A few weeks ago, some friends of mine were playing one-on-one basketball. I'll call my friends Dagwood and Albertina. They had both recently had some, um, beverages, both are smokers, and neither one had played in several months. Dagwood has easily five inches on Albertina, but Albertina used to play basketball in college. It was nighttime, but the court was lit. A fairly even match, wouldn't you say?
At one point during the game, Albertina said she was having trouble getting used to the "boy's ball." I hadn't realized that collegiate women's basketball uses different sized basketballs than men's teams, but apparently they do.
(I'll tell you the results of the one-on-one at the end of this entry.)
That got me wondering, what other sports require the use of differently sized balls, depending on the gender of the person playing the game?
Yes, there are all sorts of opportunities for ball jokes in this entry. I fully realize that. Rather than making many ball jokes all over the place, I decided to omit them, thus allowing you to insert them at your leisure.
What I found was that, in sports where the equipment differed, there seems to be an underlying assumption that women need the equipment to give them a few breaks. Here's the breakdown:
Softball/Baseball
- The softball is larger and heavier than the baseball, and it's bright yellow. This is supposed to make it a better target and easier for women to hit it. Although that fat ball is a little more difficult to throw. Especially if you take into account women's wee tiny delicate fingers.
- One reader remarked in a comment below that softball is played by both women and men who all use a ball of the same size, so my argument does not apply. My reply to that is that while men may also play softball, they usually do so in intramural, non-academic, or non-professional leagues. At the same time, women are not invited to play baseball in elementary, secondary, or post-secondary sports, and while there used to be a professional baseball league for women, it no longer exists. In brief, men get to play softball or baseball, women get to play softball only.
University of Michigan's shortstop in 2005 Jessica Merchant handles the fat softball (and a baserunner she's just gotten out) no problem.
Photo from ESPN chat with Jessica Merchant)
Basketball
- The women's ball is smaller, lighter, and more bouncy. If you go to Sports Authority's website, for example, to look at basketballs they have for sale, you'll see they categorize their basketballs into "Official" and "Women's/Intermediate" groups.
- Judging by the differences in size and weight of the basketballs, women seem to have a harder time dribbling than men do. And in basketball, it seems, women must have smaller hands than men -- which is strange because in softball, apparently their hands must be larger than men's.
Lacrosse
- The dimensions of the ball are the same, but men's lacrosse balls can be white, yellow, orange, or lime green, where the women only get to use yellow balls. No idea about the rationale behind this one.
Water Polo
- The circumference of the ball is smaller for women, but their ball weighs the same as the men's. Here, too, it seems women have smaller hands when they play water polo, but perhaps the officiators thought that since the water provides some buoyancy, women don't need the ball to weigh less.
Kelly Heuchan from Australia is doing a fine job controlling the ball so that Thalia Munro of the US team can't take it from her. Even so, the US team won the game -- and the 2004 bronze Olympic medal.
(Photo by Steve Christo)
Volleyball
- The NCAA doesn't have rules posted for men's volleyball. Does this mean that men's volleyball is like the Wild West, no rules, make 'em up as you go?
- Also because a couple people came to the site looking for this information, the height of women's volleyball nets according to the NCAA is to be 7 ft 4 1/8 inches (2.24 meters). Again, since the NCAA does not make the rules for men's volleyball available, I can't say what the height of the nets are supposed to be for men. One reader has offered some dimensions in his comment below, but his data conflicts with what I found from the NCAA.
Football
- The NCAA doesn't even have a page for women's football. But I know that girls in high schools and women in college are playing football. Catch up, NCAA!
I don't know who these women are, only that they are playing in the National Women's Football Association -- that's right, a professional women's football league.
(Photo sourced from Starling Fitness)
Yes, I'm being a bit snarky here. But it doesn't really make sense to me, these differences in equipment. Because the types of differences are not the same from sport to sport. In other words, if it's really necessary that women use different equipment, why aren't the balls in each sport always lighter, or always larger, or always brighter-colored?
And why, prey tell, is it that the balls are exactly the same for men and women who play other sports?
