HoopGurlz’s biased recruiting: Racial and positional stereotyping in girls’ basketball scouting reports

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study considers whether racial stacking and stereotypes inherent in media coverage of professional and college sports translate into girls’ high school basketball through written content in basketball recruiting profiles. Leaning on whiteness studies and a call for intersectional empirical work (Leslie McCall 2005), this research shows how ESPN’s HoopGurlz rankings reify racial stereotypes toward girls’ basketball recruits. Seventeen descriptors are operationally defined and coded by race and playing position into one of two success/failure categories: (1) athletic attributes and (2) personality or physicality characteristics. A content analysis of 499 HoopGurlz recruiting profiles uncovered 4,519 descriptors of girls’ basketball players listed in the top 100 rankings between 2016 and 2020. Results indicate race and playing position descriptors focus on strength for Non-White recruits while White recruits were favored for intelligence and commitment to the team. Guards were highlighted for athletic talent and intrinsic, learned qualities. The findings contribute to feminist studies by illustrating how empirical mapping of online recruiting content emphasizes the symbolic impact of whiteness inherent through media discourse. Specifically, it reveals racial stereotypes in sports media discourse remain as historically covert discursive practices embedded in basketball language through an underexamined space of girls’ basketball recruiting.