Things you find when you clean up your links…

(Hey, hey… hey! Watch those thoughts!)

Sites disappear, move or get taken over by Japanese script. AND….

A GREAT picture of Sherri Coale, “basketball player,” from the NAIA site, and this news: Elston King Announces Retirement – After over four decades of service to Southern University at New Orleans, King will end his coaching career

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Elston King and his wife, Imogene, found themselves in the attic of their home; waters rising and in need of a rescue. Help did arrive, but they were only taking women, so King waded through the water with his wife on his back, getting her to safety. Eventually Elston King was lifted by helicopter off of the roof of his home and taken to Baton Rouge and reunited with his wife and with his other family; Southern University at New Orleans.

The recovery for both the Kings and SUNO started in those days and weeks while both were displaced in Baton Rouge. Elston and his wife in an apartment and SUNO temporarily housed by Southern University’s flagship campus on the bluff. By 2005, Elston King had dedicated more than three decades to his beloved Knights and he wasn’t about to let a storm wash all of that away. He thought about that time as his tenure at the University comes to a close. After 41 years as a student, coach and athletic director, Elston King is retiring.

“We stayed there [in Baton Rouge] for nine months but we knew we would come back”, recalls King. “Out of everything I’ve done at SUNO, I think rebuilding the program after Katrina, from nothing, into a winning program…a program that can be respected, that’s has to be right up there with anything I’ve done in my career.”

This, from the National Wheelchair Basketball Association: USA Completes Sweep of Wheelchair Basketball GOLD at the Parapan Am Games.

With a dominating performance in the Men’s Gold medal match, the USA team defeated the Canadian team to take the Gold medal at the 2015 Toronto Parapan Am Games. The final score tallied at USA 62 – CAN 39. The USA team was able to focus on their game plan from the beginning, and even the raucous cheering from the partisan crowd couldn’t distract the USA squad for achieving its golden goal.

With this win, both of the USA teams gained the top spot at the Parapan Games and have qualified for the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. Congratulations to both teams. GO USA!

Some background on the NYC high school story from the previous post courtesy of the National Women’s Law Center: The Battle for Gender Equity in Athletics in Elementary and Secondary Schools

This fact sheet discusses the importance of sports for girls, and the unlevel playing field they still face. Compared to male athletes, female athletes receive far fewer participation opportunities and inferior coaching, equipment, practice facilities and competitive opportunities.

Which dovetails nicely with the Title IX Blog’s post: LAS-ELC “Fair Play” Video

In the spirit of sharing helpful resources, this new video created by the gender equity team at Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center is aimed at students and helps them understand Title IX’s application to K-12 athletic programs. It also helps them understand their rights under California’s Fair Play in Community Sports Act, which applies to municipal athletic programs that are outside the scope of Title IX.

From D3Hoops: A three-part series: Day 1: Greatest of all time?

Let’s get something out of the way first.

Thomas More did not win the 2015 NCAA Division III women’s basketball national championship just because the Saints had Sydney Moss.  As several players and coaches, at Thomas More and elsewhere, were quick to point out all season, the Saints were a really good basketball team. They had depth in the front court, senior leadership in the backcourt and a fearless freshman dynamo at point guard. Thomas More was much more than Moss.

All that said, Sydney Moss may have completed the single greatest season of any women’s Division III basketball player ever. Heck, it may have been the single greatest season of any Division III basketball player, man or woman.

Day 2: First to reach the elite feat

On Monday we suggested that Sydney Moss may have just had the single greatest season by a Division III basketball player ever. She was the consensus Player of the Year, was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament and led her undefeated team to a national championship.

There have been only eight seasons in which a player has done three things or was named All-Tournament in years where the Most Outstanding Player award was not given out. Today we’ll see how those eight seasons compare statistically.

The combination of explosive scoring ability and team success is rarer than you’d think.  Schweers is the only other player besides Moss to win the scoring title and take her team to the national semifinals. In fact, since 2000 only four scoring champions played on a team that won even one NCAA tournament game in the same season — Moss twice, Schweers and Megan Silva of Randolph-Macon in 2006. Most scoring champions played on teams that didn’t reach the NCAA tournament in the same season and a fair number come from programs that have never been in the NCAA tournament.

Day 3: Dynamic duo drove Wash U juggernaut

If you want to argue that another player’s season was better than Moss’ because it came against tougher competition in the regular season, then maybe you gravitate toward one of the elite seasons posted by the dynamic duo that played at Washington U.

Wash U players account for three of the eight elite seasons with Alia Fischer making the list twice. In 2000 she was WBCA Player of the Year, the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA tournament and led the Bears to a national championship with a perfect 30-0 record. We didn’t name a Player of the Year in 2000, but we named her first team All-American. 

Her junior season in 1999 was nearly as good, with another WBCA Player of the Year award and another undefeated national championship season. The NCAA didn’t name a Tournament MOP in 1999 but Fischer was named to the All-Tournament team. We named Fischer second team All-American behind regular season scoring champion and Gallaudet all-time great Ronda Jo Miller.

Which allows me to add my addendum – UW-St. Louis’ coach, the fabulous Nancy Fahey, clearly doesn’t have enough to do:

Nancy Fahey’s 30th season as women’s basketball coach at Washington University in St. Louis will have a new wrinkle to it.

The Belleville native and former University of Wisconsin athlete will have a formal role in the NCAA Division III school’s leadership team.

Fahey has been promoted to assistant director of athletics for the Bears, athletic director Josh Whitman announced Friday. Whitman, completing his first year since coming from UW-La Crosse, said Fahey will continue to serve as basketball coach.

Fahey currently serves as a member of the Senior Leadership Team, which meets regularly to discuss all matters pertaining to the department’s operation. She is also actively involved in staff recruitment, development of policies and procedures, and strategic planning.

Here’s more on coach Fahey:

Next up: the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she earned four varsity letters, started as point guard two years, and was selected team captain her senior year. Majoring in physical education, Fahey’s goal was to teach, but not necessarily to coach — that is until she and other Wisconsin basketball players worked as summer camp counselors.

“During the camp, we led stations, such as dribbling, passing and shooting. The first time I coached a station, I got lost in it. I didn’t see anyone else in the gym but the kids in front of me,” Fahey says. “From that moment, I gravitated to coaching, and all my focus went into that. To this day, I feel that singular focus when I walk onto a basketball court.”

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So, you think after London, all the hard work

is over?

Think again!

From the Women’s Sports Foundation:

While girls’ share of high school athletic participation opportunities increased between 1993-1994 and 1999-2000, progress toward gender equity slowed and, perhaps, even reversed direction during the 2000s, a newly released report by the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center for Women and Girls (SHARP Center), indicated. The SHARP Center, a University of Michigan and Women’s Sports Foundation collaboration, today released its latest research report, providing valuable insight into the state of high school athletics and the inequalities that still exist in the U.S. public school system, despite the passing of the landmark legislation, Title IX, 40 years ago.

