The NCAA News - News and Features

February 16, 1998

Putting some bend in the rules

Martin case points out the need to anticipate the hopes and challenges of disabled athletes

BY KAY HAWES
STAFF WRITER

"Anything's Possible."

What an unfortunate slogan for the PGA Tour to adopt right before Casey Martin filed suit to ride a golf cart on the tour. The tour dropped the slogan, but its irony helped Martin's case receive more attention than tour officials could have anticipated.

In fact, the controversy could have focused on the NCAA rather than the PGA Tour if the Association had made a different decision four years ago at the 1994 Division I Men's Golf Championships.

Fortunately for the Association, the committee overseeing the event ruled that Martin, who suffers from a congenital leg problem that prevents him from walking extended distances, could use a cart. Martin competed, his team won the championship and the NCAA got credit for making a reasonable accommodation for a disabled athlete.

The Casey Martin story had a happy ending for the NCAA, but it's only one story. The NCAA sponsors 81 championships in 22 sports, and countless other athletes could seek what Martin is pursuing: a minor adjustment in playing rules that would enable them to compete. How are their hopes and their dreams to be dealt with?

No matter how you see the Martin controversy, which soon will be decided by a judge in Oregon, one thing is clear. It has stimulated the most spirited discussion ever about the rights and abilities of disabled athletes to compete at an elite level with able-bodied athletes.

'I Can,' with a cart

As most sports fans know by now, Martin is suing the PGA Tour under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in public accommodations. Martin suffers from Klippel-Trenauney-Weber Syndrome, a rare vascular malformation that affects his right leg.

Arteries take blood down his leg, but he lacks the large vein along the lower leg that should return it. Blood pools in his knee and in a jumble of varicose veins, causing swelling and throbbing pain. His tibia has also been affected by improper blood flow, putting him at risk for a broken leg and possible amputation.

Players on the PGA Tour and its minor-league equivalent, the Nike Tour, are not allowed to use a golf cart during tournaments, although they are occasionally ferried by tournament personnel in a cart between widely separated holes. When that happens, often on courses where the front nine is far from the back nine, every player is ferried at the same spot.

The PGA Tour does allow golf carts to be used on its Senior Tour, but it says the Senior Tour is nostalgic, not competitive.

The PGA Tour's attorneys argue that allowing Martin to ride a golf cart would give him an unfair advantage. They

maintain that walking is an integral part of tournament golf at that level.

Martin won the first Nike Tour event of 1998, the Nike Lakeland (Florida) Classic, after getting a temporary injunction that allowed him to use a golf cart.

Nike has taken the unusual step of siding with Martin, urging the Tour to make an exception. Nike has also signed Martin to be a symbol of the company's new "I Can" campaign.

An advantage or an accommodation?

Martin didn't have to sue anyone to use a golf cart when he played on the 1994 NCAA champion team at Stanford University.

His team still holds the record for the best score (most under par) in two rounds. The NCAA granted Martin's request to use a golf cart when he was a collegiate competitor, as did the Pacific-10 Conference.

Pac-10 championships rules prohibit both pull carts and golf carts. But if an athlete is permanently disabled, he or she may be granted an exception and be allowed to use a golf cart.

A written request must be submitted to the conference office with accompanying medical statements requesting the use of a golf cart at least one week before the championships. The request must be proposed by the athlete's coach, then agreed to by a majority vote of the coaches. The request moves up the committee chain of command and is eventually voted upon by the conference's chief executive officers.

The Pac-10 also allows pull carts to be used in its championships under unusual circumstances, but permission would be subject to the approval of the conference games committee. Any such request must be made a week in advance of the championships. Athletes who acquire injuries during the championships are not permitted to use golf carts or pull carts.

Those rules came about because of Martin, and they are now spelled out in the Pac-10's golf regulations for both men and women.

Stanford and Martin appealed to the NCAA in a similar fashion. William Miller, the director of golf at Furman University, was the chair of the NCAA Men's and Women's Golf Committee at the time.

