With more and more minority student-athletes partaking in collegiate football, basketball, and track and field, smaller sports such as tennis, volleyball, soccer and swimming and diving suffer from a lack of minority participation.
Despite the fact that minority student-athletes make up 45 percent (1,840) of the 4,096 student-athletes enrolled at Southeastern Conference member institutions during the Fall 2004 – fall 2005 school year, just 12 percent (500) participated in sports other than the “big three” of minority-laden sports – football, basketball, and track and field.
With over 1,300 minority student-athletes participating in these three sports, something must be done to increase the number of minorities in smaller sports, according to Harold White, Associate Athletic Director for Academics for the University of South Carolina.
“Until you can get minorities participating in sports such as golf, tennis and swimming – the Olympic sports as we call them – on a consistent basis, it’s going to take a lot for these numbers to increase,” White said. “There’s not that many minority athletes at the high school level playing these smaller sports. The pool of minority players just isn’t there.”
White said as a black individual, he believes the total number of minority athletes will not increase until black families encourage their kids to participate in sports other than “the big three.”
“You take the big three – football, basketball and track – and that’s where you will find most of your black athletes,” White said. “We don’t play lacrosse or talk about lacrosse. South Carolina added an equestrian team about six years ago, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a black kid on the equestrian team. That’s because we don’t ride horses.”
White said until minorities begin to play and value these sports at a young age it is hard to believe the number of minority athletes in smaller sports will rise.
He also said he believes economic barriers facing minority families have an impact on which sports their children play.
The average income of a white household in 2005 was two-thirds higher than that of a black household and 40 percent higher than that of a Hispanic’s, according to the Census Bureau.
The income difference is something Nancy Spencer, current president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, said plays a significant part in determining which sports young minorities choose to take part in. She also said the value put on a child’s education also has a tremendous affect on which sport children choose to play.
“You see the big contracts in football and basketball, and that’s when the importance of education comes in,” Spencer said. “If education hasn’t been emphasized and you have a chance to start earning money for your family, the money probably looks more appealing, and that seems to be a big reason why minorities go into football and basketball.”
LSU women’s tennis coach Tony Minnis – one of just two black Division I tennis coaches in the nation – said he also believes the financial aspects of smaller sports is the No. 1 reason why the number of minority participation in them is so low.
“It’s expensive,” Minnis said. “The cost for these kids to travel across the country and take lessons and buy equipment adds up. For football you need shoulder pads, a jersey and a helmet. In basketball you need a ball and tennis shoes. But in tennis, for example, you need three $200 rackets, sets of strings and a lot of individual coaching. So just the expense alone keeps a lot of the African-Americans, Hispanics and just people in general out of these sports.”
Spencer said cultural values also facilitate a person’s decision of what sport to take part in and used an example of a study she conducted in the past to explain why it is difficult to increase the number of minorities in the SEC.
“So it’s not about genetics, it’s about what is available and what is highly esteemed in the neighborhood,” Spencer said. “I’ve interviewed black mothers who have said, ‘If my son has a choice between playing basketball or tennis, he will play basketball because that is what his peers play and that is what will bring in more money.'”
—–Contact Jay St. Pierre at [email protected]