“In the wake of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the state of women’s sports in the U.S. has generated great praise, and many believe that girls and women have finally achieved athletic equality. However, these findings suggest that we simply aren’t there yet. In fact, we are moving farther and farther away from equality with the cutting of interscholastic sports,” expressed Kathryn Olson, Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “It goes beyond the physical benefits of sport. Sports are an integral part of the educational experience; students who participate in sports are shown to achieve greater academic success. The decline of interscholastic athletic opportunities should be looked at as an erosion of the educational capacity.

Key findings from “The Decade of Decline: Gender Equity in High School Sports” include:

•    Athletic participation opportunities expanded across the decade, but boys’ allotment grew more than girls. By 2009-10, 53 athletic opportunities were offered for every 100 boys, compared with 41 opportunities for every 100 girls.

•    Despite the level of economic resources, the opportunity gap between girls and boys continued to increase. By 2010 girls participated in greater numbers than in the beginning of the decade; however, girls’ share of total athletic opportunities decreased across the decade as compared to boys’ share. During a decade of expanding athletic participation opportunities across U.S. high schools, boys received more opportunities than girls, and boys’ opportunities grew faster than those of girls.

•    By 2009-10 boys still received disproportionately more athletic opportunities than girls in all community settings—urban, suburban, towns, and rural communities.

•    In 2000, 8.2 percent of schools offered no sports programs, the percentage nearly doubled by 2010, rising to approximately 15 percent.  Additionally, schools with disproportionately higher female enrollments (i.e., the student body is 56 percent female or higher) were more likely to have dropped interscholastic sports between 2000 and 2010.

•    Seven percent of public schools lost sports programs between 2000 and 2010, while less than one percent added sports to their curriculum. Given this trend in the data, it is estimated that by the year 2020, 27 percent of U.S. public high schools (4,398 schools) would be without any interscholastic sports, translating to an estimated 3.4 million young Americans (1,658,046 girls and 1,798,782 boys) who would not have any school-based sports activities to participate in by 2020 if the trend continues.

Read The Decade of Decline report in full and learn more about our SHARP Center for Women and Girls here.

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A little more on dem dam wimmin

messin’ with dem boyz whoz wants to play sports. Charts: The State of Women’s Athletics, 40 Years After Title IX

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Bernice Sandler, who helped draft the legislation back in 1972, recently told ESPN, “The only thought I gave to sports when the bill was passed was, ‘Oh, maybe now when a school holds its field day, there will be more activities for the girls.'” During the Senate hearings on the bill—aside from one Senator’s crack about coed football which drew hearty guffaws—sports weren’t mentioned at all.

My, how things change. Forty years later, despite the important impact it’s had in other areas, from math and science education to the rights of pregnant students, Title IX is best known for transforming women’s athletics. In 1972, just 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports; today, about two in five do, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. The number of women playing at the college level has skyrocketed by more than 600 percent. (Incidentally, these days coed football teams aren’t a joke either.)

Yet progress towards gender equity in sports has been uneven and incomplete. Here are five charts showing what’s changed—and what hasn’t—since Title IX’s passage in 1972.

At the heart of it, when you get through all the gender stereotyping and social backwardness (easy, no?) these days, the big issue is about money. Sharing the pie. About how to divide a limited pie to feed various mouths. And everyone knows that Athletic Directors (overwhelmingly male) make the money decisions. And (mostly) they’re not interested in equity. If they were, there would be no need for Title IX.

So, when the male AD decides that the last 10 football players – the ones who never get in to the game – are more important than, say, the best 10 male wrestlers, or the 5 fabulous female fencers… Well, that’s not the fencers’ fault because they’ve somehow developed an “interest” fencing because they caught a glimpse of Mariel Zagunis. Or the wrestlers’ fault because they’ve somehow developed an “interest” wrestling having  caught a glimpse of Rulon Gardner. It is a choice that ADs are making because they’re scared of football.

So, while I understand that the whimpy, lazy default is to blame women for having the temerity to be interested in the higher education opportunities that sports scholarships offer, I’d be more impressed if folks like Doug at the Deseret grew a set (so to speak) and looked at the facts and didn’t hide behind his threatened ego. I guess we know who Nikes “Voices were talking about:

I’m not saying the choices are easy — especially in these economic times when educators should really be looking carefully at what they’re spending on athletics and why. But lazy reporting and opinionating gets us nowhere. Women and men “just wanna play ball.” What’s the best way to help all of them do that?

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I’ve been waiting for this

since July 20th. Thanks, Doug Robinson, Deseret News:  Women win big in Games — at what cost?

At the risk of raining on the you-go-girl parade, there is downside to the story, and you wonder why it has gone unnoticed and unnoted: The rise of the women has come at the expense of the men.

Universities, the lifeblood of Olympic sports in America, have been slashing men’s sports to comply with the federal government’s misguided demand for 1 to 1 proportionality — if 51 percent of a school’s enrollment are women, then 51 percent of the athletic scholarships must go to women, despite the original intent of the law that stated Title IX would be used to reflect interest and not as a quota system. Universities cut men’s sports to even up the numbers because A.) football has 100 or so players on the roster and there isn’t a women’s football team, and B.) there isn’t as much interest in athletics among females.

It is always impressive to find a writer with such a stunted vision of facts. Where to start, where to start? How about here.

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A little this and that

A Q&A with Coach Stringer about the 40th Anniversary of Title IX

When you think back on your life, how might it have been different with Title IX?

I didn’t have the advantage of a Title IX. As a result, I saw women in the more traditional roles (housewife, teacher, etc.). Now, you see women doing everything. They’re CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. I think, with Title IX, I might have been given a full scholarship to play basketball. Think about it, maybe I would’ve wanted to become a doctor. Who knows? But I couldn’t have done that. Look at how many women simply couldn’t afford to go to college. I was a poor kid.

Another Q&A, this time with Ann Meyers Drysdale: The former basketball star, the first female athlete to receive a four-year scholarship from UCLA, discusses the landmark equal-rights legislation Title IX (passed 40 years ago) and her new memoir

Q: What athletic performance — your own included — would you point to as the ultimate validation of Title IX?

“For me, it has to be my own. . . . We didn’t have enough money for me to ever attend UCLA, but because of Title IX, I got an education at UCLA. I think my Pacers tryout is part of the history of Title IX, as well. I know Lynette Woodard, an All-American at Kansas, told me it gave her the courage to try out for the Harlem Globetrotters, and I’d hope it gave others the courage to pursue their dreams.”

Michelle Smith writes about a couple of folks who’ve benefited from Title IX: Guard play puts Sun atop East

Kara Lawson, in her 10th season in the league, is experiencing the best start of her career. Through Sunday, she is averaging 13.8 points a game (second on the team) and has scored in double figures in 10 straight contests. Through 12 games, she has established career-best numbers in scoring, minutes played (29.0), field goal percentage (52.5), 3-point percentage (47.1) and free throw percentage (94.9).

Lawson, in the best shape of her career after switching to a vegan diet late in 2011, is also motivated to avoid being brought off the bench again as she was last season.

“It wasn’t something that I liked, but I don’t think anybody likes that,” Lawson said. “Nobody grows up dreaming of coming off the bench or wanting to be a role player. Everybody wants an opportunity to play a significant role and I would expect nothing less.”

