The NCAA girls folk’s basketball event is expanding to 68 groups foundation with primarily the most up-to-date season, giving it an equal number of individuals as the males’s event as portion of a concerted effort at gender parity.
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The males’s event expanded to 68 groups in 2011 with four first-spherical video games traditionally carried out in Dayton, Ohio. The main four for the girls folk’s event will raise home on the campuses of groups seeded within the tip 16 this season, but they’ll switch to a to-be-certain neutral home foundation with the 2023 event.
“This instant expansion of the girls folk’s basketball championship reinforces the truth that leaders inner Division I are committed to strengthening parts of the girls folk’s basketball championship that at as soon as affect student-athletes,” said West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons, the chairman of the Division I Council.
“We watch for the actual trade this may per chance presumably per chance moreover simply maintain for the student expertise at the championship,” Lyons said, “namely as it pertains to equal personnel alternatives to compete within the event.”
The expansion of the girls folk’s event was as soon as among the suggestions build forth in August after a entire exterior gender equity review performed by the legislation company Kaplan Hecker & Fink. It was as soon as commissioned after backlash driven by social media of disparities within the males’s and girls folk’s tournaments, alongside side weight rooms and diversified facilities.
ESPN will broadcast the first four video games alongside with the relaxation of the girls folk’s event.
“The expanded bracket and championship alternatives for Division I girls folk’s basketball student-athletes are paramount,” said UT-San Antonio athletic director Lisa Campos, the chair of the Division I Ladies folk’s Basketball Oversight Committee.
“Here’s a transition year for the event, and right consideration will be given for diversified enchancment areas, alongside side opening-spherical video games taking home at a predetermined home, in describe to pork up the championship expertise.”
Other suggestions encompass exploring a joint Closing Four with the semifinals and title video games held within the the same metropolis on the the same weekend, even supposing that may presumably per chance well no longer happen until as a minimum 2027 with sites already locked in until that level.
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The NCAA already had favorite the girls folk’s event the utilization of the phrase March Madness in its branding.
“This motion corrects an inequity that has existed between the males’s and girls folk’s championships for a decade,” Danielle Donehew, government director of the Ladies folk’s Basketball Coaches Association, said about event expansion, “and presents equitable postseason participation alternatives for Division I males’s and girls folk’s basketball student-athletes.”
