In the Fall of 2023, I joined the “football beat” within the sports section of my collegiate newspaper.
When I joined the sports section of the paper the previous year, I was excited to get started in sports journalism. I originally joined with my mind set on covering football, and was anticipating Fall 2023 when I could finally take my seat in the press box and have my spot on “the beat.”
I felt ready, having covered an entire season of Division I hockey the previous winter and the football team’s 2023 spring practices. I was confident in my football knowledge and knew that the other three members of my beat, who were men, also had confidence in me.
But as I walked into the football press box on the first home game of the season, things felt different. In my experience as a reporter for the newspaper, I always felt welcomed by other members of my beat and the athletic staff. The 2023 football press box was different, though. I was the only woman in the press box who was a reporter, not a member of the university’s athletic staff. I didn’t think this would have that much of an impact on me throughout the season, but by the second home game, I felt like the odd (wo)man out.
During games, I stayed quiet and did not comment on the game out loud. I lowered my computer brightness, fearing that someone would read my game notes and think they were wrong. I never asked the head coach or players a question the entire season, afraid I would make a mistake or that my question wasn’t “good enough.”
While I knew deep down, I had tons of knowledge about the sport, being in a press box where the men would only talk to each other made me feel like I didn’t belong and didn’t know what I was talking about. I felt like the fourth person on my beat, like the lowest person on the totem pole.
I couldn’t get myself to watch football for my own enjoyment. But after my school’s football season ended, I returned to the NFL and remembered how much I loved watching and analyzing football. My college’s press box had just drained the love for the sport out of me for a brief moment in time. It reminded me of the stereotype that the sports world was made to be a man’s world.
The environment is not kind to women reporters (or women in general). Women have to fight harder than any man to land a spot in sports journalism. I knew this when I declared my second major in sports journalism, but I did not feel it until I was the only one in the press box who did not fit the sports reporter stereotype.
My football knowledge was questioned, which made me question my understanding of sports as a whole. It translated into my work on the hockey beat. I was scared that questions I asked the head coach or the players would be “wrong” in some way, and I knew that I would be judged more for making a mistake than if my male peers made the same mistake.
It took me until the spring semester on the hockey beat to break through this mental block. After asking questions at every game, I again felt more comfortable with the hockey head coach and players. I felt more confident in the environment and promised myself I would not let the 2024 football press box get the best of me.
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