Missed Mechelle’s chat from last week, and she was in rare form:

Judith (Broiling in DC):  After the Mystics’ loss to NY on June 8 that dropped DC to 1-5, Trudi Lacey required every player on the the team to write her a letter, at least one-page long, about why the team couldn’t finish and was losing. Since then, they eked out a 1-point win over Indy (scoring only 7 points in the last quarter), were blown out by LA, and last night couldn’t beat the Mercury bench. If you were a Mystics player writing a letter today to Trudi, what would it say?

Mechelle Voepel: “Trade me, please?” But that woudn’t take up a whole page, unless I wrote in first-grade script. I just think the vibe there is hard to overcome. Although I guess you could say there are a few other WNBA teams now that aren’t experiencing roses and sunshine, either.

From Richard (you can tell he’s an Alien because he insists on adding extra vowels.): WNBA Today, 06/24/2012: Favourites all cement their superiority. Just.

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday – it’s been a busy few days in WNBAlien-land. Everything should be back to normal next week. For now, we’re going to catch up on Friday night’s game, as well as everything that happened on Saturday. Everyone who was supposed to win eventually took care of business, but some of them did it with far greater ease than others.

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So, what does it mean that the

NBA/WNBA site has a big ole Title IX at 40 t-shirt on the front page, but when you search for Title IX it gets all confused and can’t seem to find the T?

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Speaking of history,

a little flashback, courtesy of Title IX’s birthday: From Lee over at Full Court Press, Title IX: Former Texas Longhorn reflects on era of change

Hiss, who served as director of physical training for women at UT for 36 years, was an interesting character. In some respects, she was a pioneer. Her own promotion to that rank in the gender-biased culture of that era was no small accomplishment. Hiss made two years of physical education mandatory for every “co-ed,” as the women on campus were called at the time, and worked tirelessly to acquire resources for women’s athletics, raising $400,000 for construction the women’s gym and surrounding tennis courts and playing fields and establishing a vital intramural sports and physical education program for women that included a variety of activities from tennis and golf to archery, swimming, posture and interpretive dance.

At the same time, like her mentor, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, one of the early heads of the Girl Scouts of America and one of the founders of the National Amateur Athletic Foundation, Hiss was adamantly opposed to team sports and intercollegiate competition for women.  Both Hiss and Hoover also actively campaigned against the inclusion of women’s sports in the Olympics, with partial success – though female Olympians competed in individual sports, the U.S. did not field its first Olympic women’s basketball team until 1976.

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What is it about the Lib and

recent coulda-woulda-shoulda-beens… Charles, Brunson and Peters…. sigh.

While the Lib play “anything you can do, I can do worser” with the Mystics, Peters’s play haunts New York fans.

There are games on TV today, so watch: Saturday Open Thread: The League Commemorates Title IX’s 40th Anniversary with Three Games, Starting at 12:30 PM ET/9:30 AM PT.

If you do, you’ll probably catch this W-spiced Boost Mobile advert.

Is there something in the Gatorade, ’cause “worst loss in franchise history” seems to be a theme – welcome to the club, Sun.

If you can figure out the SASS, call me, ‘kay? They’ve been a conundrum since that phantom foul that sent Phx to the Finals.

Sucks to be Prince-less.

You know you’re in trouble when a writer calls your site “influential.” Sure I am — that’s why the NYTimes doesn’t have a WNBA tab for game scores.

Congrats to WHB fav Jo Leedham, GB Olympian (along with Harvard’s Fagbenle and Florida’s Stewart), who pulled a rare double-double v. the Czech Republic: 19-pts, 12 steals.

Their best-ever performance, defensively and offensively, came after a 10-day road trip which has seen Great Britain also defeat Argentina, South Korea and Canada who are all ranked in the world’s top 12.

Surging like that would certainly suggest a realistic chance of making the quarter-finals in the London Olympics and possibly beyond – a remarkable achievement given where the team started from.

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But what about the Women’s Basketball Timeline?

There have been some concern that, with Kim closing her womensbasketballonline.com site (and it is just that – closed) that the Women’s Basketball Timeline she hosted (and I put together in a fever induced summer of googling) would disappear.

Kim and I have chatted, and she sent over the files. I’ve turned them in to a new page (see here) on the blog.

It was fun reviewing the Timeline (and it’s cool that, because the site is searchable, so is the Timeline), but I shudder to think how many of the links are broken and/or missing. And, of course, there are odd gaps in the contemporary history because neither Kim nor I had the time or brain space to keep it up these last few years. Now? Well, I guess I know what my summer 2012 project is…

I invite any and all of you to peruse the beast. Send me links. Make corrections. Suggest additions. Forward it to your Athletic Directors! On my way back from Kentucky, I ran into the very personable AD of a DIII college — he was on his way to Denver to talk alcohol and drug abuse policy. We got to speaking about what he’s finding on his campus — women team athlete’s dropping from teams, if they’re not playing during games (and occasionally becoming superb solo athletes). I brought up the history of female athletes being pushed away from team sports in to solo sports — using Gertrude, Sonja and Babe as examples, and contrasting it with women’s basketball…No surprise, he had NO idea of the history of women’s basketball, much less the “one step forward, two…maybe three steps backward” process its been simply to offer women the same right to play basketball as men do. Consider this little gem from 1919:

Tennessee: Dr. Mary Douglas Ayres Ewell, graduate of Sophie Newcomb College for Women in 1917, played under Clara Baer. Mary Ayres returned to Knoxville in 1919 and was named coach for the University of Tennessee girls’ basketball team. In March 1920, UT women students, with Ayres’ approval, requested “equal rights and privileges” with male athletes including team travel to other colleges for athletic events, increased funding for the women’s program, and representation on the Athletic Council.

Happy birthday, Title IX.

By the way, I’ve asked Kim if I can host some of her fabulous resources: the women’s basketball library and Media Tips in particular. If there’s anything else you’re going to miss, holler (womenshoopsblog @ gmail.com) and I’ll see what can be done to fill the void.

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Kids these days, they don’t care

about nuthin’.

Except, of course, they do.

From NPR: 4th Grader Lets School Know She’s Got Rights (btw, GO MOM!)

When the girls basketball team was cut from Charlotte Murphy’s Pittsburgh school last year, the then 4th grader told the superintendent that the cut went against Title IX. For the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the law that prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, host Michel Martin talks to Murphy and Superintendent Linda Lane.

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’cause different voices are always useful,

a visit to the Sports Economist blog brings me this interesting take from Victor Matheson who responds to Frank Deford’s lament: Where are the American women (golfers)?

Prior to Title IX and the explosion of women’s intercollegiate athletic programs, the potential for any economic returns for women athletes were limited to golf, tennis, and perhaps figure skating, meaning those sports should attract the best athletes. It’s should come as no surprise that Babe Didrikson Zaharias, probably the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, gave up track for a career in golf. In a world with large amounts of scholarship money available to college players, however, it is far from clear that golf or tennis provide the best opportunities for monetary rewards for female athletes.

