The Olympic Games are the height of global athletic competition, the best of the best, and despite there being clear winners and losers the Olympics remain an incredible display of global athleticism. In the words of Gold Medalist Alysa Liu, “every second you’re there, you’re gaining something.”
With this context established – that the Olympics represent the pinnacle of global athletic accomplishment and participating alone is an achievement – consider why we sometimes diminish the accomplishments of some athletes compared to others.
Female American athletes dominated the world stage this year, earning eight of the 12 gold medals from the Milano games. Although women consistently excel at the highest levels of professional sports, they are celebrated disproportionately less in comparison to elite male athletes.
The most relevant example of this is President Trump’s joke made during his phone call to the US Men’s Hockey Team.
The intention of the call was admirable. A president called to invite a Gold Medal team to the State of the Union address to congratulate them! However, the manner in which it was done was more harmful than celebratory. Or rather celebratory at the expense of others – specifically the U.S Women’s Hockey Team who also won a gold medal at the same Olympic Games, three days prior.
Trump joked that he had to invite the women’s hockey team, otherwise he would be impeached. The joke was not funny, but most of the Men’s team laughed at it.
Context matters, though. The Men’s Team won a gold medal less than an hour before this phone call – something that hasn’t been done by the Men’s Hockey program since 1980 – so emotions, including adrenaline, were high. There’s no doubt these fantastic athletes were caught up in the heat of the moment. There was also celebratory alcohol which most likely contributed to the lack of elegance in the reception of this joke.
Hockey player junior Rowan Doyle commented on the culture of hockey: “A lot of people are surprised at how the team reacted to the joke, but to be honest it lines up with hockey culture which is basically just really aggressive masculinity.” He spoke about the aggressive nature of hockey being rooted in the physicality of the game.
Even when considering these factors we can not excuse the compliance with casual disrespect. The Women’s team achieved the exact same level of success as the men did, yet they were being laughed at.
This isn’t to bash the Men’s team, but instead to highlight the more significant pattern at hand in American society: diminishing female achievement. Whether professional or personal – performed on a global or local scale – women’s accomplishments have always had an asterisk placed next to them especially when comparable to the accomplishments of men.
My question is: Why? Why have we always done this, but more importantly, why do we continue?
Female athletes have made themselves undeniable in the realm of success despite inheriting a legacy of being denied access, resources, and recognition.
Even America, a progressive country with some of the best athletic programs available to both men and women, required Title IX to fund women’s sports. This is apparent not only with the Women’s Hockey Team, but with all female American athletes.
Campolindo flag football head coach Paki Gordon described his experience as a coach for girl’s sports and as a father to a little girl: “It’s important for female athletes, and those watching, to see that girls’ sports are just as competitive and worthy of respect as boys. I want my daughter to see she has a real future in sports.” He added, “In my experience female athletes often have a different mentality – a chip on their shoulder – because they have something to prove.”
These female Olympians trained their whole lives to reach the level they are at. They grew up in a system that overlooked them, and became champions anyway. In the face of doubt, and in systems that deny them, women dominate anyway.
President Trump even making this “joke” is laughable. These women are international champions. They’re the best in the world, and they’re being treated as if offering them an invitation would be solely a courtesy. They’re being treated as if it inconveniences their president to acknowledge, let alone celebrate, the success they brought home to their country.
The outcome of the 2026 gold medal games is quite ironic too. Two teams that play the same sport, from the same country, who both won the same medal, at the same competition, against the same country in the exact same way. The final score, and the manner in which the winning goal was scored was identical between the two teams. Literally the only thing to differentiate the two situations is the gender of the teams.
The reception of the eventual invitation the Women’s team received was elegant. They politely declined due to other engagements. This response was more powerful than any fit of anger could’ve been. It was a message within itself: these champions would not accept conditional recognition. In fact, they don’t need it and they never did. These women built greatness without applause, so an afterthought invitation? Don’t bother.
At Campo, juniors Vivi Dunn and Addison Van Veen’s Women in Athletics club “is dedicated to making our female athletes feel supported and strong,” according to Van Veen.
The Olympics are one of the most patriotic moments we, along with every other participating country, get. For us, it is a moment of pure American pride. Perhaps the only more patriotic display would be a literal war. It’s exasperating that the U.S. Women’s gold medal was turned into a joke when celebrating the U.S. Men’s gold medal for the sole reason that they are both U.S. gold medals from the Olympic Games. Why can we not come together to celebrate all of the athletes who brought pride to America equally?
The history of the USA Women’s vs. Men’s Hockey Teams also brings a point of pause. The Women’s Olympic Hockey Team is a more efficient team than the Men’s. They have won equal gold medals in half the time. Additionally, the women’s team has medaled at every tournament since its introduction in the 1998 Nagano Games.
This point isn’t to suggest that women’s achievements should be celebrated louder than men’s. I think female success should be celebrated in the same way male success has been for centuries. They should be elevated to hold equal status in society without bringing male accomplishments down at all. The idea that male excellence outweighs female excellence is ridiculous because that would mean we’re tying value to gender. The truth is that excellence, in this case athletic, has nothing to do with gender whatsoever. It’s rooted in character. Yet even when there are two brilliant successes, achieved the exact same way, for the same country, someone celebrated the success of the Men’s U.S. hockey team at the expense of the Women’s team – even if it was just a joke.
My point is that success – male or female – is not at the expense of one another, nor is it finite. We can have it all. We can cheer loudly for men and women, without subduing one beneath the other, because success truly has nothing to do at all with the gender it belongs to.
