This winter, a 6th grade squad from Next Level Girls Basketball entered a city-wide basketball league run by Southwestern Ohio Basketball. At the end of the regular season, the team posted a 7-1 record and was preparing to fight for the year-end tournament title in February. But they soon found out they were banned from playing because of one glaring issue: the league was for boys.
A text from the league's president, Tom Sunderman, was sent to Next Level's Director Larry McGraw, informing him that his team's participation in the league presented a liability risk.
McGraw believes another factor may have been at play.
What both sides say
Next Level Girls Basketball is a youth team based in Wilder, Ky., that coaches girls from the 3rd grade level through high school. The team's highest level players are competing for scholarships to play in college, but many others are there just because they like playing basketball.
McGraw describes the world of youth basketball as the "wild West" because it's comprised of many different leagues and tournaments around the country with varying rules and regulations.
Often times, teams with younger players playing at high levels might enter a league with older players for a new challenge, he says. It's also not unheard of for a girl to play on a boys team or for a girls team to play against boys, so McGraw claims when he registered the girls for the boys' league, he didn't think much of it.
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When the girls entered the winter league, Next Level utilized a team of boys who practiced at its facility in their first game against Sunderman's team, according to the league president. The game was "coached by myself," Sundermann writes on the league's website, "so there was no reason to suspect anything different.
It wasn't until the girls took the court at later games that problems arose.
Southwestern Ohio Basketball claims Next Level was deceptive by listing the team's gender as "male" in its registration, breaking the league's rules.
"We entered them into the league assuming they were a boys' team as conveniently no roster was ever provided," reads the statement. "Subsequently, their first game was filled in by a boys 6th grade Next Level team ... It wasn't until late January/early February that several teams from the 6th grade division started traveling down to Kentucky to play their scheduled games, that it became apparent that the Next Level team was, in fact, a girls team."
WVXU reached out to Southwestern Ohio Basketball's president for further comment but did not receive a response.
Breaking rules or gender stereotypes?
University of Cincinnati assistant professor Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown says the issue is not whether Next Level broke the rules, but instead the rules themselves and their impact on young girls.
Brown focuses on Black women and girls in sports and how they're presented in media and culture. She says the team's banning is another unfortunate instance of girls getting punished for having success.
"It happens all the time," Brown said, "There's this mythos that boys and men are innately always better than girls and women when it comes to sports."
Brown says this mythos stems from the idea that men have to present masculine traits and women must be feminine, pointing to examples in sports history where women were accused of "gender fraud" for excelling in athletics and not fulfilling a specific gender stereotype.
For Brown, the league's decision to go after the girls team instead of letting them finish the season comes from that same place of anxiety and the need to protect masculine egos.
From Brown's perspective, one of the more troubling parts of Southwestern Ohio Basketball's statement in response to backlash from Next Level's banning was a line about the possible physical retaliation from other teams if the girls were to win the tournament.
"Doing this for 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues," the statement reads.
Brown says this statement highlights the main issue some have with the decision to ban the team. Rather than expecting boys teams to adapt to the situation, it shifts the blame toward the girls for stepping onto the court in the first place.
"Shouldn't we be more concerned that they would feel the need to retaliate because they feel like they lost to someone who's supposedly inferior to them? Is that the argument?" Brown said. "If that's the rhetoric, then that's where we need to start making changes."
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While Next Level's Larry McGraw never felt his team was ever in danger, he says there were certainly plenty of challenges the girls faced during games from outside the lines of the court.
"They got giggles, they got laughs, and people talked about them... you know, the looks. There's a lot of that and I think this was a great opportunity for them to say, 'Yeah, we're pretty darn good and you should respect us,' " McGraw said.
A no-win situation
The league offered the Next Level 6th grade girls a chance to play in a different year-end tournament for girls only, but the club turned it down and pulled all of its other teams out of the league's tournaments in protest.
"There are two sides to every story," the Southwestern Ohio Basketball League statement concludes. "SWOB stands by our decision because it is one that places the safety of our kids in a competitive environment at the top of our priorities."
The Next Level team says it's now preparing for the spring season, and plans on continuing to challenge themselves by facing the toughest competition.
McGraw says unfortunately, even at a young age, it's not the first gender-based roadblock many of them have faced, but he believes they will be resilient and bounce back.
Still, Brown says despite their resilience, the lasting impact of the situation and message sent by the league will follow the girls for the rest of their lives.
"It's going to have a long-term effect on them because its like, you weren't kicked out because you were girls. You were kicked out because you were winning," Brown said. "I wonder if this would even have been a conversation if they hadn't made it as far as they did."
