Senior Ellen Gray and first-year Eli Tripp have both become 8-ball pool aficionados this year. They each play several times a week in the Davis Center. They’ve made friends through the game and, as a bonus, they’re good at it.
When Tripp walks up to a pool table in the Davis Center, he doesn’t feel intimidated. This is a place for him.
“[Pool] feels like second nature,” Tripp said.
Gray doesn’t feel the same way. She knows there are extra eyes on her, ready to criticize, mansplain or use her performance to disparage her gender.
“If a bunch of guys are on a table, it’s really intimidating to walk up to them and be like ‘hey, I’ve been waiting for a while,’” Gray said.
The pressure on women pool players to perform well creates an environment of judgment and anxiety that leads fewer women to try out the game.
Although there are no concrete statistics on the disparity between male and female pool players, pool is noticeably male-dominated. This culture makes it difficult for women to break into the game.
Senior Sophie Freedland feels anxiety around pool at UVM because of her experience playing pool in Burlington bars, which she says are even more male-dominated than the Davis Center.
“I don’t think it’s a crazy feminist thing to say that it’s mostly men playing pool at the pool tables, and it’s a very male-dominated environment,” senior MJ Moline said.
Well into the 1990s, women were barred from playing in pool tournaments and even to this day, professional pool is often a gender-segregated game.
Freedland, Gray and Moline have formed their own unofficial pool league that practices in the Davis Center three times a week.
“I used to get really nervous to play, especially at a bar,” Gray said. “It feels like so much pressure, and you don’t want to be the girl that gets on the table and can’t make a single ball. It really feels like you’re taking up space, like people are waiting for you and they’re annoyed.”
Freedland expressed a similar sentiment.
“When [I’m] shooting, especially when me and another girl are playing, I always feel like the gallery of people is constantly watching every shot I take,” she said.
When Freedland, Gray and Moline play together, they’re often the only women in the room, they said.
Senior Sophie Williams has worked at the Davis Center for two years. She estimates that UVM pool players are about 70% male and 30% female, while UVM’s current first-year class is approximately 40% male and 60% female.
Female pool players have ideas about how UVM can support them in creating a more welcoming space for women to play.
Freedland, Gray and Moline agreed that a table sign-up system would make it less intimidating for women to play. Female pool players wouldn’t need to ask men if tables were available and wouldn’t have to rush for a table when one opens up.
“Maybe having a women and femme pool night could be really fun, just to have an event that would put this area for women,” Freedland said.
For Gray, the rush of confidence she needs to approach a pool table comes from the women who surround her.
“I think a big part of it has been to have my girlfriends there with me to say ‘no, you deserve to play, you’ve been practicing.’ Even if you do mess up, it’s ok, these men can handle it,” Gray said.
