Oxford Hills Lady Vikings Video to Change Gender Inequality

The Oxford Hills state champion Lady Vikings have a message for girls - BE THE CHANGE!

These girls have a quote they live by:

Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyone’s responsibility - Ban Ki-moon (former Secretary General of the United Nations).

The girls along with amazing group of high school guys helped create a video that shows that even though there has been and still is gender inequality the fight isn’t over, because the power to change it is in your hands.

The concept for the video started years ago with Ryan Ricci when he was a junior at Johnson & Wales University. He was in a marketing class for sports management and had to come up with a new idea to market to the sports world.

There was the focus of men in the NBA despite the fact that Britney Griner was the talk of the town with people saying she might be drafted by the NBA. Ryan decided to have a basketball shoe geared towards women. Men get huge shoe deals all the time but women were an untapped and forgotten market.

After graduating, Ryan came back to Oxford Hills as an experiential educator as well as a before and after school coordinator. It was his time teaching 5th and 6th grade that the topic of girls having to be twice as good at sports to be respected.

Fast forward a few years and the girls are now in high school. The premise of the video is to “shatter the glass” with WNBA players pulling off the moves that made the NBA players famous. Iverson getting crossed up by bird, mutumbo getting blocked by griner. Taurasi hitting a three in Currys face and so on. The kids came up with the players and the moves.

According to Ryan the best part is that these kids took time on a beautiful summer day to shoot a video. The 5 girls all just won the class A state championship for basketball. They are all also 3 sport athletes going into there junior and senior year. The guys are also three sport athletes and most are heading to college for baseball.

The girls try to be the change through volunteering at local basketball clinics, always working step up day at school to make sure new students feel comfortable, as well as coaching various youth sports team in the community to give back to the community that helped them get where they are today. They are also trying to start a “shatter the glass” campaign and sell shirts to rise money to fight the inequality in sports.

The girls are: Julia Colby (Sue Bird) three-sport athlete with a full-time summer job. Jade Smedberg (Britney Griner) she is in DECA. Maggie Hartnett (Lauren Jackson) shirt was to small because it was supposed to be kids but also made it funny when she tried to wear it. Ella Kellogg is the youngest and has two summer jobs, and Cecelia Dieterich (Diana Tuarausi).

As for the five guys they all know that change cant happen if their not willing to help. They are: Jonny pruett (Allen Iverson) heading to UMF for baseball, Colton Carson (Mutumbo) heading to UMO for baseball, Rodney Bean (Michael Jordan) heading to USM for baseball, Will Dieterich (Dirk Nowitzki) heading to Notre Dame, he is the how do you like them apples guy.

Ryan thinks of these kids as family and helping them is something he will always do. Here's to one day not having to make videos showing the insane inequality between men and women.