There’s a twelve-year old girl in Oregon that’s already received a full scholarship offer to play basketball at Oregon State.
For a year, Jaime Nared played basketball with the boys in her age group. And then she was kicked off the team.
From ABCNEWS.COM (via YAHOO! SPORTS):
Her coach said the other players’ parents were fine when Jaime joining the team until she outshone their sons on the court.
“They were great … until she blocked the first shot. Then they were like, ‘Hey, we don’t want this big kid coming out and making us look bad,’” said Michael Abraham, Jaime’s coach.
After parents complained, The Hoop, a private league that organizes the games, told Jaime she could no longer play with the boys, citing a rule that bars mixed-gender teams.
The ruling upset enough people that Nared’s teammates actually wrote letters to the league asking her to be reinstated. The Hoop has held firm in their decision.
I hate parents, especially when they try to get involved in every aspect of their childrens’ lives. Who cares if your kid got beat by a girl? You’ll be working for a girl 20 years from now, so get over it, Billy. You suck at basketball, anyway. It’s best you learn that now while you have a chance to master long division.
4:16 pm on May 25th, 2008
Who says he will be working for a girl in twenty years?. i dont care that she outplayed them but the fact is the league bent/broke a rule by allowing her to play against the boys in the first place.
7:29 pm on May 25th, 2008
But why would a league even have such an idiotic rule? No mixed-gender teams? It sounds like country club rules. Do they ban race mixing as well?
6:43 pm on May 28th, 2008
I was so upset over how ignorant people can be I sent an email to the hoop Monday. Here is the reply I received.
Thank you for your interest in this story. Unfortunately for The Hoop, reporters are in the business of selling a story. Mr. Body of KOIN is a personal friend of the Nared family and so he decided to run this story based off of their information. Once he talked to us he realized it was going to take quite a bit of spin and he would have to leave out a lot of the facts to make this of any interest to the general public. I find this kind of reporting damaging to us as an organization and very irresponsible.
Here are the facts.
Facts:
1. The Hoop runs basketball leagues for both male and female athletes.
2. We market and sell these leagues as separate male and female leagues.
3. We provide equal opportunities for both genders to play in their sex appropriate divisions.
4. We allow players to “play up” in higher grade levels to provide them with the competition they desire.
5. We have not limited Jamie Nared in any way outside of these listed policies.
6. Our policies are consistent with AAU’s policies. (AAU is a nationally respected organization for armature athletics.) AAU’s website:
http://aausports.org/default.asp
My Summary:
The Nared family wants us to make an exception to our policies in the middle of a season. In the report KOIN reported that we had allowed her to play previously but that is false. Team Concept inappropriately chose to play Jamie Nared against our rules and policies and we emailed her coach (Michael
Abraham) reminding him that this is not allowed. This is what started the story in the first place. This is not a gender equity story because we provide equal opportunities for both male and female athletes.
Moreover, we provide MORE opportunities for Women then we do Men!
The bottom line:
The Hoop has no problem allowing girls to play with boys and vice-versa but only if the league was set up, marketed and sold to our customers as such.
We do not feel it is fair to our customers to change the rules in the middle of a season. Jamie is a gifted athlete but this does not make any difference to us because we treat all athletes gifted or not equally.
10:13 am on June 8th, 2009
Amazing, once you hear both sides of the story. Writers who do that kind of hatchet job should not be allowed to write for any publications. Or at least everyone of their stories should have a disclaimer (i.e. "Story was embellished to get a raise out of the public")
8:14 pm on August 30th, 2009
The boys on this team should be flattered that a future WNBA player wanted to play with them. If a boy kicks their but they use that experience to get better. Why should this be any different. Take it as getting to play with better compitition and deal with it.