Apparently, OSSAA thinks sports is only a man's world | Opinion

Oklahoma City is home to a professional women’s softball team, the Spark. Our state capital also hosts the Women's College World Series annually, and will welcome Olympic softball in 2028.

After years of being forced to use equipment designed for men, now there’s even a booming industry that sells items such as shoes and bicycles to address the unique needs of athletic women.

In the sporting world, women are no longer an afterthought.

COUNTERPOINT: OSSAA elevates local voices, school-led decisions | Opinion

That’s why it’s so puzzling that the OSSAA apparently doesn’t believe women deserve to have representation on this new, 15-member committee that will meet once a month between May and December to, as The Oklahoman put it, “analyze rules and pitch changes” to the entity’s 15-member board of directors.

The membership list of that board of directors, coincidentally, is also predominantly male. An internet search shows just two women serving on it.

This is not an inconsequential nonprofit.

The OSSAA’s survival is intertwined with that of the 482 public and private schools that make up its membership. It also operates on a budget of about $8 million, which is largely paid for by playoff ticket sales.

The nonprofit was founded over a century ago to bring fairness to high school sports and serve as the regulatory body not just for sporting competitions, but also nonsporting contests like band, drama and debate.

It determines scheduling, trains over 11,000 judges and referees, enforces regulations and — more controversially of late — has the high-stakes responsibility of determining whether students are eligible to compete after transferring schools and ensuring no recruiting violations have occurred.

The Oklahoman first reported in April that the OSSAA was creating a committee to dig into the body’s 24 rules and was “accepting nominations” from all its members, but most particularly looking for athletic directors, principals and superintendents.

It took just days for OSSAA to announce that it had wrapped its search.That zest for manliness picked, of course, all menfrom a crop of school superintendents, assistant superintendents, athletic directors, assistant athletic directors.

Besides women, also noticeably missing from its ranks: leaders of nonsport competitions, in the fine arts or drama, not to mention debate teachers or band directors.

“We know this group of people who work with students every day will be able to truly understand the impact of these rules, find gaps and improve them for the betterment of our students and teams,” said David Jackson, OSSAA’s executive director, who is also a man.

He told Fox 23 News that they received over 150 applications and “selected 15 who bring a wide range of ideas and perspectives from across the state.”

I find it hard to believe that there was not a woman as equally qualified as these men out of over 150 applicants.

Jackson also told The Oklahoman that OSSAA wants everyone to “know these decisions were made with students and families in mind.”

Which students? Just boys?

Look, diversity matters.

Women bring different perspectives and lived experiences. They’re traditionally the primary caregivers for children, make up the majority of educators, and when one parent has to give up their career, they’re the de facto stay-at-home parent.

In general, studies have found that women typically hold fewer leadership positions and are less likely to apply for employment and other career advancement opportunities if they don’t meet every single requirement. That’s due in part to perpetuating gender stereotypes (like perhaps the perception that sports are for men).

Plus, women’s sports are generally given second shrift to men’s. Just look at FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to celebrate the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team’s gold medal victory. Just days before he was nowhere to be found when the women also took home gold.

OSSAA should be doing everything they can to build girls' sports, not tear them down.

One can’t help but wonder why – when already under the legislative microscope — OSSAA seems hellbent on inflicting more self-harm. Do they actually want to go the way of the dodo?

Because even if this lack of diversity was an accidental oversight, it raises some serious questions about why nobody internally noticed it or was emboldened to flag it.

And it raises some confounding questions about what OSSAA wants to be.

Do they think women deserve a voice in their decisionmaking?

And if they do, who is going to have the gonads to hit pause on this debacle? Who among them will demonstrate the intestinal fortitude needed to insist OSSAA head back to the drawing board and actually conduct a search to find women who are ready to speak up?

Janelle Stecklein

Janelle Stecklein is editor of Oklahoma Voice. An award-winning journalist, Stecklein has been covering Oklahoma government and politics since moving to the state in 2014. Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OSSAA should have given women a voice on overhaul board | Opinion