Tokyo’s 2020 Olympics, delayed last year due to COVID-19, will finally begin on July 23. When Team USA walks into the opening ceremonies, many athletes will represent not only their country but their chosen higher education institution as well.
The American relationship between Olympic athletes and higher education is unique and complicated.
“We’re the only country in the world that ties an experience in sports with a 17 to 23-year-old’s experience at a university setting,” said Chris Plonsky, the executive senior associate athletics director and chief of staff at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). UT is a top producer of Olympic talent.
But in spite of the progress that has been made to break color barriers since the first modern Olympics in 1896, diversity within collegiate sports, amateur sports in particular, has plateaued, according to Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, an associate professor at the Center for Leadership in Athletics at the University of Washington.
Experts note that getting more diverse athlete representation will require institutions to hire more diverse coaches, self-analyze their diversity data, invest in youth programs, and put more resources into non-revenue sports.
In order to make significant change, said Hoffman, institutions and athletic boards need to make a conscious effort to hire a “critical mass” of diverse persons in leadership roles like coaching. A critical mass, according to The Sydney Scoreboard Global Index of Participation, is at least 30%.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) currently analyzes the athletic hiring practices for women and people of color throughout U.S. professional and collegiate settings. TIDES uses national demographics to create standards for equity — if the percentage of an institution’s hires is consistent with their proportion in the American populace, TIDES gives that institution an A grade.
