MILWAUKEE — It’s been a strenuous year for student-athletes across the nation. Canceled games, seasons, and in-person practices. This year is the first time since 2019 all 68 college teams came together for the NCAA men’s tournament and 64 teams for the women's tournament.

Each bubble in Indianapolis and San Antonio had to adhere to a long list of restrictions, including daily testing and isolation within each team. Not only did the tournament take an extreme amount of effort to pull off, but it also became controversial.

Oregon Ducks forward, Sedona Prince, released a video on March 18 that has now gone viral and been viewed nearly 18 million times.

It shows the vast differences between the men’s and women’s weight rooms. It sparked hundreds of thousands of retweets, many from NBA and WNBA players.

Marquette women’s basketball coach Megan Duffy experienced it first hand with her team as they went to San Antonio this past month. She said, unfortunately, the inequalities female athletes face are nothing new.

“As much as we see the discrepancies between the swag bags and the food, it’s just a microcosm of a much bigger picture that is the inequalities between men and women’s sports,” Duffy said. “It’s been decades going on.”

Marquette forward Camryn Taylor gave more insight, confirming inadequate food portions were given and the weight room initially provided would have been extremely insufficient long-term.

“I’m an athlete and I need to eat,” Taylor said. “For those teams who make it to the Final Four, they need to train every day.”

Both Taylor and Duffy agree, without social media, the extent of the inequities would not have been known to them.

“We’re pretty isolated within our teams in the bubble,” Duffy said. ”Once more and more videos and photos were coming out on social media, it hurt a lot.”

“We were like wow, we’re really going through this right now,” Taylor said. “This is old, it’s 2021, and this shouldn’t be a thing.”

After Prince’s video went viral, shared by iconic male hoops stars such as Steph Curry and Payton Pritchard, the NCAA took action. The changes were documented once again by Prince in another TikTok video in which she thanks the NCAA for listening to the women’s concerns.

“We hope it’ll move forward in the right direction,” Duffy said.  

Taylor agreed and noted there’s much more work left to do.

“Start giving women the attention they deserve,” she said. “Especially, female athletes.”