{"id":407140,"date":"2026-04-23T17:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/407140\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T17:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:09:13","slug":"worth-a-thousand-words-trump-photo-obscuring-womens-tennis-team-sparks-backlash-college-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/407140\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Worth a thousand words\u2019: Trump photo obscuring women\u2019s tennis team sparks backlash | College sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

A White House photo celebrating a champion women\u2019s sports team has drawn backlash due to the positioning of Donald Trump<\/a> and a group of men, who overshadowed the female athletes by lining up in front of them.<\/p>\n

The University of Georgia women\u2019s tennis team was one of several collegiate teams to visit the White House on Tuesday to mark a recent NCAA championship win. In a photo shared by press aide Margo Martin, Donald Trump and five Georgia staffers and coaches took up the front row of a stage setup, with 11 women standing in the background on a riser.<\/p>\n

The men standing alongside Trump were, from left to right: Georgia deputy athletic director Ford Williams, athletic director Josh Brooks, head coach Drake Bernstein, associate head coach Jarryd Chaplin and assistant coach Will Reynolds.<\/p>\n

\u201cA photo is worth a thousand words \u2026\u201d former tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho approved this photo?\u201d one commenter wrote<\/a>. \u201cMe when I definitely respect women\u2019s sports teams: what if we put them behind us so you can barely see them,\u201d another said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a video shared<\/a> by Martin, Trump approaches the group and shakes the hands of the five men, but does not do the same to the women.<\/p>\n

The Georgia team shared the photo on its official account later in the day, with the caption: \u201cAn honor to represent the University of Georgia at the White House today! @realDonaldTrump thanks for having us out!\u201d<\/p>\n

Georgia, who won the NCAA Division I women\u2019s tennis championship last May, were among seven teams honored for their titles at the White House this week.<\/p>\n

Championship teams across American sports have traditionally received invitations from the president to visit the White House after their victories. Such visits have become fraught during the first and second Trump terms.<\/p>\n

Before 2019, no women\u2019s championship team had made a solo visit<\/a> to the White House under Trump. Some had participated in events celebrating men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams. Four of the teams honored at Tuesday\u2019s event were women\u2019s sports teams, plus one mixed-gender rifle team.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the US women\u2019s hockey team declined an invitation<\/a> to visit the White House after winning gold at the Milano Cortina Olympics. The team cited scheduling and previous commitments, but the decision came after Trump joked about needing to invite the women\u2019s team while on a phone call<\/a> with the gold-winning US men\u2019s team. The men\u2019s team visited the White House and attended the State of the Union as Trump\u2019s guests.<\/p>\n

Hilary Knight, the captain of the women\u2019s team, later called Trump\u2019s remark a \u201cdistasteful joke\u201d<\/a> that had overshadowed the Olympic success.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just focusing on celebrating the women in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and continue to celebrate three gold medals in program history as well as the double gold for both men\u2019s and women\u2019s at the same time. And really not detract from that with a distasteful joke,\u201d Knight said in February.<\/p>\n

The image at Tuesday\u2019s event drew comparisons to previous instances in which men have dominated photos at events focused on women\u2019s issues. In 2017, a photo of Trump signing an anti-abortion bill<\/a> surrounded by eight male staffers in the Oval Office was met with outrage.<\/p>\n

Reince Priebus, Peter Navarro, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon watch as Donald Trump signs the executive orders in the Oval Office, 23 January 2017. Photograph: Evan Vucci\/AP<\/p>\n

Trump in recent weeks has been accused of running a \u201cmisogynistic administration\u201d<\/a> after the departures of three women from a cabinet already dominated by men. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Pam Bondi, the attorney general, were fired in the last two months; Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, announced on Monday she had stepped down.<\/p>\n

Noem and Bondi were both replaced by men in what was already the least diverse cabinet<\/a> this century.<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 23 April 2026. Trump\u2019s current cabinet is the least diverse in this century, not the least diverse in history as an earlier version stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A White House photo celebrating a champion women\u2019s sports team has drawn backlash due to the positioning of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-407140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}