A full athletic scholarship at my institution has a retail value of roughly $55,000 per year. While that’s a far cry from $2.9 million, it’s also much easier to attain. Fewer than 90 women’s golfers earned over $55,000 on the LPGA tour last year while over 60,000 women earned NCAA scholarships (although admittedly most of them were worth only a fraction of $55,000). Still, the total prize pool from all events on the LPGA last year was about $35,000,000 while the NCAA’s “prize pool” for women athletes outside of golf and tennis was about a billion dollars. Given these sorts of figures, it comes as no surprise that American women athletes have increasingly turned from golf and tennis to other sports where the reasonable chance of a small scholarship payout outweighs the nearly impossible chance of the “big bucks.”

Visiting the Title IX blog is always interesting. A recent post: Boys Excluded from Field Hockey Teams

What does Title IX say about this?  Contrary to suggestions in both stories, Title IX is not necessarily violated by a school that allows girls to try out for boys’ teams (football, say) but denies the same right to boys playing on girls’ teams.  For one reason, when it comes to contact sports, Title IX allows but does not require schools to allow cross-over participation.  There are some quirky definitions of contact sport out there — basketball is listed as a contact sport in the Title IX regulations — so it’s arguable field hockey shares this status as well.  More importantly, Title IX regulations recognize that girls’ athletic opportunities have “historically been limited,” which justifies their crossover participation in a way that does not apply to boys, who usually have and have always had more athletic opportunities overall.

Yet, I will throw out a Title IX argument in favor of Keeling Pilaro’s case.  Courts have held that once a school allows cross-over participation in situations where it is not required by Title IX, it may not then discriminate against that cross-over player on the basis of sex.  I would argue that Section XI has elected to allow Pilaro to play even though Title IX does not require it to do so. Therefore, it may not single him out for differential treatment based on sex. Clearly it has done so, as no girls are subject to the possibility of losing eligibility for being too good at the game.  Only Pilaro, because of his sex, faces the dilemma of playing well or playing at all.

Moreover, if I were in charge, I would opt to move the cross-over participation regulations out of the stone ages by (1) eliminating the contact sport exemption, which is blatantly rooted in sex stereotypes, and (2) requiring schools to allow cross-over participation to both sexes unless doing so would take away an actual opportunity from the underrepresented sex.

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Yes, I am alive,

it’s just work and a seriously annoying spring cold did their best to fell me. As if!

Did you catch this: Sports Illustrated’s Title IX Anniversary Issue Released; 12 Women’s Basketball Players On SI.com’s Top 40 List

Congrats and enjoy: Carroll’s Don Racine resigns as City League’s winningest girls hoops coach

Imagining that Don Racine would be the Bishop Carroll girls basketball coach for, well, ever never seemed too far-fetched.

Wednesday, though, Carroll announced Racine’s resignation after 33 seasons.

“I’ve enjoyed it. For me, it’s the best place for me to be coaching,” Racine said. “…All good things eventually come to an end. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good, bad, indifferent. The kids are great, the administration, the families. I loved it all.”

Obviously lots of coaching shifts and, as a result, coaching openings happening.

Saint Louis hires former Badgers coach Lisa Stone. Some may wonder about this hire, but then they’re probably ignoring her pre-Wisconsin success. This might work out for both the Billikens and Stone.

Arkansas-Pine Bluff introduces Mississippi Valley State’s Kilbert as women’s basketball coach

UNCW tabs Adell Harris as women’s hoops coach

FAU hires Nebraska assistant as new women’s basketball coach

You stay put: New contract makes Kentucky’s Mitchell SEC’s highest-paid women’s basketball coach

An addition to the Jayhawks: Katie O’Connor Returns To Kansas Women’s Basketball Staff

An addition to the Vols: Warlick Names Law to Coaching Staff

Speaking of Tennessee: Warlick era under way in Knoxville – Coach influenced and motivated by dad’s love of sports

Tennessee coach Holly Warlick jokes that in her family, if you didn’t want to talk or participate in sports … you might have been tempted to try to find a new family. Her father, Bill, coached youth-league teams in basketball and baseball, and always encouraged her to play.

“Sports were just a part of our family; that’s what we discussed and what we did,” said Warlick, who officially took over as Tennessee’s coach in April after legendary coach Pat Summitt moved into an emeritus position. “If you didn’t enjoy sports, the conversation would have been … extremely limited. We were always on the go — practicing, walking to the ball field, walking back.”

An addition from Cal to Gonzaga: Lindsay Sherbert Added To Women’s Basketball Squad

Speaking of players: UNC is making some noise: Recruiting Coup – No. 3 Diamond DeShields is gem of North Carolina’s quartet of top 2013 recruits

A little conference championship hosting news: Albany selected to host America East men’s, women’s basketball championships. ‘ware the Danes!

Whoop-dee-do it’s almost basketball time again!

pilight does a little years later quarterbacking: Best Draft Picks Ever in the WNBA

Saturday Links: WNBA Preseason Begins Today With Three Games a

Check out The Michelle and Mechelle Show: WNBA Preview

Eastern Michigan’s James is Enjoying Challenge Of Making Lynx Roster

Speaking of W hopefuls: Courtney Hurt & The Difficulty Of Making The WNBA As An ‘Undersized’ Power Forward

More from Minny: Whalen & Co. on Lynx ready to defend WNBA title

Czech out more on Whalen: One chapter in Whalen’s basketball career perhaps ending, another beginning

From Jayda, picked up by the Chicago Times: Storm’s Tina Thompson balances basketball, life as mom (I wonder if we’ll ever see the headline “LeBron James balances basketball, life as a dad?)

Out of Tulsa: Shock players see new energy at practice

Sun’s Jones chasing title, Olympic gold this year

Anticipating that trip to London, the Sun ponder impact of long Olympic break. Might I make a suggestion to the league (that they won’t listen to)? Make a big. friggin’. deal. about the Olympics. Having viewing parties. Get team members to attend. Hunt down former Olympians (and their coaches) to host. Raise money for target charities — how about the Special Olympics teams? Or the women’s paraolympic basketball team? Don’t let the W buzz die.

More Olympic stuff: USA Today’s looking at 100 Olympic hopefuls in 100 days: Diana Taurasi

The Senior National Team isn’t the only thing keeping USA Basketball busy: Top 2013 prospects set for USA trials – Mercedes Russell, Kaela Davis, Diamond DeShields to try out for U17 national team

and Four Gold Medalists Highlight 2012 USA Basketball Women’s U18 National Team Trials Roster

Sun’s Tina Charles shines her light in Africa

During the last week, contruction finished on a three-room school in the village of Ganale that will accomodate up to 150 elementary schoolchildren during the day and adult litaracy classes at night. Charles paid the entire $32,000 cost for the 2,860-square foot school.

