COVER
Alina Valenti (33) celebrates a point. The Oregon beach volleyball team defeated Bushnell 5-0 on Senior Day on April 9, 2024 at Amazon Park in Eugene, Ore. (Kai Kanzer/Emerald)
promised scholarships, equipment and facilities to the beach volleyball players. But, according to Hopen, the university blamed the lack of financial and physical resources on the number of beach volleyball fans. The resources for student-athletes “greatly” vary among men’s and women’s teams, according to the complaint. Men’s baseball and football teams receive multiple uniforms and team clothing each year, which they get to keep once the season ends. UO’s football team equips its athletes, whether on scholarship or not, with access to replacement equipment at all times. The women’s beach volleyball team has one gear drop at the start of the season with gear that is often used, ill-fitting and sometimes from other teams, such as the indoor volleyball or women’s golf teams. Bailey Glasser, the law firm representing the two women’s teams, said UO harmed each plaintiff by creating a “sex-based barrier” to financial aid and inflicting intentional “degrading and stigmatizing second-class treatment.” The firm argued in the complaint that financial awards and resources should be allocated to student-athletes based on the number of players on teams rather than the number of fans each team has. Due to a lack of financial assistance, some members say they had to take on staff responsibilities and outside work, all while still playing as an athlete. In the complaint, Cole wrote that she did “so much of the administrative work to keep the team organized, she felt like an assistant administrator and coach rather than a student and a player.” UO denied Cole’s allegations, stating that the beach team had a head coach, an assistant coach and three team managers “that handle the administrative work for the team.” However, the work Cole did for her team, without any athletic financial aid,
led her to work another job in order to afford necessities like food. Cole played her fifth and final year of beach volleyball at Tulane University, where she said she “finally” encountered a Division I beach volleyball program that “supports and respects its athletes.” “It’s just such a bad environment right now,” Hopen said. “Playing outside when you don’t know what’s gonna be in your sand, or if you don’t have flip flops ready at practice to run to the bathroom … It gets exhausting.” The exhaustion from Hopen’s time with the beach volleyball team, paired with the commitment to her master’s program, drained her over the three years she spent at Oregon. After not enjoying her season on beach volleyball, she tried to move on, feeling alone in her negative experience with Oregon. Reflecting on the athletic department’s treatment of her and her team, Hopen felt that in a lot of Oregon environments, she “felt like I was kind of being treated like a child.” “This is wrong. I know what’s going on here’s wrong because I was in a great department with great leaders, and great people and great staff,” she said. “I want it to get better.” UO denied all allegations of sexual discrimination listed in the complaint in an 89-page response on March 4. “I really do feel like I had a similar love for [my] teammates at Oregon that I did with Idaho,” Hopen said. “Our experience at Oregon was just so hard.”
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