To the editor:

The Journal-World may take pride in its sports reporting about the Kansas Jayhawk teams, but without a J-W sports reporter advocating for women’s competition and the J-W sports editor providing adequate and appropriate space for coverage of KU women’s athletics, the KU women’s teams will continue to receive marginal media recognition for their superlative successes. For the more than 4,000 volleyball fans, reported to be in attendance at the NCAA regional competition in Allen Fieldhouse this past weekend, wishing to learn the arena destination and opponent of their favorite Jayhawk team, barely four inches of newsprint was devoted on the Monday J-W sports page to the KU volleyball team’s next foe in Los Angeles in the NCAA Sweet 16.

This past weekend, when the KU women’s volleyball team played so successfully in Allen Fieldhouse in the NCAA regional tournament, the most evident coverage was Saturday’s J-W coverage which included two large photos taken at KU’s defeat of their first match opponent, Wichita State University. On Sunday’s sport page, the highly successful volleyball team was awarded only the lowest quarter-page coverage for “winning” the NCAA Regional Tournament and earning a Sweet 16 berth.

Can anyone imagine such disproportionate coverage by the J-W for a KU “men’s” team after a Sweet 16 NCAA accomplishment? Even though the media is not held legally to Title IX compliance, it is time for the J-W to equitably report the competitive coverage for all of the sports teams at KU, especially when the team excels at high levels in national championships.