Unfortunately, there’s a “Dabnabbit” to report: Shyra Ely tears ACL, will miss WNBA season

WATN: Vanessa Nygaard: Windward School Makes Coaching Changes

More WATN: Terrell Owens, Other Stars, To Attend Brittany Jackson Dinner Party In Ooltewah To Benefit Pat Summitt Foundation

By the way, Grandpa’s got game, too: Senior basketball is serious business – Basketball at the Bykota Senior Center in Towson is definitely old-school — including some players in their 80s

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Granny’s Got Game’s got Debbie

From the fundraising site indiegogo:

Who else is involved

Debbie Antonelli, one of the nation’s most esteemed women’s basketball analysts, has agreed to narrate the film.  Bill Jackson, an Emmy-winning Hollywood sound mixer, has agreed to do the sound mix for the film.  They are both very talented and I’m excited to have their help.

Missed the first post about this documentary by Angela Gorsica Alford (Vandy/USA Basketball)

Granny’s Got Game is a documentary film about a senior women’s basketball team in North Carolina. These seven fiercely competitive women in their seventies battle physical limitations and social stigma to keep doing what they love. They started playing 6-on-6 basketball in the 1950s but stopped after high school as there were no opportunities to keep playing in those pre-Title IX days.  Now they must learn a new, physical style of play while overcoming the skepticism of their peers. The team has had great success together over the last two decades, winning a multitude of medals in tournaments across the country.  Just like so many younger sports teams, this one includes a bossy captain, a guard who never runs the plays correctly, a tentative post player, and a benchwarmer who wants to play more than anyone.  As teammates and friends, they support each other off the court through the difficulties that accompany aging, such as breast cancer and widowhood. These women are more than a team…they are a family. The film follows them for a yearlong season culminating in a nearly disastrous trip to the National Senior Games Championship in Houston, Texas.

If you want so support the film (donation amounts start at $10) click here.

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More “Happy Birthday Title IX” stuff

With a h/t for the reminder to Nate & Swish Appeal, the list of the nominees: Title IX Trailblazer Tribute For The National Association of Collegiate Women’s Athletic Administrators’ 40th Anniversary Contest:

In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Title IX on June 23, 2012, NACWAA invited athletics departments, conference offices and organizations across the nation to nominate and celebrate a trailblazer who has made significant contributions in the area of gender equity. We are pleased to announce that 25 trailblazer tribute videos were submitted and are now available for viewing on the NACWAA YouTube Channel. Direct links to each entry are listed below.

The video with the most views during the designated two-week viewing period (April 9-23, 2012) will win a $9,000 gift from the NACWAA Foundation Fund in support of its women’s athletics programs and/or female staff professional development.

America East Conference – Pat Meiser
Auburn University – Meredith Jenkins
University at Buffalo – Nan Harvey
Cornell University – Digit Murphy
Capital University – Dixie Jeffers
Dartmouth College – Josie Harper
University of Dayton – Ann Meyers
DePaul University – Jean Lenti Ponsetto
Fresno State University – Margie Wright
Hollins University – Lanetta Ware
Illinois State University – Laurie Mabry
Kent State University – Judy Devine
Lone Star Conference – Kathleen Brasfield
Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
Northeast Conference – Christie Rampone
Northwestern University – Kelly Amonte Hiller
University of Oklahoma – Marita Hynes
Pacific Lutheran University – Sara Officer
Princeton University – Chris Sailer
Southern Illinois University – Charlotte West
University of Texas – Jody Conradt
UCLA – Ann Meyers Drysdale
Wiley College – Janet P. Eaton
William Smith College – Pat Genovese, Aliceann Wilber and Sally Scatton
West Virginia University – Kittie Blakemore

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Happy Birthday, Title IX

From Chris Whit at the Athens-Banner Herald: Murphey’s pioneering spirit lives on through UGA women’s athletics

[T]oday is the closing round of the annual Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic, a women’s golf tournament she began 40 years ago as the Georgia Invitational and later renamed the Women’s Southern Intercollegiate Championships. It has become one of the largest, most competitive and longest-running women’s athletic events in the country, a fitting tribute to someone who spent nearly four decades laboring for the simple pleasure of seeing other women have the opportunity to play sports.

“It’s been forty years since this tournament started, and that speaks a lot to who Liz Murphey was,” said Landers, who was hired by Murphey and then-athletic director Vince Dooley in 1979. “For her to start this women’s golf tournament when she did, when most places didn’t even have women’s golf teams then, it was a big deal when you think about it now. That shows her vision and the passion she had, as well as the courage that she had to step out and dare to dream of something different for women athletes. That’s what Liz was about — that opportunity.”

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From ESPN’s celebration of Title IX’s 40th:

Kate Fagan and Luke Cyphers: Women continue to shatter stereotypes as athletes. So how come they can’t catch a break as coaches?

Since 2000, NCAA programs have added 1,774 women’s head coaching jobs. Men have filled 1,220 of the openings.

Women have entered the rest of the workforce at all levels and now make up 57 percent of college students. Sports are bigger than ever for them too, with an average of 8.73 women’s teams per school.

And yet female coaches continue to be sidelined. Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer is only half-joking when she says, “We’ll have a female president — and one woman coaching women’s college basketball.”

It’s not as if women are finding new opportunity in the men’s game: Only about 3 percent of men’s teams are coached by women, the same percentage as before Title IX’s passage. Coaching is a man’s world.

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Happy 40th, and Mechelle writes

Kim Mulkey is Title IX personified

Mulkey looks back at her playing career in Ruston, La., with fondness in particular for the administrators whose acceptance of women’s sports didn’t seem forced by Title IX.

“I think F. Jay Taylor was a visionary and pioneer in the women’s game,” Mulkey says. “There’s probably not another university president at that time that valued the importance of a women’s basketball program more than him. He was proud, he loved it, he talked about it, he gave it the resources.

“How many male presidents at that time could envision what this would mean to a university in north Louisiana? He was special in my life and to all of us at Louisiana Tech.”

Makes me think of another conversation I had while I was in Kentucky. A co-worker, 65ish, spoke fondly of his mother-in-law’s enthusiasm for the game of women’s basketball. Apparently she played and watched the NCAA tourney obsessively, edging closer and closer to the screen as her eyesight failed, yelling at the players. Said my friend, “I remember conversations about the game between her, who had played, my wife, who wasn’t allowed to play, and my daughter, who now could play.”

Talk about a lost generation in sports.

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Oh, those pesky little facts….

(Doing a little catch up) From the Title IX blog: Alma College wrestling reborn

We’ve largely gotten away from correcting all the little mistakes, misinterpretations, and misrepresentations of Title IX that occur in the media. But sometimes one of them just strikes that nerve and…

A story about the rebirth of intercollegiate wrestling at Alma College in Michigan says that the program was cut in 1984 “in large part because of Title IX.” This bothers me for two–related–reasons. One, a majority of the wrestling community blames the enforcement of Title IX for its demise in the 80s. And two, Title IX was not being applied to athletic departments in 1984. The Grove City decision came down in 1984. No school is going to cut a program for Title IX reasons while a Supreme Court decision over whether it will have to or not is pending.

Erin does some interesting analysis in her post: How Diverse Are Women’s College Sports?

