National Collegiate Athletic Association |
CommentDecember 8, 1997
Guest editorial -- Equal opportunity still an elusive ideal
BY DIANE SCHUMACHER When I entered the Olympic stadium last July to throw out the first pitch for the women's softball game between the United States and Taiwan, I couldn't help thinking how far we have come as women involved in sports.
When my name was introduced at the pitching mound in Atlanta, I first acknowledged the enthusiastic crowd with a wave, and then blew a kiss to the USA team. I scanned the stands to the right of home plate and spied a group of former female athletes who contributed to the game in the earlier years, when being a female athlete brought little recognition or acceptance from our society. For a second, I envisioned the group as younger players, playing games in home-made uniforms, their hair streaked with sunlight as opposed to the gray and white of the later innings of their lives. Those women were truly in a league of their own. I developed my sports skills growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, by playing touch football, baseball, punch ball and some basketball with the neighborhood boys. As a girl of 8, I would tag along with my dad when he drove my older brother to his baseball practices and games. His coach told my dad to have me go out in the field and shag fly balls. I was excited to be part of an organized and real practice. The coach liked what he saw. Afterward, he told my dad he wished he could trade some of the weaker-skilled boys and have me play on his team. My did did not think that would be a good idea. Instead, he and other dads got together through the town's parks and recreation office to start a local girls' fast-pitch league. My fondest memories of those early years were not the wins and losses, but piling 10 girls into the station wagon we owned and driving to and from practices, to and from games. I decided to attend a parochial high school across town because my older brother attended. I was not shocked that there were no competitive sports for girls, with the exception of gymnastics. It was part of life. I realized early on I wasn't capable of performing the routines of gymnastics, not to mention that I don't think manufacturers made leotards to fit a 5-foot, 10-inch frame. I stayed active by playing in the marching and concert band and took part in the annual interclass volleyball competition held in conjunction with the annual magazine drive. By the time I hit my junior year in 1970, I began to wonder why my high school was unable to field any girls' sports. The boys had football, soccer, baseball, basketball and tennis. We had gymnastics and cheerleading. The next fall, I enlisted two female physical education teachers in my efforts to start a girls' basketball team. After many meetings spent talking to classmates and countering the objections of administrators, I turned in a list of interested girls. I was granted permission to schedule three games in the city against other girls. I coached and played in all three games, losing all three. However, I felt I had won in showing the administration that there was indeed a strong interest despite the obstacles and the many excuses given. The following spring, I also organized a softball team. Thirty girls showed up for our first practice behind the gym. When I was told there would be no outside competition for us, we reluctantly decided to disband. The autumn after my 1971 graduation, my parochial school announced it would begin to sponsor girls' basketball and softball teams. In three years, the program won All-Western Massachusetts championships. I was not surprised. I knew we could. It's too bad that those in decision-making positions couldn't see it, either. As a freshman at Springfield College on the eve of Title IX's implementation, I was so excited to be a part of athletics in a school. Yet I noticed differences between the operation of both men's and women's programs didn't change much, even after Title IX was instituted. The softball coach was also the women's athletics director, and the programs were separate from the men's programs. The men's athletics director was a powerful NCAA basketball rules person who retired from coaching. I noticed there were one to two full-time secretaries in his office. The women's athletics director had a student secretary. At the time, colleges belonged to both the NCAA for men and the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. More than 90 percent of women's programs were administered by women. Coaches, administrators and officials of men's athletics under the NCAA were governed solely by men. By 1976, the AIAW was fading. Eventually, athletics scholarships were offered to women's programs under the NCAA. Restructuring of athletics programs throughout the country took place. What had been separate departments for men and women became one, with the males becoming athletics directors in most cases. If women were involved in the administration, it was under titles such as women's co-administrator, associate or women's administrator. During the 1980s, as more women elected to leave the