Rising Stars: Meet Mara Fitzgerald

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mara Fitzgerald. 

Hi Mara, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Sports have always been a huge part of my life. When I was little, I wanted to try them all – even if there weren’t girls’ teams. I was the only girl in the local boys and girls club flag football league, I played on both the girls and boys basketball teams in elementary school because the boys had 3x as many games, and I played baseball as well as softball. Even as a little kid, I noticed that girls were treated differently in the world of sports. 

As I got older and focused in on basketball, I continued to notice the differences. They weren’t so obvious as the school not offering a girls basketball program, but they were still there. The boys got to play every Friday night to a full gymnasium. The girls played Thursday nights when everyone had school and work the next day. The boys received most of their funding from boosters and alumni – the girls had to aggressively fundraise or have our parents chip in for warm-up suits, team meals, etc. 

When my athletic career ended and I entered the professional world in Washington, DC, I continued to notice the differences in men’s and women’s sports. The biggest frustration came from how the city treated our WNBA team: The Washington Mystics. In 2018, they had to play the WNBA finals in a college gymnasium because their shared arena was under construction. They did not receive the marketing attention that their counterparts, the Wizards, received. No mentions in the sports section of the newspaper, nothing on talk radio, no banners throughout the city after they made it to the WNBA finals two years in a row, the list goes on. 

I realized that I’d been noticing a lack of representation, equality, and respect in sports my whole life – so I wanted to do something about it. That’s when my sister and I created SHOT:CLOCK. As former athletes and avid sports fans, we wanted access to news, highlights, stats, etc. on women’s sports: but that’s pretty hard to find. Only 4% of sports media coverage is dedicated to women’s sports. 4%. Though neither of us had backgrounds in journalism or sports media, we knew that ANYTHING would be better than settling for 4%. So, we turned to social media. We created SHOT:CLOCK as a platform dedicated to highlighting women’s sports with a specific focus on the numbers. Numbers that no other platforms provide. We focus on salary comparisons, pay gap progress, viewership data, sponsorships, media coverage, lawsuits, and much more. The goal is to highlight what is going on in the women’s sports world (as well as women in the men’s sports world) so that people not only have access to this previously inaccessible information but also so that sports fans everywhere can see the changes that need to be made and ultimately be part of the change. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I noticed almost immediately that my sister and I were not the only people craving the information that SHOT:CLOCK was publishing. We thought it may be a niche market at first, but were quickly proven wrong. Sports fans care about women’s sports – they just need an opportunity to prove it! 

In finding the population of sports fans that support women and want more women’s sports news, we also found the population of nay-sayers. People who think nobody cares about women’s sports and say that women should quit and go back to the kitchen. It seems outrageous that people still use the “kitchen” insult, but believe me, it’s there! 

Ultimately, SHOT:CLOCK focuses on the data – not the emotions of those who want to hold women back. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As I mentioned earlier, my background is not in journalism or sports media – It’s actually in engineering. 

After graduating from Penn State with a degree in Architectural Engineering, I began my professional career in construction project management for a mid-sized general contracting firm in Washington, DC. My teams specialize in healthcare, education, arts and music, and historic renovations. Being a woman sets me apart in construction – no doubt about it. I’m often the only woman on the jobsite and in project meetings. And just like in sports, there are always the nay-sayers who may prefer I “go back to the kitchen,” but I’d rather be the person building the kitchen. 

For the time being, my work with SHOT:CLOCK and women’s sports does not overlap much with my work in engineering and construction. But as women’s sports continue to grow, they’ll need new stadiums to play in. Hopefully one day I’ll be the person building those stadiums. 

What matters most to you?
Mutual respect for men and women, whether it’s in sports, construction, or elsewhere. 

When people talk about gender equality, it’s easy to look back over the last 100 years and pinpoint progress that has been made: women can vote, they can open bank accounts on their own, they can go to school, get degrees, be CEOs. In the sports world, we see similar progress: women being allowed to join country clubs and play golf, Title IX leveling the playing field on the legal front, women playing/coaching/refereeing football, women owning sports franchises. 

What is harder to see and slower to progress is society’s respect for women in sports. When will we stop referring to athletes as ‘hockey players’ and ‘women’s hockey players’? When will TV listings stop showing “College Soccer” and “Women’s College Soccer”? It’s 2021 and the NCAA has just now agreed to use ‘March Madness’ branding for both the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Before now, it was ‘March Madness’ for the men’s tournament and ‘NCAA Women’s Basketball’ for the women’s tournament. Did you know that 13% of men think they can win a point against Serena Williams? Serena Williams. One of the greatest (if not the greatest) players ever to play the game. And the men who were surveyed aren’t professional athletes or formally trained tennis players. They’re just regular guys (clearly with unconscionably high confidence and ridiculously low respect for women in sports). 

One day, when people are asked ‘who is the greatest athlete of all time,’ they will stop limiting the list to Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods. They’ll start off with Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and Diana Taurasi. They’ll give women in sports the respect they deserve. 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shotclock_media/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/shotclock_media
• Other: linktr.ee/shotclock_media