 Recently, the NCAA published the most recent school-year’s participation data, which includes breakdowns by sex, race, sport, division, and conference. Because this data set goes back to the 1999-2000 school year, I decided to use it to look for trends in racial diversity in women’s college athletics over the last decade. Several hours and few Excel spreadsheets later, I have the some questions and answers to report.

You can also hear Erin on NPR’s Marketplace discussing Title IX & Bullying: Legal Doors Closed, But Prince Case Continues to Impact

The settlement details of a lawsuit  between the parents of Phoebe Prince, a 15 year old student who committed suicide in January 2010, and the town of South Hadley and its school department were revealed this week.  A legal door may  now be closed for the parties involved, but legal analysts say the Prince case remains a cautionary tale.

Also from the site, and interesting action in light of the Penn State/Sandusky case: UNI Undertakes Title IX Compliance Review

The University of Northern Iowa is undertaking a comprehensive Title IX compliance review, officials announced this week. UNI reportedly has hired an outside firm to examine “‘all policies and procedures that funnel into Title IX’ including student misconduct, harassment and discrimination, communication, outreach and training.” This kind of review is the first of its kind at UNI, which has in the past conducted a narrow review of its sexual misconduct policy but never one as broad as has been described. It also sets UNI apart from its peers, as this this article suggests, by undertaking a review that is broader than sexual abuse reporting policies as other public Iowa universities have done in the wake of the Penn State scandal.

The review will undoubtedly examine the university’s response to a 2004 incident in which a female student was assaulted in her dorm room by two UNI football players. In 2007, the student sued the university, arguing that the university’s hostile and indifferent response constituted a violation of Title IX. She argued that university officials treated her with “great animosity,” denied her academic accommodations and a request to change dormitories, and failed to respond to reports that she was receiving harassing calls from players. After she was forced to quit school, the university sent her tuition bill to a collection agency and the dean of students told her she was disappointed “she didn’t tough it out.” All of this, if proven true, sounds like a classic case for institutional liability under Title IX.

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Getting our basketball priorities straight, fans want to know

Where can I get the chicken piccata recipe?

Need to know who to follow on Twitter: Ask Lady Swish for their Twitter rankings

Which coaches/teams are getting it done on Twitter? Here’s our tweet-by-tweet rundown on how things grade out:

HEAD TWEETS

Kenny Brooks, JMU – @CoachBrooksJMU
Provides informative, occasionally humorous updates…Stinging commentary from the 2010 CAA Awards Banquet was Twitter gold…Isn’t afraid to give glimpses of himself as a husband and father in addition to coach…Gets extra credit for periodically retweeting our stuff (You da man, Coach!). Grade: A-

Classic Brooks tweet: “It’s Comedy Central up in here!”

Excuse me? Mechelle’s on vacation?!?! The noive!

From Mel:

There are times when team nicknames can get in the way of a story and make things a bit confusing.

Though All-Star starting guard Katie Douglas remained home knocked out of the start of a road trip by a fever, her Indiana Fever knocked out the previous unbeaten home record of the Connecticut Sun with a 69-58 victory Thursday night to break a statistical first-place tie between the two and move to a one-game lead in the WNBA Eastern Conference.

Sue wonders What’s up with the Sparks?

The Title IX blog is rockin’ the info:

Title IX and community colleges

The NYT ran a very interesting article last week about the application of and compliance with Title IX at the country’s community colleges.
Community colleges face unique challenges when trying to comply with the law. It’s non-traditional student body, of which women make up the majority–often a large majority, has lead many community colleges to believe they cannot possibly comply. Additionally, community colleges are facing the same–if not worse–budget issues as four-year institutions.

Soon-to-Be-Coed College Plans to Retain Single Sex Classes

Peace College in Raleigh, North Carolina is making some changes. Not only is it changing its name to William Peace University, it has decided to admit male undergrads for the first time in its history. According to this article in Inside Higher Ed, however, some classes will remain single-sex, though the President assures that no one will be denied access to a course, just sometimes a particular single-sex section. This raised some Title IX red flags to the reporter on this article, who contacted me and some other Title IX experts about whether this was legal. As I said to him, it seems to me like a difficult position to defend. By becoming coed, the college loses any claim to an exemption from Title IX on the basis of its single-sex tradition. Accordingly, it must comply with the law’s prohibition against discrimination in all of its programs, and this includes classes, with limited exception for things like physical education, human sexuality, and choruses.

Why Title IX should (and already does) apply to high schools

As we noted yesterday, a lawsuit against the Department of Education has been filed claiming that the application of the three-prong test to high schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Here’s a little more on that. And we are sure there is much more to come.

School District with Sexual Orientation “Neutrality” Policy Targeted by Lawsuit and Investigation

The Anoka-Hennepin School District is the only district in Minnesota with a curriculum policy that requires teachers and staff to remain “neutral” on sexual orientation issues, deferring instead to students’ “family homes, churches, and community organizations” to disseminate attitudes and information about homosexuality.

Two major civil rights organization, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center, have sued the district on behalf of LGBT student plaintiffs who experienced harassment and discrimination at Anoka-Hennepin schools. They argue that the neutrality policy amounts to gag-order that contributes to a hostile environment for LGBT students by rendering teachers ineffective at dealing with LGBT harassment when it occurs and at laying a foundation of inclusion and appreciation for diverse sexual orientations that could prevent harassment of LGBT students in the first place. They argue that the policy singles out LGBT students for exclusion in violation of the federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, Title IX, and the Minnesota Human Rights Statute.

Speaking of Title IX, did you catch this New York Times article: Long Fights for Sports Equity, Even With a Law

In 1998, the University of Southern California was accused of denying its female students a fair chance at participating in sports. Thirteen years later, the federal agency charged with investigating sex discrimination in schools has not completed its inquiry of U.S.C.

In 2008, the same federal agency, the Office for Civil Rights, came across evidence that Ball State University in Indiana was losing a disproportionate number of women’s coaches. But the agency opted to let Ball State investigate itself. After a two-week inquiry, during which Ball State failed to interview a single coach, the university concluded that there was no evidence that any of the coaches had been unfairly treated or let go.

The federal law known as Title IX — requiring schools at all levels across the country to offer girls and women equal access to athletics — has produced a wealth of progress since it was enacted almost four decades ago. Almost no one disputes that.

But scores of schools, year in and year out, still fail to abide by the law. For those schools, almost no one disputes this: There is little chance their shortcomings will ever be investigated, and even if they are, few will be meaningfully punished.

I often wonder if those who oppose Title IX were first children. You know, because they believe that because they were “first” they should get all the perks – mom and dad’s attention, nurturing and money. As for the rest of the kids — too bad. Their birth order simply means they are and should always be second class siblings.

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Catching up with Mechelle

’cause I’ve been, well, busy being a professor type….

So, working back to front:

Mechelle discusses the “Pay for Play” system.because, as she wrote, Title IX a pay-for-play roadblock

Though it is a passage just 37 words long, Title IX has been both credited with and blamed for a lot of things that have happened in college athletics in the past four decades.

