PG Gender Ratio Examined

The turf war over gender equality in sports at PEA does not start on the playing field, but rather, some say, in the admissions office.This past year, 27 male post-graduates and five female post-graduates joined the senior class to play a variety of varsity sports. This coming school year, there will be 20 male PGs and, again, only five female sports PGs. While the larger gender ratio among the student body is nearly even, the uneven ratio of boy to girl post-graduates is a result of how Exeter’s admissions process works."Annually, there are significantly more boys who apply for the PG year than girls," boys’ varsity basketball coach and eleventh-grade admissions officer, Jay Tilton said. "Admissions admit students based on the percentage of applicants that are in the pool. For example if, out one hundred applicants for the twelfth grade, ninety are boys and ten are girls and there are twenty places, we wouldn’t be able to take all ten girls."Yet some coaches feel that even with an uneven applicant pool, the ratio of accepted students should still reflect the gender balance in an entire class."A 20-to-five boy-to-girl ratio is not reflective of the norm in terms of any particular class," said girls’ varsity basketball coach and English Instructor, Johnny Griffith. "We would never have a 20-to-five girl-to-boy ratio of preps."Griffith believes that the admissions system is not broken, but perhaps flawed. "My question would be: could we change the system so that, rather than a PG class's being reflective of the applicant pool, the balance of PG's admitted could be reflective of the balance we try to achieve within each particular class," Griffith said.Other coaches felt similarly."If there is a pool of girls applying for PGs they should be accepted at equal rate, not by proportion," echoed Christina Breen, girls’ lacrosse coach and English instructor. "If that many more boys apply than girls, then that many more boys get accepted, as opposed to just who is the best qualified. There could be twenty qualified girls who are more qualified than the boys who are accepted."Some coaches and students interviewed agree that having few or no PGs is detrimental to a sports program."PGs are often some of the most skilled players on the team, which helps the team win more," boys’ varsity lacrosse and soccer captain, Nicholas Weigel said. "Beyond that, they also have an added year of maturity that even some seniors may not. Many of them were team captains before coming to Exeter, so they provide extra leadership without even needing the title of captain."Breen agreed. "Our teams really suffer because we don’t have as many older athletes," she said.However, not all members of the athletic community believe that post-graduates are necessarily beneficial. Many coaches and a few students recognize that large numbers of PGs do not sustain a program and prefer the younger talent of recruits."There is not a single coach in the school who I think wants to have a disproportionate number of PGs in their program because it’s not an ideal way to maintain a program," Tilton said. "Year to year, there no set number of PGs allocated to my program.""We try to get younger athletes but it’s difficult to do. The people who are initiating contacts with us for the male athlete tend to be older," Tilton said."Though a lot of high school coaches or college coaches will call Exeter and recommend quality basketball players, there aren’t very many ninth and tenth grade coaches calling us."