Equipment is the same for
- Soccer
- Tennis
- Ice Hockey
Women's ice hockey teams from the College of Saint Benedict versus St. Augsburg, February 2006
(Photo from the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota)
I wonder how long it will take before the equipment across sports is equalized. It has to happen. I mean, they don't make women run the 350 meter relay while men run the 400 meter relay, do they? They used to say that women shouldn't really compete in track because all that running jostled their important baby-making organs. But they've changed their minds about that idiocy, thankfully. So it has to be a matter of time before people realize, hey, maybe women can actually handle a basketball that's one inch larger.
Yeah, that's what the difference amounts to. But there is a difference. And here is where I reveal that Albertina lost the one-on-one. She jammed her finger horribly and later had to have a splint taped onto it, so her injury may have worked against her. It's also very likely that Dagwood's extra height was a major advantage for him, and Albertina's blood-alcohol level could have been higher than Dagwood's. But I do think that having to use equipment that was different than what she was used to also must have had a negative effect on Albertina's performance.
I don't think it was necessarily that the ball was bigger -- as in too big for her weak little arms -- because she has whipped many people at arm wrestling, including Dagwood. I think it was that the ball was different. When basketball players have to change their shoes in the middle of the game, people make a big deal out of it: oh, how will he adjust to this new equipment. Tennis players swap racquets in the mid-game and sometimes it throws them off. But they don't show up at a match and start playing with balls that are larger or smaller than they are used to. And when Billie Jean King trounced former Wimbledon champ Bobby Riggs in three straight sets, they didn't make her play with a bigger or smaller or more or less bouncy ball than she was used to. She beat him at the same game using the same balls.
For all Mr. Riggs' posturing, Billie Jean King defeated him in straight sets, 6-4 6-3 6-3.
(AP Photo)
| Softball / Baseball | Women’s | Men’s |
| circumference | 11 7/8” to 12 1/8” | 9” to 9 ½” |
| weight | 6 ¼ to 7 oz | 5 to 5 ½ oz |
| appearance | Optic yellow, red seams | White horsehide or cowhide |
| Basketball | Women’s | Men’s |
| circumference | 28 ½” to 29” | 29 ½” to 30” |
| weight | 18 to 20 oz | 20 to 22 oz |
| bounce, dropped 6 ft | 51” to 56” high | 49” to 54” high |
| Lacrosse | Women’s | Men’s |
| circumference | 7 ¾” to 8” (same) | 7 ¾” to 8” (same) |
| weight | 5 to 5 ¼ oz (same) | 5 to 5 ¼ oz (same) |
| appearance | solid yellow | white, yellow, orange, or lime green |
| Water Polo | Women’s | Men’s |
| circumference | 0.65 to 0.67 meters | 0.68 to 0.71 meters |
| weight | 400 to 450 g (same) | 400 to 450 g (same) |
| air pressure | 12 to 13 lbs/sq in | 13 to 14 lbs/sq in |
| Volleyball | Women’s | Men’s |
| circumference | 25.6” to 26.4” | NA |
| weight | 9 to 10 oz | NA |
| air pressure | 4.3 to 4.6 lbs/sq in | NA |
| appearance | 12 panels, 1/3 white or light | NA |
Sources (it was hard to get these pdfs to load; I had to try multiple times)
NCAA 2007 Softball Rules and Interpretations, page 46
NCAA 2007 Baseball Rules and Interpretations, page 20
NCAA 2007 Men's and Women's Basketball Rules and Interpretations, page BR-37
NCAA 2006 Men's and Women's Soccer Rules and Interpretations, page 17
NCAA 2006-08 Men's and Women's Ice Hockey Rules and Interpretations
NCAA 2006 Women's Volleyball Rules and Interpretations, page VR-21
NCAA 2007 Women's Lacrosse Rules and Interpretations, page 19
NCAA 2007 Men's Lacrosse Rules and Interpretations, page 15
NCAA 2007 Men's and Women's Water Polo Rules and Interpretations, page 24
women's volleyball net height = 7'6"
ReplyDeletemen's volleyball net height = 7'11 5/8"
softball and baseball are different sports, but they are similar. look at rec leagues. all player use the same size ball.
riggs vs. king was the equivalent of michael jordan circa 1992 vs. michael jordan circa 2004. the whole thing was a farce.