do it, women's sports didn't exist and for as "evolved" as we like to think we are, if we stopped, there is a chance that women's sports would diminish substantially and even vanish at some point.
The Iowa Women's Basketball Team averaged 7, 102 in 2019-2020. That number is likely to go up with Caitlin Clark in town. The Iowa Wrestling Team averaged 12, 500 the same year, the highest ever, and 12 straight with more than 8,000 on Avg.
The Women's Wrestling team won't sniff those numbers for many reasons, IMO. I don't think this moves the needle to the Average Joe and Jane like people commenting on a Wrestling Board think it does. People have X amount of money and X amount of time. Are they going to earmark that money and time for Iowa Women's Wrestling? We'll find out in due time. I wish them well regardless (and they're likely to be very good, that can't hurt).
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More wrestling to watch now. Go Hawks.
I wasn't making a strong argument either way, just an observation that there already being more female athletes (51%) as was noted doesn't necessarily mean much either. They are still 'under-represented' based on overall student ratios. I agree that proportionality as a rule has many problems or limitations, but it is after all a result of many past inequities. It is right and necessary that we fix that. Unfortunately, most of the costs of fixing it are being borne by those who did not generate the past inequities. Nevertheless, we will all be better off the sooner it is fixed.
More wrestling to watch now. Go Hawks.
As long as there is a Magical Money Tree to pluck from (Men's Sports), "right and necessary" is all good.
We should all be so lucky to have a business that just grows and grows, but with very few paying customers. It flies completely in the face of reality and common sense, but what the hell ...............
It is huge for growing the sport with literally half the population. It's such an amazing sport, growing women's wrestling will expose more people and with Iowa's history in the sport we should be a leader. Additionally wrestling has suffered in Title IX considerations because of the lack of the female side of the sport. Strong D1 women's programs will help keep both genders and the sport itself on solid ground collegiately.
Again, why should those ratios match 1:1? Do they match for other competitive positions, such as in the school orchestra? Should they?
LMAO, you think?
The sooner *what* is fixed?
I take zero issue with women playing sports; what I take issue with is the blunt proportionality which makes a whole bunch of (faulty) assumptions.
I'm glad women who desire to play sports today can play, but ultimately all we should really want is for there to be athletic programs that have some type of correlation with what students desire.
I actually think height as a characteristic is a really interesting thing to think about. If the average male height at a D-1 university is 5'10", but only 20% of slots/scholarships go to students at or below average, whereas 80% go to those at or above average, is that fair to shorter people? Should schools do more to help students who aren't "height privileged' have more athletic opportunities? Should it be proportional? Do we even want it to be? It sounds a little crazy, but it's not far removed from what we're talking about.
1) Never said it needed to be 50:50, and acknowledged limitations of proportionality rules. But it is absolutely appropriate to look for notable discepancies between the target population's gender/race/etc. proportions and job class (or other sample) proportions. If notable differences, better have a good non-discrimination-based answer as to why.
2) Yes, me thinks. Sad, but propose other solutions to fix the past wrongs other than telling harmed groups to "wait a few more generations and hope we voluntarily work towards equity". I struggle to find better ideas than many of the undesirable but necessary ones we have now.
3) My comment was broad, not focused just on student athlete ratios. But if you don't think there was, and in many cases still is, many types of discrimination with multi-generational impacts, probably not much more to discuss.
I'll bow out after this.
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