While Title IX clearly has benefited the majority of female student-athletes, some people say that the law requiring equity in education may have inadvertently done a disservice to those student-athletes attending all-women's colleges.

Unlike co-educational institutions that have had to carefully ensure equity in athletics between men and women in terms of facilities, scholarships, recruiting, coaching positions and other issues, single-sex institutions have not had to deal with those matters, and some feel this has made them lag behind.

"Women's colleges have not had the force of law to enhance their athletics programs," said Valerie Cushman, director of athletics at Randolph-Macon Woman's College and a member of the Division III Management Council and the Committee on Women's Athletics (CWA). "The intention (of Title IX) was not to eliminate or detract from men's programs, but to bring women's programs to the level of men's. While that hasn't happened in ways that everyone thought it would, the bottom line is that women's programs have grown tremendously in support and participation rates at co-ed institutions across the country, and the law is the driving force behind those changes.

"Because women's colleges aren't bound by that law, and because they have no stick against which to measure, they've been more likely to stay stagnant and to not grow their programs," she said.

Lynda Calkins, director of athletics and associate dean of students at Hollins University, an all-women's college, agreed that single-sex schools, in some cases, have fallen behind their co-ed counterparts.

"I wouldn't say that Title IX had a negative impact on women's institutions and their efforts in intercollegiate athletics," said Hollins, who also chairs the CWA. "Whereas many of the women's institutions were the ones that had strong intercollegiate athletics programs in the early '70s, what some of us failed to do is to keep a finger on the pulse of what was happening with our co-ed brothers and sisters and therefore have slipped behind."

Laurie Priest, director of athletics at Mount Holyoke College, said that officials at many women's colleges simply didn't realize at first that Title IX did have an effect on them.

"They were competing for those same student-athletes and therefore as co-educational schools upgraded their programs, some women's colleges fell behind because they didn't recognize Title IX as having an impact on them," she said. "If you're going to be competing for students who are looking at a variety of different schools, you're going to have to provide a quality athletics experience and you can't just not support (athletics) and put the dollars in."

Priest said her school has upgraded its program to attract student-athletes and stay competitive with the schools with which it competes for students. She considers her program on par with any in the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) -- a former women's conference that went co-ed in the mid-1990s.

Scot Reisinger, athletics director and basketball coach at the College of Notre Dame (Maryland), said while women's colleges have been hurt by Title IX, his school has tried to get past the inequities, in part, by competing in an all-women's athletics conference.

The Atlantic Women's College Conference (AWCC), a Division III conference, is the only NCAA-recognized, all-women's conference.

"It started because the schools were having a hard time filling schedules and finding like competition," said Reisinger, who serves as the conference's president. "So it has succeeded in giving us like competition. I do not think that it is a disadvantage, because we can still go out and compete against everyone else in our non-conference schedule."

Reisinger said the conference is currently trying to recruit new members as Hood College and Chestnut Hill College prepare to leave the organization after becoming co-educational institutions. A big selling point, he said, is that with automatic qualification, a team from the AWCC is guaranteed a spot at the national championships. This, he said, helps gives women's colleges a voice in the Association.

But not everyone sees it that way.

Mary Baldwin College Director of Athletics Donna Miller said despite the automatic qualifications that have helped some of her schools' teams make it to the national championships, she's not happy her school is a part of the AWCC.

"It hurts us in recruiting," she said. "If we're in this women's conference, we're not forced to try and offer the kind of programs that other female athletes are getting at co-ed institutions, and I just think that's wrong. I think it's just regressing us."

The whole point of Title IX was to raise the standards for women's intercollegiate athletics, and belonging to a same-sex institution conference goes against that, Miller said.

"Even today, I can't go (to my administration) and say we have to have better facilities here and make it mean anything," she said. "Now if I had men here, number one, we wouldn't be in this position, and number two, we'd have a lot better chance of getting things -- finances and all that stuff."

But, as Cushman points out, it can be difficult as a women's college to gain respect in a co-ed conference.

"We're at a challenge to compete in our conference," she said of her schools' position within the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC). Cushman said her schools' facilities rank at the bottom of her conference, something she attributes in part to Title IX.

Calkins, whose school also is a member of the ODAC, said Hollins is working to make itself more competitive in the conference, and that includes a recent decision to discontinue three sports, in part, to help make the remaining seven teams more competitive.

Cushman acknowledged there's no easy answer for women's colleges, but she hopes that it is an issue the Association will tackle in the future.

"If suddenly state institutions were no longer supporting intercollegiate athletics, (NCAA members) would probably work as an Association to find a way to ensure that those programs could remain viable, competitive members of the NCAA," she said hypothetically. "And in the case of women's colleges, we have a smaller collection of institutions that are clearly not competing at the same level, with a few exceptions.

"Is it the responsibility of the Association to try and find a way to support those institutions?" Cushman asked. "What would we do if there was a segment of the Association that wasn't getting the support it needed?"