by Laura Everett 12/23/22

The best of Boston deserve the best sports coverage. It’s no secret that women’s sports teams in and around Boston are consistently under covered. From our local NPR stations only announcing the scores of the men’s pro teams, to the local newspapers only covering high school girls teams and perhaps a fraction of pro sports, greater Boston’s pro women’s teams are systematically ignored.

And so, this space is beginning with rage and righteousness. Rage, that the established institutions that lay claim to a progressive and inclusive world-view are perfectly comfortable in their sexism. Rage that it is still ok to ignore women. Rage that the double standard is justified by the self-perpetuating mythology that no watches women’s sports, but local media outlets participate in the coverup that maintains the inaccessibility of women’s sports. You can’t love what you can’t see. And these athletes in women’s sports, especially here in Boston, deserve to be seen.

This space begins in righteousness because I also know what is true: women’s sports deserve to be covered, deserve to be seen, and deserve good reporting. That must necessarily include strong and loud antiracist commitments. Boston in general and sports media in particular have horrible and well earned reputations for racist coverage of Black athletes, particularly women. I have no illusions that I am removed from the racist worldview of sports media or the landscape of New England. Only that I enter this work with the commitment to watch, write and opine in explicitly antiracist ways.

This project begins again, as so many have before, with the righteousness commitment that the dignity of the players matters most. And finally, with the righteousness joy that athletes in the women’s games, playing at elite levels, deserve our respect and our best.