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Paste eaters at NTBA can’t handle little girl playing boys basketball

By Josh Hill

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A little girl was just trying to play basketball on the boys team and it turned into an ordeal that reminds us how much humanity sucks. 

We’ve come a long way in the world of sports when in regards to not being sexist pigs about everything. For years, women had no place anywhere near a sports game — even the stands — but thankfully we’ve evolved or the people who subscribed to those knuckle dragging views have died. But the problem of gender equality in sports is still a massive issue, even though we’ve made as much progress as we have.

The latest incident of this comes in the form of a 10-year old girl pleading with the National Traveling Basketball Association to forgive her of the sin of being born a girl in a boys sport. Charlottesville Cavaliers guard Kymora Johnson and her team from Virginia traveled to South Carolina to play in a national tournament, but were shut down immediately.

It’s not because they lost a game, it’s because Johnson was a girl on a boys team — which according to the NTBA means she must have cooties or something.

Just look at this quote from the Washington Post and try to not feel your heart break:

"“Kymora ran to the coach and the officials and told them to just disqualify her, not her team. She’d sit in the stands, she’d take the uniform off. Anything. “I wanted my team to be able to make the championships, to be able to play,” she told me.”"

Good lord. How much lead paint do you need to huff to make a child feel this way. Regardless of gender, all she wanted to do was play basketball and then was thrust into a situation where she was falling on a sword for her middle school team.

Middle school.

This wasn’t Game 7 of the NBA Finals, it was a freaking middle school game featuring prepubescent children. Meanwhile, the NBA is allowing women to coach men at the highest professional level in the sport — yet something called the NTBA doesn’t see it fit for a girl to play with boys?

Note to self: women can coach men, but can’t play with them.

If this was to make sure that boys and girls stay separate in the sport of basketball, that’s a trope that is long dead. Women have authority and control over men in the NBA thanks to Becky Hammon. So what’s the harm in letting a girl play on a basketball team with boys — one that features kids who are fresh out of elementary school? Should this girl sit in the corner while the boys play at recess? Should she not be able to read out of the same math book because the numbers go higher than most of the NTBA members can probably count?

This is a really stupid issue. Gender equality is a serious issue in this country, and when a girl can’t even play basketball because she was born with the wrong parts than her teammates have, then what the hell good is sports as an escape anyways?

Thankfully, the team took it in stride and attended the rest of the tournament in pink uniforms to support their teammate. But the fact that a fifth or sixth grader has to take anything in stride beyond not getting fruit snacks before dinner is ridiculous.

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