Tremendous progress has been made to provide equitable athletics opportunities to women in the two and a half decades since the NCAA introduced women's championships. The Women's Final Four is drawing sellout crowds, and other women's sports -- particularly volleyball, softball and soccer -- are thriving as well.

Unquestionably, Title IX opened doors in terms of making athletics opportunities available to women. But the NCAA's decision to designate selected sports as emerging sports for women has helped generate significant opportunities for female student-athletes, too.

NCAA bylaws currently identify team handball, rugby, synchronized swimming, archery, badminton, equestrian and squash as emerging sports, or sports that are recognized by the NCAA that are intended to provide additional athletics opportunities to female student-athletes. Institutions are allowed to count emerging sports toward the NCAA minimum sports-sponsorship requirements and NCAA minimum financial aid awards.

Four sports initially deemed as emerging have gone on to become NCAA championship sports -- rowing, water polo, ice hockey and bowling -- and all are enjoying strong sponsorship.

The emerging-sports legislation came from a 1991 survey of NCAA institutions focusing on expenditures for men's and women's athletics programs. Findings indicated that while the undergraduate enrollment was nearly equal for men and women, men composed about 70 percent of athletics participants. In addition, athletics departments were funneling about 70 percent of athletics scholarship funds into men's programs, as well as 77 percent of operating budgets and 83 percent of recruiting funds.

In response, the NCAA established a Gender-Equity Task Force that recommended the Association set institutional standards and NCAA regulations to assist in reaching the goal of gender equity in intercollegiate athletics. At that time, five team and four individual sports were identified as emerging.

Janet Kittell, an associate director of athletics at Syracuse University and vice chair of the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics, said the reaction to the introduction of emerging sports generated positive feedback.

"It gave people a way to get their arms around the issue of how to start. I think it was an aid," she said. "Some of (the emerging sports) expanded even more quickly than we anticipated. The growth of women's sports in the last decade, and the championships and diversity of opportunities for women, is phenomenal."

Factors for progression

The explosion of opportunities is evident. For instance, both women's ice hockey and women's water polo championships already have undergone bracket expansions that doubled the size of their fields to eight teams.

While those sports have shed their "emerging" label, others have struggled to grow sponsorship numbers. For many in fact, sponsorship levels remain well below the 40 required to be eligible for championship status. Further, no schools currently are using an emerging sport to meet NCAA minimum sport-sponsorship or financial aid award requirements.

Equestrian seems most closely poised to make the leap since it already has met the sponsorship minimum, but the other sports aren't close, yet. In fact, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics is recommending the removal of those sports from the emerging-sport list (see related story, page 8).

Kittell said it is tempting, but problematic, for those sports to apply lessons and strategies that proved successful for bowling, rowing, water polo and ice hockey. In some cases, she said national organizations worked diligently with colleges to move programs from club to varsity status. She emphasized, though, that while those lessons and patterns may be followed by other sports, they may not necessarily produce similar results.

"Sports like ice hockey, water polo and bowling are regionally strong -- bowling in the historically black colleges, ice hockey in the Northeast and upper Midwest and water polo in the far West. Now there's equestrian emerging in the Midwest, too," said Kittell. "By throwing that lifeline to the sports as a way of going from emerging to championship in a logical progression, what we've done is show people that they can compete regionally for a national championship."

University of California, Davis, head women's water polo coach Jamey Wright has seen firsthand the impact of not just Title IX, but also the emerging-sport designation. Wright, who has been in charge of the Aggies' program since 1983, cited the explosion of women's water polo programs at the high school level and at the collegiate level.

In the mid- to early 1990s, the sport grew from a handful of programs to about 60. Wright said the existence of a highly developed collegiate club championship program through U.S. Water Polo, the existence of an established NCAA men's championship, Title IX considerations and "a lot of sacrifices and hard work by athletes and others in the early days" helped boost women's water polo to championship status.

"The concept of emerging sports has been great in terms of the impact it has had on expanding opportunities for women athletes," Wright said. "Think about all these phenomenally gifted female student-athletes who are participating in NCAA championships. Had the emerging-sport concept not happened, what a loss to the athletics community and to those individuals. It really is dramatic."