How March Madness 2021 became a catalyst for change in women’s sports

A lot can happen in five years – just ask any women’s sports fan as March Madness is now upon us.

Even using the iconic trademark on the women’s side is a fairly recent development–up until 2022, “March Madness” was a term reserved only for the men. That shift alone wouldn’t have happened without the historic 2021 women’s tournament, which took place in San Antonio, and garnered national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

However, for Ali McCracken (then Ali Kershner), the then-Associate Director of Sports Performance for Women’s Basketball and Golf for Stanford University, there was a sense of hype leading up to the 2021 tournament. After hearing that the 2020 tournament would be cancelled a season prior, Stanford continued to work under imperfect conditions.

Because of strict Covid protocols in Santa Clara County, the Cardinal had already been operating and adapting their training – isolating through Covid exposure, training out of hotel rooms, and even moving their team to Las Vegas to train and compete throughout the regular season – so the bubble environment in San Antonio was nothing new to them. 

Disparities in plain sight

The weight room that awaited them, however, was another story. McCracken notes that there was a sense of excitement surrounding the upcoming tournament because colleagues of hers had already sent photos of the men’s facilities in Indianapolis. McCracken assumed the women would get similar amenities. 

“We were escorted by one of the tournament coordinators up to this makeshift practice facility that they had put together,” McCracken recalled. “And I remember pulling her aside because none of our other women’s basketball strength coaches had yet seen this facility yet and so I just asked the coordinator ‘Where is that and how do we sign up for time so that we can train? And she was like, ‘Oh, they don’t have one of those here.’ And I was like, ‘Well, do we have any access to weight training equipment or barbells, anything like that?’ And she was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s in the practice facility I just showed you.’ And she kind of pointed at the corner of this room to this dumbbell pyramid up to 30 lbs and a stack of yoga mats and some hand sanitizer.”

At the time, McCracken had no idea that she was sitting on a story that would soon make national news. She just wanted to train her team. But she felt compelled to do something about the stark discrepancy she noticed.

Here are the differences in amenities/provisions between the Women’s & Men’s NCAA Tournament I’ve seen so far

– Weight room/equipment
– Food
– Swag Bags

Photos from: @Cpav15, @sedonaprince_, @danhenry3, @alikershner pic.twitter.com/2YfCeXaJNn

— AJ McCord (@AJ_McCord) March 19, 2021

“I remember just kind of like in frustration – because we were at practice and there was nothing else I could do – taking a picture of it and I don’t know what I was thinking I would do with it,” she recalled. “But then I was like, ‘This is quite a stark comparison,’ and at practice, like within five minutes of showing up, I had taken that picture and spliced it with that other one of the men’s training facility. And then I put it on Instagram and I was like, ‘You know what? I have like 50 followers. My parents will probably see this and maybe a couple of my other friends.’ I didn’t really think anything of it, right? And then I put my phone away cause I was going to warm up the team.”

From there, everything changed for McCracken and many of the Stanford athletes. McCracken said that her post blew up and the team started receiving an onslaught of messages from everyone from Dicks Sporting Goods to local sports stores, to NBA and WNBA athletes.

Just a shoutout to the incredible female athletes and women I have had the pleasure of working with in the past, and those that I get to work with today #NGWSD #NationalGirlsAndWomenInSportsDay pic.twitter.com/zHAGhJgJXI

— Ali Kershner, MS, CSCS (@alikershner) February 6, 2020

“[Everyone was asking] ‘Where can we send you equipment? It’s on a truck, it’s ready to go. Where can we drop it off?’ And we’re like, ‘We don’t know what we’re supposed to do. Reach out to the NCAA and maybe you can help them.’ But we’re focused on just playing our game.”

McCracken then was roped into meetings with NCAA leaders including then-NCAA president Mark Emmert, who tried to explain the situation and make things right in the aftermath. She was told that NCAA leaders assumed that women wouldn’t want a weight room, or didn’t need one.

“The chief medical officer for the NCAA was like, ‘We weren’t thinking that the women would want this,’ and there was like this big education piece asking, ‘Why did you think that? Did you ask? Did you talk to any of us who actually do this?’ And then it was a budget thing. And there was this swirling narrative, but it culminated in basically a meeting of the head coaches in the NCAA like the second or third night of the tournament and saying ‘What can we do to right the ship right now?’” 

McCracken said simply that the women needed a legit weight room, too, and the women got one within days. But by then, the damage to the NCAA had already been done.

