Charlotte Adams, ‘21 competes in archery with a club, and track and cross country with WHHS. Adams is driven to succeed in both sports both by her teammates and herself, often manifesting itself as stress. “Sometimes its a two way street and sometimes its a circle,” Adams said on her stress motivating her.
This student athlete shines a light on sexism in sports
String. Aim. Release. The sport of archery is one that often gets overlooked in the days of constant football games and baseball playoffs. But to Charlotte Adams, ‘21, archery is one of the main focuses of her life.
In 2017, Adams set the U.S. record for her age group at the National Indoor Archery Championships in the barebow competition. She practices with a local club geared toward teaching kids the sport.
But this student’s athletics stretch further than the bow and arrow. “I’ve done cross country… and track [at WHHS] since seventh grade,” Adams said. Her active family inspired her to get involved with running to disconnect from the stress of school.
But as Adams has gotten to know the sports better, she has also been able to see the ins and outs of each community the archery and running teams have to offer.
The archery community is “not the most liberal community,” which Adams has seen in many forms, such as “people wearing hats and shirts of certain political affiliations,” Adams said.
In archery, Adams has also seen that “there is a little bit of light sexism in tournaments and things where the shots are yielded to the man instead of the woman,” Adams said. But, these occurrences are infrequent, and Adams does not see this as a hindrance to equal opportunity in the sport.
On the contrary, both the cross country and track coaches at WHHS treat the teams as “cohesive and united.” Adams said, “I don’t think the coaches see the teams that differently in respect to how they can perform based on their own talent and hard work.” Although the men’s and women’s teams have different workouts based on body structure and abilities, they still practice together.
Although Adams feels that few gender disparities are present in high school sports, largely due to Title IX, she sees sexual harassment as the current looming issue in sports today.
“There needs to be some easier ways for victims to speak up, and not feel that their experiences are minimized or trivialized because they are an athlete and that is the situation in which they experienced assault,” Adams said.