"We required a letter from Stanford and one from his physician," Miller said. "The physician really went into detail, and we thought this person really needed a cart."

Miller said a few players and coaches expressed concern that Martin might be getting an unfair advantage. But the committee, which had been stingy about granting requests for carts from coaches with temporary ailments, felt that a cart was warranted in this case.

"We've been very sensitive to the situation as a committee, I think, and we tried to do the right thing," he said.

NCAA decisions about whether to change a sport's rules for a disabled athlete are made on a case-by-case basis by the committee in charge of that sport. Martin was accommodated in keeping with the general philosophy of the Association, said NCAA General Counsel Elsa Cole.

"What we did for Casey Martin was consistent with our principle of nondiscrimination, which we adopted voluntarily," Cole said.

Will the decision in the Martin case somehow affect the NCAA?

"Our consistent position has been that Title III (of the Americans with Disabilities Act) does not affect us," Cole said. "And if it does affect us, it's only at the place and during the time when we're conducting an event that's open to the public."

Strictly speaking, the case does not apply to the NCAA. It is being tried in Oregon, which is in the federal courts' ninth circuit. The NCAA's place of business -- Kansas -- is in the 10th circuit.

"A decision by a court in the 10th circuit or the Supreme Court is the only decision that would bind us," Cole said. "A court here might look at a ruling in another circuit, but a ruling there would not bind us.

"However, we are obviously watching with interest. We want to be accommodating to student-athletes with disabilities and let them participate in athletics."

Can they really compete?

The accommodation of athletes with disabilities is not a topic that will go away any time soon. And the Martin case is not just an isolated incident. No matter what the judge in Oregon decides, athletes with disabilities have demonstrated that they can compete in several sports.

Can't think of any athletes who have overcome disabilities to compete at the highest level? How about Jim Abbott, a University of Michigan alumnus who was born without a right hand and still became a major league pitcher with the New York Yankees?

How about swimmer Tom Dolan, another Michigan graduate, who won a gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta despite having asthma and a windpipe half the size of most adults?

Or how about Ronda Miller, a deaf athlete from Gallaudet University who was named an honorable mention all-American last year in basketball and who holds the NCAA Division III women's volleyball record for most kills in a season?

As laws and attitudes regarding disabilities have changed, some children with disabilities are beginning to play sports at an early age like their able-bodied counterparts.

With the educational philosophy of inclusion, where children with disabilities go to public schools with children who don't have disabilities, the doors to basketball and track have opened along with the doors to calculus and advanced literature.

Also, organizations dedicated to promoting athletics for the disabled now exist for virtually every major disability you can name. The existence of those organizations has resulted in the development of elite competition for disabled athletes.

The most famous of those competitions is the Paralympic Games, which are recognized by the International Olympic Committee and historically have been held in the same host country or city as the Olympics. The Barcelona Games drew a record attendance of more than 1.5 million spectators.

Some groups, like the United States Association of Blind Athletes (USABA), have members who have served as alternates on U.S. Olympic teams and have won medals against athletes without disabilities.

One of their members, Marla Runyon, is one of the top 10 U.S. women in the pentathlon. At the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials, Runyon, who is legally blind, didn't make the team, but she set a record in the women's 800-meter run portion of the pentathlon.

There are elite deaf athletes in the highest levels of competition in practically every sport. Many athletes who compete against them never even know their competitors are deaf.

Often, only the referees need to know so they won't penalize deaf athletes for not stopping play when the whistle blows. The athlete's coaches and teammates use visual signals to let them know when to discontinue play.

Most deaf athletes require little accommodation, said Steve Feit, sports information director at Gallaudet. "These players don't think there's anything strange about not being able to hear," he said, "and they don't think they're at a disadvantage."