The TikTok video that broke the internet

On March 18, 2021, then-Oregon forward, Sedona Prince broke the internet with her viral Tik Tok video outlining the discrepancies between the women’s and men’s national basketball tournament. Today, that video has 3.5 million likes. McCracken, too, was still fielding media inquiries, all the while aware that this was becoming a pivotal moment in women’s college sports.

@sedonerrr it’s 2021 and we are still fighting for bits and pieces of equality. #ncaa #inequality #fightforchange ♬ original sound – Sedona Prince

“I think that it was becoming clear that while this particular thing, not having the same weight room access or equipment available, was one little example, and was starting this larger conversation around really what’s going on in the NCAA where it’s supposed to be equal. And so it was interesting to see what started as this very small issue turn into this symbol for larger wholesale change that needed to happen across the organization.”

As the broader conversation was unfolding, however, McCracken and dozens of other athletic personnel were in San Antonio for one reason: to win basketball games. McCracken feared that raising a ruckus at the national tournament would distract her team.

“A really interesting piece is that all of this happened before we played our first game,” she said. “And I just remember being like, ‘Oh my God, what if we lose in the first round?’ I don’t want this to have caused a distraction within our team. You know, while we’re out here, fighting for social change and actually a bigger cause, it felt really important. But at the end of the day, we were there to play a basketball tournament.”

Fortunately for McCracken, Stanford did the exact opposite of going home early: they won the entire tournament. The Cardinal, led by legendary head coach, Tara VanDerveer and future first round WNBA picks Cameron Brink, Lexie Hull, and Haley Jones, won their first national title since 1992 in a 54-53 thriller over Arizona. 

Stanford’s success, however, didn’t drown out the fact that change needed to be made, and the broader conversation McCracken helped spark surrounding the tournament didn’t stop after the Cardinal took the trophy home. Just after the conclusion of the 2021 tournament, the NCAA launched an investigation with an external firm to examine gender inequity in college sports. The findings were stark, and revealed systemic undervaluing and underfunding of women’s college sports as a whole.

The impact on women’s sports

Women’s basketball saw some quick change from the findings, like gaining access to the infamous “March Madness” trademark. McCracken acknowledges this change, and balances it with the reality of how far college sports has to go to ensure equality – and that starts with curiosity.

When it came to the weight room situation, McCracken notes that a conversation or two could have completely changed how that tournament was covered – with headlines and coverage focusing more on the athletes themselves, rather than the inequality they were victims of.

“The frustrating part is that I think – and I’ll say this easily on record – is that a lot of our female athletes can lift just as much as, if not more than some of the men, and are incredible athletes in the weight room,” she said. “I just think that there’s a lack of curiosity and wanting to understand what they actually might want and need to to be effective in the weight room. And they were just making assumptions, and we know what happens when you assume.”

Sports media, too, has been plagued by assumptions about female athletes as well – especially whether or not they can garner audiences and revenue. But in recent years, viewership for women’s sports has skyrocketed no matter the sport or the competition.

The next year’s NCAA Tournament final drew 9.9 million viewers, for a 103% viewership increase YoY. In 2024, the national championship game nearly doubled that count, drawing 18.7 million viewers, and surpassing the men’s final. The WNBA has also thrived post-Covid. The Women’s College World Series and women’s volleyball tournament have set records too.

There’s a sense of tension in the kind of force making change in just one area of women’s sports requires–whether it’s weight room discrepancies or salary negotiations. Although there has been progress driven partly by media coverage of the 2021 tournament, there’s still much more work to do. 

“It’s all progress and we’re going in the right direction. Do I think that we’re where we need to be? Certainly not. Do I wish that it didn’t take this kind of big news story and kind of crazy cycle of events to push for this kind of change? Yes. But that’s kind of how it goes, right? There has to be some inciting incident.”

Years after her virality, McCracken knows all too well that change doesn’t happen overnight. But her self-described “obsession” over women’s sports is driven in large part by the same sense of curiosity she implores multiple industries to have when it comes to female athletes. For McCracken, her biggest question is how far women in sports can go when barriers are taken down.

“As women’s sports go, society goes,” she said. “So when we tell [society] we work and can train just as hard as men, the world then can see it when we say that. I’m just so excited to see where we go from here because what we’re seeing now, the trickle down is real and it will start to affect everything in every part of society, not just sport.”