Apparently, OSSAA thinks sports is only a man's world | Opinion

What the heck were leaders of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association thinking when they proudly announced they had chosen only men to serve on a powerful new committee to review the governing body’s rules? Do they think we still live in 1911, when the body was first created and women weren’t even constitutionally guaranteed the right to vote? Because the alternative is that the leaders of this body have apparently been hanging out in the men’s locker rooms imbibing so much testosterone-fueled Kool Aid that it has addled their brains and made them forget that women can lead, too.

I’m beginning to get a sense of why lawmakers are so fed up with the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, better known as the OSSAA, and why Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt called for the group to be abolished during his State of the State address in February. POINT: OSSAA should be subject to accountability | Opinion OSSAA supporters say the body is a scapegoat for making difficult regulatory oversight decisions.

But critics say it is an archaic board that metaphorically lives in the Stone Age and is failing to evolve with the times. The fact that this body could not even bother to appoint a single woman to serve on their latest committee is only going to add fuel to that latter argument, because I’m not the only one who has taken notice. Here’s a news flash: These days, tens of thousands of women and girls compete in sports, band, speech and all sorts of other high school activities that this association is entrusted to govern.

Interest in women’s sports is growing in a big way. The WNBA has seen its attendance numbers explode. The value of National Women’s Soccer League teams is up.