There are a total of 24 sports at San Marin. Three seasons, boys and girls. When most people think of San Marin, they think of football, basketball, and baseball.
Football won back-to-back state championships in 2021 and 2022, making the sport even more popular in Marin County.
Varsity boys baseball won first place in North Coast Section (NCS) Division III in 2024, and the game had around 365 people in attendance, almost triple the amount of what’s at an average game for other teams.
At a varsity boys’ basketball game, you find at least double the amount of fans than at a varsity girls’ basketball game.
While gender plays a big part in how sports are represented, both in San Marin and professional sports, funding and the way sports are broadcasted play a major role as well.
When you try to talk about how much more money football has compared to other sports offered at San Marin, you often get the answer, “Oh, it’s just because they fundraise a lot.” But in reality, sports such as football have more people donating to them because they have more media attention than other San Marin sports teams, which is something that can’t be blamed on the school.
When I say they have more media attention, I don’t mean how much they’re posted on the San Marin Instagram accounts. I’m talking about what sports are livestreamed and how much they are recognized in the community as a whole.
Football, girls volleyball, basketball, baseball, and other more popular sports have a livestream for nearly every game, whereas with water polo, swim, and boys volleyball hardly, if ever, have any live streams posted.
However, media attention isn’t the only problem. Many San Marin sports have to share their practice facilities with other sports.
Swim and water polo go to Novato for their practices, games, and meets because San Marin doesn’t have a pool.
Wrestling and cheerleading have to share the mini gym, which is okay, the problem is that the ceiling has been leaking for the last few years and ruining mats that cheer and wrestling bought with the money they raised as a team.
While wrestling and cheer have had to deal with that, the sports that use the main gym, such as basketball and volleyball, have gotten new wall matting and have had the floor re-surfaced once or twice a year, which can cost around $20,000, depending on material and contractor cost, and is only recommended to be done every five to 10 years.
NUSD doesn’t use contractors to resurface the gym floor, but they do have to pay for the materials needed. Why then, has the ceiling in the mini gym just been fixed over the summer when there was potentially mold in it for at least the last two years?
There should be no excuse for this when there is a general All Sports Boosters bank account that can be used for any sports related necessities. The cost to repair a ceiling tends to be around $150 to $4,500, less than a fourth of the cost of resurfacing a gym floor. So why did it take so long to be fixed?
Marin County needs to begin recognizing more than just the most popular sports. There are so many sports at San Marin with many student athletes playing them.
These unrecognized athletes put in the same amount of work and effort as the athletes who play more recognized sports and so they should have the same amount of recognition.
There are many ways we can go about getting these sports the recognition they deserve, such as making sure all sports are livestreamed, and having more community involvement for all sports, not just the most popular ones.
