What if someone told you you couldn’t do your favorite thing in the world anymore? And what if the unspoken reason behind that was your gender?
That’s the reality girls in Alaska’s Anchorage School District were facing in 2013 when the district canceled funding for four girls’ high school hockey teams. The Scotty Gomez Foundation, an organization which raises funds and makes grants to provide hockey opportunities for youth in Anchorage, agreed to take over the program for an additional three years, but was forced to cut the program at the end of 2015 due to insufficient funds.
“We tried our best, and we figured we wouldn’t be able to support it any longer,” said Carlos Gomez, founder of the Foundation, to Fortune. The decision was made to discontinue the program after the current season.
“The idea that we couldn’t find another funder is devastating for them socially,” said O’Hara Shipe, coach of one of the teams, to Good. “It’s devastating for them academically. And I think it’s devastating for their personal growth.” The implicit reason for a lack of funding was that these were girls’ teams—the boys were not facing a lack of funding. “I just feel like no one cares about girls’ hockey as much,” said one of the players in the program to the publication.
“Women always seem to facing these issues,” said Gomez. Meanwhile, “the boys weren’t facing any cuts at all,” he said.
Happily for these girls—some of whom were relying on hockey to get college scholarships, said Gomez—Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) stepped in and agreed to sponsor all four hockey teams through 2018.
“They came in to save the day, so to speak,” said Gomez. The sporting goods maker donated $200,000 to the program, and provided all four teams—about 120 girls—with new equipment. The donation was part of the company’s Sports Matter initiative, a $25 million, multi-year campaign to support youth athletics.