The NCAA delivered on filling in the women’s weight room ahead of the start of the big tournament in San Antonio — but even this isn’t quite enough by comparison to the men.
The “upgraded” weight room was revealed Saturday on ESPN’s College GameDay show, where correspondent Holly Rowe showed off the new digs. Yes, there are more weights and equipment scattered about … but it still feels pretty hollow compared to Indianapolis.
Here’s another weird thing … Rowe goes out of her way to point out that the area that Ducks forward Sedona Prince filmed in her now-viral video isn’t technically meant to house weights or be a training room, per se — but rather, a place for players to confer and “loosen up.”
Rowe says she’d been told the carpeted space Prince panned across is actually the compliment area to the practice court — and yet, even that has been littered with more dumbbells, racks and row machines … albeit sparingly. Rowe then showed off what she described as the actual weight room — implying that Prince mighta been misinformed.
She says the space Prince was in was always meant to be a complement space next to the court, despite the fact there was a meager set of dumbbells in the middle of the floor to begin with. Weird way to spin it.
The “real” weigh room, as it’s now being described, looks super slapped together and about as makeshift as can be — and doesn’t seem much different than where Prince filmed. All these rooms look like conference rooms, so who the hell knows. That said, there is a bit more equipment here … but again, it’s not nearly as robust as the men’s facility at all.
It’s interesting … Rowe seems to be saying the actual weight room she’s showing off was there all along, but she does say the NCAA upgraded that space too. So the question then becomes … what’s the truth??? In our eyes, it seems the weight room(s) — whether it was the one Prince thought she was in or the one Rowe’s showing now — both sucked.
The NCAA admitted as much, saying they did, indeed, fall short in providing equitable equipment/space to the men’s and women’s teams … and that they’d try to fix it ASAP.
This appears to be a quick Band-Aid fix — unclear if they plan to bring in even more stuff as the tournament kicks off Sunday. Either way … this was a complete blunder on the org’s part.
