Despite winning championships, women's sports in Boston don't get the attention they deserve

A group of women gather on a football field. They wear black football helmets and red jerseys. — The Boston Renegades, a professional women’s football team, have won five national championships in the last six years.

Jesse Steinmetz was the producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley.

Mariam Hydara is the summer 2023 intern with GBH’s Under the Radar.

September 08, 2023

What Boston sports team won five national championships in the last six years? Hint: it wasn’t the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics or Bruins.

The answer: the Boston Renegades, a women's football team.

While the local women’s teams that have been winning championship after championship, they've received much less fanfare than their male counterparts at Fenway or Gillette Stadium.

"Sports aren't inherently male, but in so many spaces we've come to accept them as such," said Rev. Laura Everett, author of the blog, Boston Women’s Sports. "We have national and world champions playing locally, but they're not getting the coverage they deserve. Whereas so often women's sports teams are expected to prove that they're worthy, when the men's teams are just presumed that they are."

But soccer fans may have reason to rejoice — a bid to bring a new national women’s soccer team to Boston could materialize in coming years. Some experts hope it could be the catalyst for local women's teams to finally get the respect and higher profile they have earned.

"It's exciting to think that women's pro soccer will be back, hopefully, in Boston and exciting because it's a sport and a league, the NWSL, that's really on the rise. It will be great to have Boston be part of that women's sports conversation nationally."

GUESTS

Shira Springer, sports journalist and lecturer in Managerial Communication at MIT

Reverend Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, author of the blog, Boston Women’s Sports