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Gwenie Lee is a junior at Lincoln High School, covering Portland Interscholastic League sports from a student perspective. This story is part of a new initiative by WW to develop young voices in journalism.
As Portland Interscholastic League teams approach the OSAA 6A boys and girls basketball playoffs at the Chiles Center, many female athletes are asking:
Why does it feel like no one supports women’s sports?
Well, almost no one. Parents regularly attend their daughters’ games. Now and then, a teacher or staff member will make a brief appearance. But why does the energy for the boys teams not transfer to the girls? Where are true sports fans when female athletes are competing for championships or school pride?
Let’s look at the results and the attendance figures. This football season was not kind to PIL teams; once again, no PIL teams finished in Oregon 6A football’s top 10.
Girls cross country and soccer, meanwhile, were standouts during the fall sports season.
In girls cross country, Lincoln won its first state championship since 1978, and Franklin placed fourth. In girls soccer, Grant topped the state rankings for most of the regular season and was even ranked 10th in the nation before losing in the state championship finals.
Yet, those girls teams rarely played before the crowds they deserved. Though many deny it, students ultimately view boys sports as more exciting and competitive than girls, and support them accordingly.
During the 2024–25 fall and winter sports seasons at Lincoln, the most tickets sold for a football game, excluding Homecoming, was 1,005 tickets. The most tickets purchased for a girls volleyball game?
Sixty-seven.
And that celebrated surge of interest in women’s basketball, generated by the play of Catlin Clark and Angel Reese in the NCAA tournament and their rookie seasons in the Women’s National Basketball Association? The most tickets purchased for a single girls basketball game at Lincoln was 63, barely half the attendance for the boys game.
Aileen Droege, a junior soccer player at Lincoln, is frustrated by the meager support for girls high school sports in Portland.
“There are always a lot more people showing up for men’s games than women’s,” Droge says. “This is really sad because, personally, I find women’s games more enjoyable. Because there is already a stigma and stereotypes of women’s sports, people assume they are less interesting.”
Across the Willamette, basketball players at Cleveland feel the same dramatic difference in fan support. During the 2023–24 season, the girls watched most of the students who attended the boys home game wander off before their game began on the same floor.
Kamakila Waiwaiole, a senior on the girls teams, posted her dismay about the walkout on Instagram and received a slew of sexually lewd and hateful comments from the Cleveland community.
“Boys show up for the boys, where the f--k are the bitches at?” one sports aficionado said. Another told Waiwaiole, “Nobody stays for [your] games because you guys all suck.”
“The students leaving the gym didn’t impact us much because, unfortunately, we’re accustomed to smaller crowds compared to the boys games,” Waiwaiole says “We still went out there and played hard, and even won that game.”
The reaction to her Instagram post was more troubling, Waiwaiole added: “It was challenging to stay focused on basketball with all the external attention and comments affecting many of the girls on the team.”
Feelings of isolation and insignificance are common for Portland female athletes because of the diminished support from their peers and their city. If the PIL truly wants to help girls sports teams, it must celebrate the most successful teams and find ways to encourage school communities to rally around them.