In regard to the concept of “pay-for-play,” Title IX is generally seen as a substantial roadblock. But not just because of the gulf between football/men’s basketball and women’s sports, but also because of the gap between those “big two” sports’ profit-producing programs and virtually all other collegiate sports, both male and female.

Fever rise behind dynamic duo

This is the fifth year that Tamika Catchings and Katie Douglas have been playing together as Indiana Fever teammates, but they probably wouldn’t call this season “pivotal.” That sounds too heavy, and they don’t want to carry that weight through the summer.

Sure, Douglas turned 32 in May, and Catchings will celebrate her 32nd birthday Thursday when Indiana is host to the Chicago Sky. Wear and tear from typically playing nearly year-round is an unavoidable concern in women’s hoops. Plus, in her career, Catchings has dealt with two of the major injuries — ACL and Achilles tendon tears — that often plague basketball players.

But if the Fever’s dual pillars can stay healthy, or relatively so, through the rest of this season, maybe it will bring them their first WNBA title, which is the biggest goal both have left in their basketball careers.

Chicago’s Sylvia Fowles aiming Sky high

Chicago Sky center Sylvia Fowles is a native of Florida and graduate of LSU, and a polite Southern hospitality is just an ingrained part of her personality. But don’t mistake that for a propensity to sugarcoat things. Fowles prefers the unvarnished truth.

So when you ask if she’s relatively satisfied with the Sky’s play thus far — going into the week of the All-Star Game, they’re in fourth place in the Eastern Conference — she says it’s not good enough.

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semi-OT: So, what year is it, Ball State?

Softball likely a key issue in Ball State University’s case – The program is operating without a locker room, as players sometimes change clothes in parking lot

That the Cardinals’ softball team, which has been among the best in the Mid-American Conference the past four seasons with two West Division titles and one appearance in the NCAA Tournament, has no locker room most likely was one of the main issues that initiated a federal investigation of Ball State’s athletic department more than two years ago.

The university has been under scrutiny since March 2008 when an unknown person filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. The grievance alleged Ball State was in violation of federal Title IX laws.

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Some stuff to read over brunch

before you go out and enjoy the day.

Seattle: Jayda is Catching up with Storm All-Star Sue Bird

A benefit to the WNBA starting training camp later is most players have trickled into their respective cities earlier to begin one-on-one workouts and get settled. (In the past, camp started in April with season-openers hovering around mid-May). For Storm PG Sue Bird, that means moving to a new home in Queen Anne and reuniting with teammate Lauren Jackson, who Bird hasn’t seen since winter.

It’s the first time in five years that Bird hasn’t returned a champion from some nether-region, however. There was the 2010 FIBA World Championships title in October, but Bird’s Russian team, Spartak, placed second in EuroLeague and the country’s postseason.

Cali: From C&R: VanDerveer honored at BAWSI’s Sportsapolooza

Stanford Women’s Basketball Coach Tara VanDerveer was honored at the Bay Area Women’s Sports Initiative’s first annual Sportsapolooza. Also honored was BAWSI co-founder and soccer legend Brandi Chastain. Sportsapolooza was a fundraiser for BAWSI held at Santa Clara’s Leavey Center May 4th of this year.

Cali: Remember the student crankiness that was happening over at UCLA over shuffling up to the cheap seats: Students vote to reject new seating arrangement at Pauley Pavilion

Ohio: Mom and coach knows meaning of family

Family isn’t always defined by genealogical trees — names scratched out on paper, its branches stretching back generations into history.

Sometimes, family is defined with X’s and O’s — plays drawn up on a clipboard during a critical time-out. Sometimes, family has less to do with the name on the back of the jersey and more to do with the name on the front of it.

If anyone knows exactly what “family” is, it would be Suzy Venet Pietz.

Minny: A Mother’s Day to celebrate: Minnesota Lynx’s Taj McWilliams-Franklin has kept her family and career intact

Taj McWilliams-Franklin had 50 offers to play Division I basketball as a high school senior in Augusta, Ga.

Then she learned she was pregnant.

There were college and high school coaches who told her that raising the baby would be a mistake and would derail her basketball career. They said she should give up the child for adoption. She ignored them. She decided to raise the child on her own, and the scholarship offers all but dried up.

Connecticut: For Lobo, It’s All In A Mother’s Day

Siobhan Rushin was watching her older cousins play basketball on Easter.

“I bet my mom would be good at this game,” she told them. “She played basketball in college.”

Her mother, Rebecca Lobo, laughs when she tells that story. Her four children, ages 6 months to 6 years, delight her. They exasperate her. She, who never yelled before having kids, yells at least twice a day now (“Will you stop doing that. I already told you 10 times to stop!”). Or she wonders if her head is going to explode because her two oldest are quarreling. Again.

From the Title IX blog: One week later

Many, many responses to last week’s NYT piece by Katie Thomas on the fudging of Title IX numbers by colleges and universities.

A related piece, with a h/t to Swish Appeal (and a concern that Forbes would allow the sentence “As I’ve eluded to, things are a little easier in the SEC and Big Ten where football and men’s basketball make enough profit to cover all the other sports.”) Does Football Fund Other Sports At College Level?

BusinessofCollegeSports.com last week we looked at the Top 25 recipients of student activity fees. As I researched, I was looking for a correlation between those who rely on student fees and football profit. Then someone asked me how sports outside of football and men’s basketball impact a school’s athletic department budget. So, I did a little digging.

First, let me say that it is generally true that football, and sometimes men’s basketball, subsidizes a (sometimes large) portion of the expenses for other teams. It doesn’t matter if we’re looking at a team from Conference USA or the SEC. Accordingly, I pulled numbers for several of the top student fee recipients, both in terms of dollars and percentage, an SEC school, a Big Ten school and Cal-Berkeley because of their recent fundraising efforts to save five sports.

In the charts that follow, you will see a breakdown of the revenue and expenses for football, men’s and women’s basketball and the catchall for the rest of the varsity sports, “Other Sports”.

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Some cool Title IX stuff

over at the T-IX blog: The three-prong breakdown

A session at the conference addressed the three-prong test and the ability and difficulties in complying. The happenings at the panel were reported by Inside Higher Ed. It seemed like a good discussion about whether the prongs are viable any more–and if so, which ones and how schools can demonstrate compliance. There was certainly frustration among various audience members who were athletics administrators about the challenges each pring presents. The session was lead by Jacqueline Michaels of OCR who seemed to do a very good job with questions from the audience and in explaining the intricacies of each prong–especially the confusion over prong three given the changes and clarifications this specific test has seen over the last 6 years.

I highly recommend reading this short piece to get a better understanding of the three prongs and how they are enforced.

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Some “knock on” effect

From the StarNews in Delaware: UNCW has its eye out on keeping up with Title IX

“It’s a non-issue for UNCW,” athletic director Jimmy Bass said Wednesday afternoon. “We count tennis players as tennis players. Kids that scrimmage with the women’s basketball team are just students.

“We do everything here straight up.”

From Ed Graney at the Las Vegas Review Journal: Apathy spurs fudged Title IX numbers

The problem with Title IX compliance was, is and always will be football, which more than anything has led to the cutting of men’s sports across the country and schools padding their numbers on the women’s side with male practice players, which, by the way, the Department of Education has no issue.

