When it comes to U SPORTS trophies, the women’s hardware isn’t winning.

This spring marked an exciting time for avid Huskies and U Sports followers. If you’re anything like me, you may have been keeping up with the U Sports national championships. As I watched men’s and women’s teams lift up their respective trophies in basketball, hockey and volleyball, I couldn’t help but notice a stark pattern. Why were the women’s trophies so damn ugly? 

No offence—some might call them historic or symbolic—but honestly, compared to the men’s, they just look lame. The men’s trophies are towering, gleaming monuments to victory. You could chug beer out of those things and hoist them above your head in triumph. The women’s ones? Not so much. I wanted to see if there was any explanation behind this phenomenon, so I did a little digging into the histories of these trophies.

The first trophy that really caught my attention was the women’s basketball trophy, known as the Bronze Baby. Shoutout to the Huskies women’s team for winning it this year (I got to see it up close!). It’s… memorable, I’ll give it that. The trophy is an eerie-looking barefoot woman in a dress that is leaning forward ever so unsettlingly. Strange, I must say. I also have a gripe with the name itself. The “Bronze” of Bronze Baby makes it seem like it was awarded to the third-place team, not to the champions of Canadian women’s basketball! 

According to U Sports, this trophy is a replica of a statue that was on the grounds of  Dunfermline College of Physical Education in Scotland. It was donated in 1922 by the Students’ Council of McGill University. That’s really all the information I could find about the strange specimen. I wish there were a clear explanation and significance behind the Bronze Baby. Who is she? What is her story??

Now compare that to the men’s basketball trophy, the W.P. McGee Trophy. Donated in 1963 by the University of Windsor Alumni Association. It’s shiny, massive and just screams “CHAMPION.” It’s everything you’d want to lift above your head after a big win. Seeing the two side by side feels like a sick prank.

Continuing on to hockey, it’s the same. The women’s championship trophy, called The Golden Path trophy, is this tiny little wooden base with a statue of a bronze hockey player on top – I can’t even tell if it’s even a woman hockey player. All I could really find on the trophy was that it was donated in 1998 by Katherine Cartwright, former player and the first head coach of the Queen’s Gaels women’s hockey team.

The men’s trophy on the other hand, called the David Johnston University Cup, is exactly what you would expect and imagine if you were to think of a hockey championship trophy. It’s tall, grand with a nice silver cup at the top. The cup has a long history and was first presented by Queen’s University and the Royal Military College of Canada to honour the first interuniversity hockey game back in 1885. And again, I ask you—what would you rather lift in front of a roaring crowd? 

For a country that prides itself on its hockey and equality, the stark differences between the trophies are a shame.

Lastly, we move on to volleyball. The women’s trophy does not even have a formal name and is just called “the championship trophy” on the U Sports website. However, that’s not even the worst part because visually, this thing blows. It’s this janky silver hand holding a cage-like volleyball. The metal looks old and rusty, not the slightest bit shiny or new and was donated in 1977 by the Great Plains Athletic Conference.

The men’s volleyball trophy might be the best of the bunch. Called the Tantramar Trophy and donated in 1967 by Mount Allison University. Again, it’s another big, grand, shiny trophy that even has a hint of gold to it. The disparity is glaring.

To be fair, other major U Sports trophies for soccer, track and field, cross country, and swimming are more equal in grandeur between genders. However, for these? I mean, you can make of what you’ve seen for yourself.

You’d never see a men’s championship trophy that looks as bizarre as some of these women’s ones. It just wouldn’t fly and maybe that reflects deeper societal expectations. Men’s victories are meant to be celebrated loudly, with grandeur, while women’s are expected to be humble, quiet, and dainty. Like, “Here’s your weird tiny trophy, now don’t make a fuss.”

It’s not just U Sports. Look at Wimbledon, one of the most prestigious sporting competitions in the world: men get a golden cup, while the women get a dish. Sure, it’s a beautiful one, but historically, it’s been tied to being symbolic of a woman’s domesticity given that the kitchen used to be where they had the most power, not the court. What a wonderful relic of sexism.

Maybe there’s an argument for embracing the weirdness. Maybe these niche, offbeat trophies challenge our expectations in a good way. Maybe, but also… no. They’re just not as cool.

At the end of the day, the trophy isn’t the point—it’s the players and their accomplishments that matter. Still, would it kill U Sports to make the women’s trophies something to really be proud of and show off? I think it’s time to give our women’s champions the hardware they deserve.