Sports afforded new dawn, horizons

Numbers of female athletes not the only telling fallout

Jody Berger, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 20, 2002 at midnight

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Thirty years ago, fewer than 300,000 girls played high school sports. Today, 2.8 million do.

About 30,000 women played in college the year Title IX was signed, and most paid their own way through school. In fact, if all of them had pooled their scholarship money, it wouldn't have bought even half a loft in present-day LoDo.

Colleges in 1972 awarded female athletes $100,000 - for all women who played in sports.

Now, more than 150,000 women play college sports. They share $372 million a year in scholarships.

"The difference is night and day," said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation. "Night and day."

Hundreds of thousands of women who might not have afforded tuition became graduates with financial help mandated by Title IX. And these women are interested in all sports.

Two decades ago, fewer than 5,000 women ran cross country. Today, 11,721 compete in that sport.

In softball, the numbers jumped from 416 college teams with 7,465 players to 850 teams with 15,041 players.

In soccer, 80 teams with 1,855 players grew to 824 teams with 18,548 players. And the athletes' accomplishments go beyond the college game.

"We draw from that talent pool," said Brian Chenault of USA Soccer. "Our national team is made up of players who played and were coached in college."

Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and their national teammates won gold medals in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics and the World Cup in 1999. They have held the No. 1 ranking since international competition began in 1985.

A similar story turns up on the basketball court, where American women have won four of the past five gold medals. They also dominate professionally.

"There's the established path to the WNBA," said Val Ackerman, the league's commissioner. "Youth leagues, AAU, high school and college. Title IX very much helped strengthen college athletics through increasing funding, better facilities and coaching."

Lesser-known sports also feel the effects of the 30-year-old law. Bowling was thriving as a club sport at historically black colleges, so the NCAA smoothed the path for bowling to become a varsity sport.

Other "emerging sports" such as ice hockey, rowing and water polo also received a hand from the NCAA. The organization increased the championship fields in traditional sports and speeded the process for new sports to stage national championships.

"We said, 'Let's not drop any opportunities because of Title IX,' " said Peg Bradley-Doppes, the athletic director at University of North Carolina-Wilmington, who serves on the NCAA Committee for Women's Athletics.

The committee noted that men had many more opportunities to compete in postseason play than women. By increasing the championship fields, more women would have the same opportunities and more schools would be encouraged to add teams.

"Volleyball and soccer had reduced championship fields, so you really had to be the best of the best to make it," Bradley-Doppes said. "Now, with the increased fields, schools have an added incentive to start a team."

But the ultimate proof of Title IX's impact is no longer just the numbers. On campus, life has changed for female athletes.

When Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law June 23, 1972, he gave colleges three years to implement the changes.

University of Denver athletic director M. Dianne Murphy graduated from Tennessee Tech the year the law was signed. She played three sports as an undergraduate, wore the same uniform for all of them and received no help with tuition.

University of Colorado basketball coach Ceal Barry enrolled in college just after Murphy, but in Barry's four years, everything changed.

In Barry's freshman year, 1973-74, she and her teammates hopped into station wagons to drive to games. They shared uniforms with the volleyball team, and if they could schedule 20 games, it was a good year.

By Barry's senior year, the team bought uniforms and didn't bother with the motor pool. They chartered buses and booked hotel rooms.

"We realized we could play out of state," Barry said. "It was like, 'Oh, we can stay overnight.' We didn't really know how to be a varsity team, but we figured it out. All this money was thrown in our laps, and we knew if we didn't use it, we'd lose it."

After graduating, Barry took an assistant coaching position at Cincinnati. As a graduate student assistant, she more or less ran the show because the coach was a part-time employee.

When Barry started at CU, she earned $24,000 as head coach. "I think you could make more money as a high school teacher and coach at the time than as a head college coach," she said.

But chances are, when Barry tells her players about her playing days or the beginning of her coaching career, they hear that story parents tell: something about walking to school in the snow, uphill both ways.

Barry's players don't know much about suffering or not being treated like the men.

The CU women don't bother with buses; they fly. They don't high-tail it home after a game or sleep four to a room; they stay in hotels. And they always have clean home-and-away uniforms, practice jerseys and anything else they might need.

At CU, the women's team is treated like the men's in all the tangible ways. In some ways, the women are treated better. But that's because they win.

"Our administrators think Mandy Nightingale is pretty cool," Barry said. "They talk about our women athletes with the same pride as our men. They're fans."

Barry knows the airplanes and hotel rooms won't evaporate, but some of the emotional support and the cheers would dry up if her team suffers a few losing seasons.

"But that is equity," Barry said. "They don't like us because we're women. They like us because we win. That's how it is in men's sports."

And that's all Title IX intended.

College sports might be big business for the schools, but for the students who play, athletics are another part of the educational experience.

Male and female students have equal access to chemistry and history classes. Title IX's goal was to ensure that male and female athletes have equal access to all that athletics offers: competition, scholarships, coaching - even the boos.

bergerj@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-5386.

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