profession due to restructuring or philosophical disagreements with the direction athletics was heading, more males entered the coaching profession. In addition, there was a constant battle among powerful sports lobbyists to water down Title IX. In 1997, as I reflect on 25 years, I wonder when we will really have grown up. I never thought that following the male model of our sports culture was ever the right thing to do. In schools and colleges, I always felt the diploma is the gold medal and that the athletics program is an extension of the classroom. I still do. Maybe what Title IX will force us to do is re-evaluate sports in our school system. If we don't get it right in the next few years, look for athletics to become more club-oriented, like in Europe. It's only because we have become too self-centered and too specialized that we no longer wish to share and cut back. When I think of the Depression, what did people of that era do? They re-evaluated where their money would go. They were forced to cut back and cut out the perks. Title IX will again make us re-evaluate and possibly reorganize. So why not try to follow a different model this time? We have an opportunity to try to put school athletics into a perspective that has been lacking. Maybe now there will be better control over spending and making sure colleges are doing the right thing for the nation's daughters, as well as for its sons. Diane Schumacher is director of women's athletics at Augustana College (Illinois). She was the first American player inducted into the International Softball Hall of Fame. Letter to the Editor -- Compliance an institutional responsibilityI am responding to the guest editorial written by Jim Elworth from the University of North Dakota, which appeared in the November 17, 1997, issue of the The NCAA News. Mr. Elworth opposes Legislative Proposal No. 97-19, the Division I Academic/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet's proposed amendment to Constitution 3.2.4.3, which would require certification of continuing eligibility of student-athletes to be done by an institutional staff member outside the athletics department. I am not writing to argue for or against the proposed legislation nor am I writing to question the process North Dakota uses to certify continuing eligibility. I do, however, take exception to an assumption Mr. Elworth makes when he writes, "Should the amendment pass, a person in the registrar's office will be assigned to check the eligibility of North Dakota's ice hockey team. That person, unfamiliar with NCAA rules and inexperienced in applying them to specific transcripts, then will call me to ask if the players are eligible." Our approach at Western Illinois University is that rules compliance is an institutional responsibility, not solely of the athletics department. It is the responsibility of our compliance coordinator to make sure key contacts within the registrar's and financial aid offices have a working knowledge to apply NCAA rules that affect those areas. I serve as the academic certification officer in the registrar's office and certify continuing eligibility at Western Illinois. I'm invited to attend (and do attend) the athletics department's rules-education meetings, attend NCAA regional seminars, and keep in close contact with our compliance coordinator regarding all institutional and NCAA academic issues. It's a process that has served us well. Mr. Elworth continues to write, "Amendments such as this propose to take the certification process out of the hands of those who know it best...." May I remind Mr. Elworth that the authority for certifying courses that count toward a baccalaureate degree for all students rests, in most cases, with an institution's registrar's office, not the athletics department. The assumption that persons outside the athletics department are "unfamiliar and inexperienced with NCAA rules" is irresponsible. On the contrary, such campus-wide involvement only enhances the integrity of the process.
Laurie Black Opinions -- Division comparisons intriguing, but how appropriate?
Michele Tolela Myers, president "I really believe that Division III schools embody the principles under which college athletics were founded. We talk the talk and walk the walk. And I don't think that Division I does that. I'm not being malicious. They can't. With the arrangement they have made, they would lose money, and they would lose support."
John V. Lombardi, president "I think everyone is trying to do the right thing. I am not persuaded there is a huge difference (between Divisions I and III), except in the scale. I wish they wouldn't be so 'holier than thou' about it."
William E. Kirwan, president "There is no question that Division I athletics has a dark side that causes institutions pain and embarrassment from time to time. To a large extent, Division III has avoided that. (However), probably nothing any Division I-A school does brings as many people to the campus as athletics, particularly the revenue-producing sports. I think the hope of most universities is that some of those people will become involved to the benefit of the institution."
