SIZING UP THE COMPETITION

Whether the weights on the rosters are strictly accurate or not, coaches and players of men’s teams turn to them frequently as a useful reference.

Before a game, many say that they  often look at the opposing team’s roster to plan Harvard’s defensive configuration.

It is for that reason, women’s soccer coach Ray Leone says, that he keeps not only weight but also height off of his team’s public roster.

“It’s purely just a competitive thing, because they can know who to mark just by the height of them,” Leone says.

But despite the fact that many players say they consult other teams’ rosters as part of their pre-game strategizing, Svoboda is skeptical of the usefulness of that practice, saying that teams have other ways to preview their opponents.

“I’ve heard that, and I kind of chuckle,” he says. “With most sports, you get such a prolonged warm-up period, and there are so few secrets in today’s day and age with video and film, certainly at the Division I level. Is having that information truly helpful? In the 45 minutes of warm-up time, can you pretty much size up, ‘Oh, that center on the basketball team is a mammoth individual?”

WEIGHING THE PROS AND CONS

The strategic benefits of public weight listings may not be a major issue, but the symbolic importance of choosing to provide men’s weights but not women’s is significant to some commentators.

“It’s like the elephant in the room,” says Laura Pappano, the director of the Women’s Sports Leadership Project at Wellesley College. “It’s a loud omission. I think women should be proud of being fit, beautiful, strong athletes.”

Cappellini agrees. “I think that living an athletic lifestyle and making sacrifices to be an athlete—and all that goes along with that—demonstrates that you do have an inherent care for your body,” he says. “There should be naturally a sense of pride that comes along with all that.”

That pride, he thinks, could be reflected by listing women’s weights so that fans, opponents, and recruiters can see.

“You don’t need to have the prettiest body. You need to have the body that’s most efficient, strongest, fastest. Sometimes when we talk about the girls, we’ve lost sight of that,” he says. “Girls work equally as hard as guys as athletes, so why shouldn’t we list their weights? They should be proud of that.”

Many female athletes disagree, saying that it is unnecessary to equally violate privacy in the name of fairness.

“I get the whole, ‘We don’t want to make such distinctions between female and male sports and try to equalize them all,’” senior women’s volleyball player Christine Wu says. But she would not want to see weights online. “People might get uncomfortable.”