Junior Courtney Cohn, The Pitch’s first ever female sports editor.

As this school year wraps up and the new positions for the Pitch next year have been announced, I’ve been thinking about what my experience has been on the Pitch this year. One of the things that keeps popping up in my head is the fact that I am the first female sports editor on the Pitch ever. To give some perspective, the Pitch has been around since 1954. I actually found this out last year when the positions were announced.

I had mixed reactions when I was informed about this. I was so excited to have this honor and to show that gender stereotypes can’t stop anyone from doing anything they want to do. I was also surprised because it’s crazy to think about how throughout all of the years The Pitch has been around, no female students have been sports editors.

At the same time, I was also not surprised because the stereotype is that typically boys follow sports, and girls don’t. I believe this stereotype is untrue because, not only are there so exceptions to this, but also people are allowed to follow and enjoy whatever what they want. While I believe this, I also have to acknowledge that this stereotype has some weight based on what I found out.

From that moment on, I wondered if I would have any challenges being a female sports editor and I wondered if people I interviewed would be surprised or think it was strange. Now that the school year is almost over, I am very happy to say that I did not encounter any of the challenges that lingered in the back of my mind. The coaches and players I interviewed did not care in the slightest and were nothing but kind. Additionally, the other sports editors and writers did not treat me any differently.

For a while now, I’ve heard about many cases where female reporters in the sports world were being treated as inferior to men. However, my positive experience being a sports editor has given me a lot of hope that gender stereotypes are diminishing and do not hold the same bearing they did in the past.

Honestly, none of these thoughts even crossed my mind when I filled out my staff application last year and decided to apply for a sports editor position. There was no question in my mind that that is what I wanted to do. In the journalism class, that I took last year, all of the students had to post weekly on personal blogs and then would read what other people in our class posted. I’m a huge Chicago Bulls and NBA fan, so my blog discussed the Chicago Bulls’ season. I enjoyed writing about basketball so much that I decided, that was I wanted to write about the following year on The Pitch.

I have written some NBA articles since I’ve been on The Pitch, which I’ve definitely enjoyed doing, but I’ve also found that I like to cover other sports as well. I loved capturing the action of WJ sports, especially boys’ basketball, since basketball is my favorite sport to watch and analyze the statistics for.

I had a great experience this year being a sports editor and working alongside the three other sports editors. I hope that there will be more female sports editors in the future that will want to cover sports and do what they love. I am so glad that my feat was honored during the announcement of my position, but has never been considered or mentioned in anything else I’ve done on the Pitch.

I’ve always wanted to write an article about this, and since this is the last print issue of the year, I have found the perfect opportunity. I hope that anyone who is worried about doing something because they might be judged for it or if it does not correspond with societal norms, is able to brush away their fears and accomplish whatever they put their mind to.