Name: Cali Greenspun

Social Justice Group: 2023-2024, Sexism Against Women in Sports

Date of Fieldwork: January 31, 2024

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Naomi Picayo

Type of Fieldwork: [69]

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

On Janruary 31st, 2024, we met with LREI alumni Naomi Picayo. Naomi shared many experiences and struggles through her journey playing high school volleyball and basketball and college basketball. While she shared many significant struggles, one really stood out to me. From a young age, Naomi played basketball on a co-ed youth club team, but she was the only girl; and when she was around 8 years old, she experienced her first exposure to direct discrimination. Her and her guy friends were playing basketball in the park one day, and there were two people left to get picked for teams. Naomi happened to get picked last and was told: “sorry, we picked him because your a girl, and girls aren’t as good as boys at basketball.” This came as a shock to both me and her at that age. From then on, Naomi continued to push herself and work hard to be better than all the boys at basketball; and now, she has an award sitting in the Thomson Gym trophy case for most points scored in basketball in LREI history.