Facing a swell of outrage and accusations that it prized men’s basketball players more than the athletes competing in the women’s tournament next week, the NCAA apologized on Friday for vast disparities in workout facilities at its marquee championship events.
Later in the day, Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, acknowledged an additional startling imbalance between the men’s and women’s tournaments: different methods of coronavirus testing for athletes and for others inside the tournaments’ “controlled environments.”
The method in use at the men’s event in Indiana is called a polymerase chain reaction test, or a PCR test, which is considered the gold standard of virus testing. It is highly sensitive and almost always detects infections. The method for the women’s tournament in Texas is a rapid antigen test, which is cheaper and generally provides quicker results but is less sensitive and more likely to yield false negatives.
The controversy around the women’s tournament erupted this week with complaints about unequal facilities. Players at the men’s tournament have benefited from an enormous, well-stocked workout complex in downtown Indianapolis. But the stars of the women’s game, who will play their tournament in Texas beginning on Sunday, appeared to have only a rack of hand weights.
Faced with an uproar on Friday, Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s vice president of basketball, apologized for “dropping the ball, frankly.”
“We will get it fixed as soon as possible,” he said from Indiana.
The NCAA’s apologies came after an onslaught of online criticism. It started soon after Ali Kershner, a sports performance coach at Stanford, posted images on Thursday of a cavernous weight room at the men’s tournament, where teams will be living under tight restrictions, and the sparse facility at the women’s tournament.
Though each tournament has at least 64 teams, the men were given workout equipment including dumbbells, barbells and squat machines, all arranged in what appeared to be a hotel ballroom, while the women apparently had only a rack of dumbbells, none heavier than 30 pounds.
“The women want and deserve to be given the same opportunities,” Kershner wrote. “In a year defined by a fight for equality, this is a chance to have a conversation and get better.”
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