Title IX
Bob Groseth, men's swimming coach "The thing that's shoved down our throat is that women are just as interested in sports as men but just haven't been given the opportunity. That's like saying men are just as interested in cooking, they just haven't had the opportunity.... "(Colleges) will do back flips to avoid litigation at all and particularly against a government agency. When courts put proportionality standards up they just say, 'The federal government says it and they're going to take the money away if we don't.' They're afraid to go to court against Uncle Sam."
Jean Ponsetto, chair Discussing the adverse effect that Title IX has had on men's nonrevenue sports: "I think it's an unfortunate reality. I think an even more unfortunate reality was what we weren't giving to women. "Anytime you take something away from someone, there's a lot of hurt and pain. But those are institutional choices, and the NCAA certainly isn't advocating that; it's advocating finding ways not to cut men's sports."
Leo Kocher, wrestling coach "Statistics clearly show that at Division I schools more men walk on to teams than women. I guess there are more males that value the athletic experience beyond a scholarship. I think that disparity has something to do with interest.... "The state and federal bureau are stomping all over schools for having more males participating than females participating in athletics -- but in other extracurricular activities where the disparity could be worse, there doesn't seem to be a concern.... "If differences between males and females have got to be discrimination, does that also apply to drama, speech and debate activities?"
Sportswriting
Terry Frei, sportswriter "There isn't a business, much less a college or pro sports team, where there isn't dissension, where there isn't often selfish-motive backbiting, where even popular bosses and fellow employees aren't talked about behind their backs. But when we come across the inevitable office-locker room politics in sport, we act as if we proved the Watergate money trail led right to Richard Nixon's desk drawer. Isn't it amazing that we look for this more often when a team is losing? "We frequently have far less knowledge of the sports we cover than we have a mastery of the buzz phrases. The play calling is too conservative. They lack the killer instinct. A program needs discipline. The players need to know their roles. "Sometimes, the phrases fit. The problem is, we're too mindlessly indiscriminate in throwing them out -- because they sound good. Too often, we're nodding at one another and congratulating one another for our toughness instead of saying: Now why do you say that? "Did we study the film? Did we talk to other coaches? Did we talk to the players? Did we attend the practices? Did we analyze it all and reach a reasoned conclusion? "Sometimes. "More often, we've just watched and talked with one another. We've nodded at one another, reinforcing the cliches until they come back around to us -- full-circle. Or we take the words of one or two ax-grinding 'sources' as the gospel, even if it's fourth-hand information. "Beat writers -- the reporters assigned to cover specific teams -- around the country too often have become obsessive dispensers of minutiae, not reporters and often not writers. "This is especially true in baseball, where it often is considered more essential to tell us who has the fourth-best changeup among setup men in the division (Zzzzzzzzz), than to craft a good, entertaining and even readable story. "The goal of a lot of sports columnists around the country is to make 'em talk at the Denny's counter, and frequently that means indulging in: a) unsophisticated and barely literate bluster that panders to the bandwagon mentality; b) relentlessly manipulative melodrama and hyperbole; or, c) both. As I travel, I'm coming across more columnists who sound like the self-proclaimed know-it-alls on the fifth beer at the end of the bar. After a while, you tune out the noise."
Rick Greenspan, athletics director "There are probably still fewer women that have an interest in walking on because in some cases there is not a pot at the end of the rainbow, (such as) professional sports or athletics administration options. It's more of a challenge for women to walk on.... "I think understanding Title IX is hard for most people. (They ask) why don't we have 10 women's sports and 10 men's sports? But that doesn't always work. "I think that (dropping some men's sports) was a fair thing to do and a right thing to do, but people were upset because they thought it was a case of reverse discrimination. But whether people like it or not, we're going to comply with the law. If we had not dropped those men's sports, we would have had to have added many more women's sports than women's soccer." |
Elevating the status of women's softball to Olympic status took a long time. On our nation's college campuses, gender equity has come about slowly as well. Twenty-five years after equal athletics opportunity was mandated for men and women participating in college athletics, it remains an elusive ideal.