Gallaudet's student-athletes compete at the varsity level in Division III against hearing athletes in baseball, men's and women's basketball, cross country, men's soccer, softball, women's swimming, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track, volleyball, and wrestling. Gallaudet's football team dropped to club level three years ago, but it still plays hearing athletes, and it's still popular with both the athletes and the fans, Feit said.

What might the future hold?

What about athletes like Martin who can compete but require accommodation? What about a deaf swimmer who can't hear the starter's gun? At most meets she'll be able to watch the pool surface to see the reflection of the starter's gun going off. If it's an outdoor meet, is it reasonable to permit her to look up out of her stance slightly to see the smoke?

A rule already exists in NCAA swimming and diving to accommodate disabled athletes (see accompanying box).

The rule permits blind athletes to graze against the lane lines with their hands to judge their place in the lane, said Mark Luca, assistant executive director of the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes. The grazing does not violate the rule prohibiting competitors from pulling on the lane line to assist forward motion.

"They also can have a tapper at the end of the pool," Luca said. "The tapper stands there with a cane with a tennis ball on the end of it. They tap the athlete on the head or shoulder to tell them to start their turn."

Blind athletes are accommodated in both wrestling and judo by a rule that requires the sighted athletes to maintain body contact with the blind athletes, Luca said. "If contact is broken, the official restores it," he said.

What about a blind runner? Would it be permissible for her to run alongside or immediately behind a guide who holds her cane? Would that be an advantage because the guide could set the pace or call out coaching advice?

Tina Jinkens, a blind athlete in Lawrence, Kansas, who competes in road races and triathlons, often has to agree not to participate for prize money. In one recent triathlon, she competed with a partner who held her cane during the run, rode in the front of the tandem bike and, during the lake swim, guided Jinkens with a rope looped around both of their waists.

"Since I had a partner, we had to agree not to participate for prize money," Jinkens said. "Since that's not why I was doing it, I didn't have a problem with that."

What about an athlete who's missing a hand like Jim Abbott and who needs a prosthetic device to hold his rifle? Would that be an advantage? Could a football player be permitted to kick wearing a plastic foot? Could a blind rower be excused from helping to place the boat in the water?

Those types of questions may one day come to a rules committee near you.

What if it changes the sport?

One of the PGA Tour's contentions is that permitting Martin to ride in a golf cart would change the tradition of the sport. Golf's living legends -- Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Ken Venturi -- have testified for the PGA Tour that walking is an integral part of the game, vital to the tradition. To allow one competitor to ride, they say, would change the sport forever.

What if disabled athletes did change a sport? At Gallaudet, they already have. By some accounts, Paul Hubbard, Gallaudet's star quarterback from 1892 to 1895, is said to have invented the football huddle to give his players more privacy to plot strategy by sign language. It's now as much a part of the sport as the ball itself, so much so that the "no-huddle" offense is unusual enough to warrant mention by the play-by-play commentator.

Another deaf Washington, D.C.-area athlete, William Ellsworth Hoy, an outfielder who broke into the big leagues in 1888, is said to be responsible for the baseball umpire's hand signals. Unable to hear calls at the plate, Hoy and the visiting umpires designed a simple series of hand signals he could see from the outfield --balls on the right hand, strikes on the left. Nowadays a modern umpire probably couldn't call a game if you tied his hands.

While it's hard to say whether the Martin case will have a lasting impact one way or the other, one thing is for sure: The discussion has only begun. And the old slogan still fits -- anything's possible.

NCAA Principle of Nondiscrimination

The Association shall promote an atmosphere of respect for and sensitivity to the dignity of every person. It is the policy of the Association to refrain from discrimination with respect to its governance policies, educational programs, activities and employment policies.

Disabled competitors

(1998 NCAA Swimming and Diving

Rule 4-6-1-j)

Make every reasonable effort to accommodate competitors with disabling conditions and to apply recognized procedures (which can be found in the 1998 U.S. Swimming Rules and Regulations) when such procedures are appropriate.