Game-Day Expense at CCNY: Supporting Female Athletes and Coaches
By Jaquelin Bautista
The following article is featured in the January 2020 special edition of The Campus, The Beaverbeat.
Atthe City College of New York, we support our athletes. Whether that means sharinggame day information or cheering from the bleachers, we are proud of thededicated students and coaches that represent us on the fields,tracks, and courts.
The most pressing reason for supporting our female athletes and coaches specifically is that by the age of 14, girls begin to stop playing sports at twice the rate that boys do. The overarching factor that causes so many girls to drop out of sports is the lack of access. Girls have approximately 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sports than boys do, which forces them to look elsewhere for opportunities that may be unaffordable or nonexistent.
Anotherconcern for female athletes is safety and transportation. The lack of access tosports facilities, especially in many urban areas, can force girls to travelthrough unsafe neighborhoods to go to practices. Other times, girls stay homeif the practice facilities are too far and there are no safe transportationoptions, such as carpooling, buses, or trains, to take them there.
Theoverwhelming list of reasons why women tend to drop out of sports morefrequently than men also includes the poor quality of experience. Generalquality issues include poor practice facilities (especially when compared tothe facilities men use), suboptimal playing times, the lack of experiencedcoaches, and coaches that are more focused on the male team. Issues withfunding, which are more prevalent in girl’s programs, can lead to poorequipment and uniform quality, making it more difficult to practice and playcomfortably.
Thoughthere has been a higher rate of representation and equality throughout manysectors, there are still proportionately fewer role models for women to look upto, and the social stigma attached to female participation in sports can leadto girls becoming the victims of bullying, social isolation, and negativeperformance evaluations.
The Campus conducted a deep dive into the makeup of the CCNY teams andcoaches to see just how much support and how many opportunities female athleteshave. As of 2018, CCNY had a total of 137 male athletes and 97 female athletes.At CCNY, there are sports offered to both men and women, such as cross country,indoor and outdoor track and field, soccer, basketball, and volleyball, however,CCNY does not have co-ed sports. The only sport offered exclusively for men isbaseball, and the only sport offered exclusively for women is fencing.
Whatis striking about the sports department at CCNY is the lack of femalerepresentation in the coaching staff. All of the men’s sports teams,besides the baseball and volleyball teams, have part-time head coaches. Thebaseball team has a full-time male coach and the volleyball team has apart-time female coach. Additionally, each of the men’s teams, besides baseballand volleyball, have 5 part-time male employees or volunteers to fill the rolesof assistant coaches. The number of assistant coaches does not change for thewomen’s teams.
Whenanalyzing the number of male and female assistant coaches for each time, itbecomes clear that the number of male assistant coaches far exceeds the numberof female head coaches. The men’s teams have a total of 30 male assistantcoaches and only 2 female assistant coaches. Similarly, women’s teams have atotal of 16 male partners assistant coaches and only 2 female coaches.
Whenanalyzing the funding allocations, we discovered that male and female full-timehead coaches are supposed to make an average annual salary of $56,000, however,there are no full-time female head coaches for any teams at CCNY. Thefunding allocations began to get interesting when we analyzed the operating, orgame day, expenses for both men and women’s teams at CCNY. For example, themen’s soccer team has 33 team members while the women’s team only has 19,however, the game-day expenses for the men’s team is set at $293 per player,making the teams total expense $9,679, whereas the expenses for the women’steam is set at $592 per player for a total of $11,251.
Thoughthe women’s team is smaller, the game-day expenses are much higher per playerfor women than for men, making the difference in total expense seem verysimilar.
Thistrend can be seen for multiple teams on campus, including the men and
women’sbasketball team. The men’s basketball team has 16 players and the game-dayexpense per male player is set at $1,083 making the total team expense $17,321.The women’s team, on the other hand, only has 10 players, but the game-dayexpenses are $1,684 per player, making the total team expense $16,837.
Byquickly glancing at the report, which leaves the total expense for the men’steams at $253,000 and the total expenses for the women’s team at $247,500, onecannot gauge the large discrepancy in per player cost that exists. So thequestion then becomes, where do the extra expenses per female player come from?
TheCity College Equity in Athletic 2018 report did not go into the details of theallocations of uniforms, meals, and transportation costs which contribute tothe game-day expenses. In order to gain a better understanding of the fundingdisparities amongst male and female teams, an analysis of the 2017 NationalCollegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) revenue report was conducted and showedthat for equipment, uniforms, and supplies, men’s teams spent an average of $1,451,000,while women’s teams spent $819,000.
Acrossall sports nationally, we found that men’s teams generally spent more in totalthan women’s teams, including specific areas like transportation and medicalservices. The question then remains, why are game-day expenses higher for CCNYfemale athletes teams? If we want to show the female athletes at CCNY that wesupport each one of them, we need to answer questions like this one and makesure their ability to play on a team is not dependent on financialinconsistencies.
