The Exhaustion No One Talks About In Women’s Sports
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being a woman in sport. Not from the work itself, but from existing in a space that never fully wanted you there in the first place.
I learned this early. As a new golf pro, I was cornered in a dark parking lot after a closing shift. An assistant pro told me I was working too hard—that I was making him look bad. He poked me hard in the sternum and I fell back into my car. I was alone. I was scared. And the message was clear: don’t stand out, don’t take up space, don’t exist too loudly.
Nothing changes unless someone is willing to point out inequality.
But when that person is a woman, she’s labeled difficult. If she reacts to being ignored, dismissed, or made invisible, her reaction becomes the story, not the discrimination that caused it.
We’re expected to absorb unfairness quietly. To be grateful. To not make things uncomfortable. And the moment we refuse, we’re called emotional, divisive, unprofessional, or worse, a “feminist,” as if wanting fairness is a flaw.
The outrage of those who benefit from sport staying the same gets redirected at the women trying to make it better.
So we’re left with a choice: stay quiet and invisible, or speak up and be punished.
When women step back, we’re told we lack confidence. What sport doesn’t want to admit is that women learn early what happens when they challenge the status quo. Stepping back isn’t weakness, it’s self-preservation.
Every woman who steps forward today does so because someone before her refused to disappear. Progress in sport has never come from comfort, it comes from people willing to stand beside us.
But this work cannot fall on women alone. Real change requires allies, leaders, and institutions to step up, not just support equity in theory, but protect it in practice.