As the school year comes to a close around the East Bay, it’s a gloomy time for me as a sports editor. All the high school sports games and programs that I’ve kept up with year-round have been dwindling down the past few weeks and are now officially over.
But with sports on my mind I have noticed a change in sports on a national level. Over the past few years the rise in popularity of women’s sports is undeniable.
To start, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese changed the game of women’s college basketball viewership during the 2024 NCAA tournament, receiving just over 18 million views, making it the most watched women’s basketball game in history at the time, according to SportsPro.com. Another female sport that’s garnered a lot of attention recently is women’s rugby. During the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, the women’s rugby team won their first medal with a second place title.
The increased interest in women’s sports has also brought a change in sports bar culture. Portland’s Sports Bra opened in 2022 and is dedicated to only show women’s sports games on their screens. The bar has done so well that they’re expanding with four locations across the country.
This trend has also begun to sprout in the Bay Area. The Golden State Valkyries, the Bay’s first WNBA team, played their first game at the Chase Stadium in May of this year.
Even on a high school level, girls are also breaking barriers in sports. In February 2023, the California Interscholastic Federation—which governs the state’s high school athletics—approved the addition of girls’ flag football as a state-sanctioned sport. In the 2023-2024 school year, high schools in the greater Tri-City area including San Leandro, Castro Valley, Tennyson and Mt. Eden held their first season of girls’ flag football. The Tri-City area teams competed with schools as far as Berkeley in tournaments.
Another example of local women excelling in sports is Chabot College’s athletics. Just a few weeks ago at the Track and Field State Championships, the women’s track team earned gold in the 4X100 meter relay with a time of 46.98, representing the Hayward community college.
As attention on women and girls’ sports grows, it will create an even larger and more welcoming opportunity for women and girls to be a part of the world of sports. Whether in their own community or if they pursue sports at a higher level, female athletes can be assured that there are supporters and an audience for women in sports.
