Benilde-St. Margaret’s is the home to many of the top high school sports programs in the state of Minnesota. Despite enjoying competitive success across the board, students at BSM see many differences in regards to the treatment each sport receives.

While many sports at BSM are well known, such as lacrosse and hockey, some of the most successful ones are relatively unknown to most students. This is a problem that students would like to be addressed and brought into discussion. “I feel like some sports are taken less seriously or people put effort into a sport and the school doesn’t recognize it as it should be recognized,” senior Eleanor Hutcheson said.

Many athletes at BSM believe there are injustices which prove to have tangible impacts that affect them in their daily lives when it comes to after school athletics and activities. Injustices that are present are not just intangibles; they are physical problems that many athletes here have to overcome. “Our field time is pretty unfair I think. I know women’s and men’s soccer gets field time for their practices over the football team. I play football and almost everyday this year we [had] to go practice on the grass field which is very beat up. I think BSM football is such a big part of this school hence we should not get treated like this,” junior John Robbins said.

Another big issue surrounding BSM sports recently has been how equality applies to gender and also turf time in the BSM sports community. Although many issues at BSM are being combated with our new Director of Equity and Inclusion, some students still believe that gender is a factor which determines how certain sports are treated. “I feel like men’s teams just get way better treatment in general. I really see this in our basketball programs. [The guys] get to practice in the better gym and they also get better jerseys and uniforms in general,” senior Sierre Lumpkin said.

In addition to gender disparities, the inequalities throughout turf time, facilities, and funding seem to be apparent. Students around BSM believe that women’s sports teams receive less advertising and announcements as opposed to the men’s teams. “A lot of times with the female sports in particular, they get a lot less [attention] than males. They have their Instagrams but their games don’t get advertised much. Women’s soccer gets announced over the sound system but not women’s volleyball or other sports such as tennis and cross country,” Hutcheson said.

Head Athletic Director Jerry Petinger thinks BSM has worked to combat issues this year. “Well, number one, we changed Ms. Dahlstrom’s position a little bit this year to help normalize fairness with our great activities, which I think is happening…But as far as sports goes, I don’t think we’ve changed anything to recognize one more than another. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of recognizing anybody and any team when they reach a certain level,” Head Athletic Director Jerry Petinger said.

Since many sports at BSM are so successful, some students recognize that some sports are not given as much advertisement and popularity as others. One of the top programs at BSM is lacrosse. The lacrosse team has gone back-to-back as Minnesota state champions. Many of the players are upset with the little to no recognition the school shows to these winning student-athletes.This does play a role with when the season ends though. The lacrosse season last year went so far into summer, and this acted as a variable when it came to attendance and school glamorization bias. “We haven’t heard or gotten any recognition from the school, and we haven’t even been recognized as a team yet from the past two huge accomplishments we have had,” junior Gus Bell said.

BSM has really been focusing on creating a more united community, making sure sport advertisement is equalized across the various sports at school. This is relates to this year’s theme, One BSM. One factor that many students do not know about when it comes to school based sporting announcements is that most of the announcements are student founded. The administration will send out info if the players or coaches of a team make the request to have a shout out. Captains need to take initiative as a team leader or ask their coach to get things done. “Sometimes you hear debate announcements in the morning and then what debaters did…the coaches will send that in. So if coaches or athletes or participants of any activity send stuff in, we’ll put it on announcements. Of course, what we can control is you’re going to get more media coverage typically, of the big team sports, whether it’s high school football or hockey. Or volleyball, whatever it might be,” Pettinger said.