Sports are a defining feature of senior sprinter Kaya Binetti’s life. She has been an athlete for as long as she can remember, spending her high school years on the soccer field. Once she got to Emory University, Binetti became a valuable member 0f the women’s track and field team, and spent the summer interning at a training camp for the New York Jets.
Binetti has known that she wants to pursue a career in sports after graduation, but felt like the University lacked a community dedicated to women with similar career interests. To remedy this, Binetti decided to carve a space for women interested in sports at Emory by chartering a new Women in Sports Club this fall. The group hosted their first official event last month.
Inspiration for the club came to Binetti when she heard about the initiative Samantha Rapoport, the NFL senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion, was taking to promote women’s roles within the league. Rapoport is best known for creating the NFL Women’s Forum in 2017, which has placed about 250 women in jobs in the league.
Binetti’s plans for the club took off even more during her internship this summer. While working, she got a taste of the professional sports atmosphere and ran into the NFL’s first-ever female scout, Connie Carberg.
“Immediately she was so nice and kind and just willing to talk to me,” Binetti said. “We got into a conversation about what I was interested in. I told her about my club, and then she immediately was like, ‘Here’s my email, here's my number.’”
Binetti immediately began planning for the club’s first event, which was a talk with Carberg and the New York Jets President Hymie Elhai on Sept. 25. Carberg became a scout for the Jets in 1976, approximately four years after the United States Congress enacted Title IX, which protects individuals in education and sports from discrimination based on sex.
Since 1976, Carberg has paved the way for many other women in a male-dominated industry by simply following her passion for sports. At the club’s opening event, Carberg said she used her love for sports to build up the confidence to pursue a job in the NFL.
“I was not confident in myself in dating,” Carberg said. “I didn't go to my prom. I was very insecure. … But the one thing I felt confident about, for some reason, was talking football, being around and judging it.”
Carberg said that since the Arizona Cardinals appointed Jennifer Welter as an assistant coaching intern in 2015, there has been an influx of women operating in professional football. To break into the industry, Carberg encouraged students in the crowd to network and become involved in sports management programs.
Binetti said that networking with people in the industry was one of the main reasons why she wanted to start the club in the first place.
“It is really hard, no matter who you are, to get your foot in the door with professional sports,” Binetti said. “So I think everyone looked at it as a way to connect and a really good idea to help us advance our careers.”
The club’s vice president, senior sprinter Samantha Glass, said that the new group will help any women interested in sports, not just student-athletes or those wanting to explore careers in the sports world.
“Being somebody in sports, you make a lot of good connections and there's a lot of other people who feel the same as you,” Glass said. “It's a good way to meet other people and be able to make connections with people in the industry, whether or not that's your end goal.”
Glass added that the club hopes to host future lectures with special guests to spread awareness about opportunities for women in the sports world.
“In general, women shouldn’t be afraid to be in sports,” Glass said. “We saw how many people came [to the first club event]. There’s a big community of us.”
