Three Skyline High School athletes say a sports betting ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney sends the wrong message about women in sports.

Field hockey player Kate Shinsky, swimmer and diver Olive Boog, and field hockey player Miranda Newberry told the Skyline Post that the ad, released Sept. 9 by sports prediction market Novig, sexualizes female athletes and promotes unrealistic body standards. All three are members of the class of 2029.

In the one-minute spot, Sweeney poses in multiple sports settings wearing little clothing, using footballs, basketballs and a tennis racket to cover her body. The ad shows little athletic activity.

"I do hate it and I think it's offensive to women in sports," Shinsky said. "If you're gonna make a sports ad, at least have her playing, and not just sitting in half naked clothes. There's so much more to sports than just representing it with a ball."

Boog told the Skyline Post that young girls watching the ad will believe the only way to be considered beautiful is to look like the people on television. She said that standard is unrealistic and that showing real athletic bodies matters for self-esteem. Real women athletes "have strength and look healthy," Boog said, with muscle and body fat rather than the polished image the ad presents.

Newberry said women's sports "can really only go up from here" but that the ad is "just sexualizing women in sports and kind of diminishing it."

The Skyline students joined a wave of criticism from professional athletes, according to Fortune. Four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus said that she was infuriated. British sprinter Amy Hunt said women in sport are defined by "muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears." Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a TikTok of herself competing with the caption, "idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like," ABC11 reported.

Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky said at a Front Office Sports panel that Sweeney was "driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging" behind the campaign. Speaking at the same panel, Fortinsky said the company is "hugely supportive of women's sports" and that the ad was never intended to portray female sports, calling Sweeney "an actress, the biggest movie star in the world."

Sweeney, who joined Novig as a strategic partner and equity holder, said in a company press release that the campaign was meant to put the focus entirely on sports.

The backlash comes as women's sports viewership surges. Nielsen reported in March that U.S. audiences consumed 46 billion minutes of women's sports in 2025, a 71 percent increase since 2022.

Shinsky's field hockey squad carries a 7-3-1 record this season. Skyline plays at Dexter on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at Saline on Monday, Sept. 28, and at Huron on Wednesday, Sept. 30.