NCAA Basketball Player Calls Out Women's "Weight Room" in Viral TikTok

The topic of unequal treatment between men and women is not necessarily a new conversation in the sports world—and a recent viral video, apparently highlighting the dismal women's weight rooms at an NCAA Tournament, serves as a stark reminder of what some female athletes say they face daily.

On Thursday, Stanford basketball coach Ali Kershner posted a series of shocking photos comparing the women's and men's weight rooms at the NCAA Tournament. While the men's weight room featured every piece of equipment imaginable, the women's weight room—if it can even be called that—consisted of merely six pairs of dumbbells and a stack of yoga mats.

After Kershner's post went viral, amassing over 80k likes and thousands of supportive comments in less than 24 hours, Lynn Holzman, the NCAA Vice President of Women's Basketball, responded to the controversy on Twitter.

"We acknowledge that some of the amenities teams would typically have access to have not been as available inside the controlled environment. In part, this is due to the limited space and the original plan was to expand the workout area once additional space was available later in the tournament," she said.

"However, we want to be responsive to the needs of our participating teams, and we are actively working to enhance existing resources at practice courts, including additional weight training equipment."

The claim of "limited space" was called into question, however, when Sedona Prince, a player in the March Madness tournament, posted a video on TikTok showing vast amounts of seemingly unused space adjacent to her team's warm-up area.

"If you aren't upset about this problem, then you're a part of it," Prince added.

Other sources are bolstering the claim of unequal treatment. Instagram account @womenshoopz has been compiling photos that show how the prioritization of men's teams extends beyond just their weight rooms. One post shows the "swag bags" offered to women players compared to their male counterparts, and the difference in the quality and number of items left many in the comments section floored.

The NCAA March Madness Tournament is one of the biggest events in college basketball. It remains to be seen how the student-athlete organization plans to address the claims of unequal treatment of their women's basketball teams.