(Good news for Texas A&M.)

But when you allot 85 scholarships and more than 100 participation spots to football, you have to discover an equal slice of the pie on the women’s side.

Football became too big, too powerful. Yes, it makes most of the money. It also uses most of the resources.

Sorry. Division I football could survive with 40 scholarships and participation numbers of 80. It could. It also would solve most if not all Title IX issues overnight.

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And a response to the response

via email from Erin over at the Title IX blog:

I just read A&M’s response on your blog and they are not technically wrong.  EADA reporting requirements ask for a tally of “participants” and the definition of “participant” includes anyone who practices with the team. 

The only problem with their defense in my opinion is that the well-known purpose of the EADA is to make gender equity transparent.  So it’s not exactly in the spirit of the rules to report male practice players there without noting in the “caveat” section of the reporting form that you have done so.  For an example of a university that does report in that manner, pull up the EADA reports for Cornell. 

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Another school responds, “Not us!”

Texas A&M – NY Times: College Teams Relying On Deception Undermine Gender Equity; Byrne Responds

The New York Times published a story on Tuesday questioning our compliance with Title IX and specifically referenced our national champion women’s basketball team and the male A&M students who practice with the team.

We are very proud of our Title IX compliance at Texas A&M and feel that we are leaders nationally in this area. In fact, every year we have a third party fully evaluate our Title IX compliance. Such an evaluation is not mandated.

Unfortunately, facts can get in the way of accurately reporting a story, especially when looking at an easy target like the recent national champion of women’s basketball. Misconceptions and misinformation grows on itself. The New York Times writes things and other media regurgitate the information how they see fit.

Here are the facts.

Title IX essentially gives female student-athletes the same opportunities as male student-athletes. In order to comply with Title IX, one of the tests is the proportion of male vs. female students enrolled at the institution as compared to the proportion of athletic opportunities offered.

Title IX regulations require that an institution NOT count male practice players.

Meanwhile, the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) requires male practice players to be reported as participants on any women’s team they practice with. In 2009-10, we had male practice players associated with women’s basketball, women’s tennis, and volleyball.

The EADA is a different calculation than that used for compliance with Title IX regulations. The bottom line is we are dealing with two separate laws with two separate definitions of a participant. The fact is we reported accurate numbers in each case, and we are compliant with both.

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The NY Times responds to the

responses. Gender Games: Answering Questions About Roster Management and Title IX

With 270 comments and counting, New York Times readers reacted to my article in Tuesday’s paper about roster management with passion, insight and numerous personal stories about how Title IX had affected their lives, whether good or bad. Many readers questioned why so much attention is paid to female athletes and argued that the fact that 57 percent of college students are now female is proof of discrimination against men by colleges and universities. Others asserted that Title IX overlooks the fact that men and women have different interests, and raised the question of whether fewer women want to play sports. Still others said the examples cited in the article showed that, 40 years after it was passed, Title IX needs to be rewritten.

Here’s a selection of questions that readers posed, and my responses.

Expect more, since Thomas’ article the first in a series of articles.

I can’t encourage you enough to get educated on the subject of Title IX. It’s AMAZING how much mis- and dis-information there is out there.- Few Americans Familiar With Title IX, Though Most Approve of It. Oh, and the Times also has an editorial: Cynical Games With Title IX

These practices are cynical and might be illegal. Congress clearly needs to tighten the reporting standards, so that schools are required tell the whole truth about their athletic teams and their efforts to ensure gender equality. Boards of trustees and alumni need to take immediate responsibility, pressing their schools to comply, not just with the letter of the law, but with the spirit.

Adds the Title IX Blog:

In sum, the NYT is the bearer of bad news when it exposes the extent and scope of universities’ false reports of gender equity. I wish that we could believe universities who report gender equity in athletics. But at least the good news is that after this public exposure, investigators, complainants, plaintiffs, bloggers, and other watchdogs are less likely to be duped by false numbers going forward. We’ll dig below the surface of universities’ reported data and demand stronger evidence in support of universities’ claims to gender equity. When they realize that their false numbers will not protect them, maybe they’ll start reporting the real ones.

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A response

USF defends gender-equity practices after NYT story

After being featured prominently in a New York Times story on college athletic programs “relying on deception” to meet Title IX standards, USF officials said Tuesday that they have changed how they count female track athletes for gender-equity purposes, but that they remain among the most balanced schools in the state and Big East conference even after those changes.

“You can take all those (questionable) numbers away, and we’re still in conformity (with Title IX),” executive athletic director Bill McGillis said. “If your premise is that we are including kids on the cross-country roster who are not participating in cross-country in order to comply with the proportionality piece of Title IX, that would be false.”

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I’m sure you’ll be reading more on this

over at the Title IX blog…

From the New York Times: College Teams, Relying on Deception, Undermine Gender Equity

Ever since Congress passed the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX, universities have opened their gyms and athletic fields to millions of women who previously did not have chances to play. But as women have surged into a majority on campus in recent years, many institutions have resorted to subterfuge to make it look as if they are offering more spots to women.

At the University of South Florida, more than half of the 71 women on the cross-country roster failed to run a race in 2009. Asked about it, a few laughed and said they did not know they were on the team.

***

But as women have grown to 57 percent of American colleges’ enrollment, athletic programs have increasingly struggled to field a proportional number of female athletes. And instead of pouring money into new women’s teams or trimming the rosters of prized football teams, many colleges are turning to a sleight of hand known as roster management. According to a review of public records from more than 20 colleges and universities by The New York Times, and an statistics from all 345 institutions in N.C.A.A. Division I — the highest level of college sports — many are padding women’s team rosters with underqualified, even unwitting, athletes. They are counting male practice players as women. And they are trimming the rosters of men’s teams.

“Those of us in the business know that universities have been end-running Title IX for a long time, and they do it until they get caught,” said Donna E. Shalala, the president of the University of Miami.

Shocked. I’m just SHOCKED that male dominated athletic departments should do such a thing.

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Have you been following this

over at the Title IX blog? Commentary on Yale and “Dear Colleague”

There has been a significant amount of press about both the complaint filed by Yale students alleging the university has not done enough to remedy sexual harassment and the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter about dealing with harassment. Often articles and commentary discuss the two together. What has been interesting is some of the backlash. Wendy Kaminer had a piece in the Atlantic last week expressing her libertarian feminist opinion on the complaint and Dear Colleague letter, which again we should note is not a change in the policy–just a reminder. Kaminer, the lonely libertarian feminist, says that the complaint (and I would assume by extension the whole complaint process) is more feminine than feminist because it relies on “the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers.” Really? We haven’t learned by now, especially with preponderance of bullying among young children, that the whole “sticks and stones” argument just doesn’t hold water anymore (if it ever did). That words are actions too, that they create an atmosphere, that they construct and reveal power relations. There is no such thing as “pure speech”–words are not just words. I think Kaminer is wrong; this is not “feminine timidity” and women (and some men) hiding behind government rules by using the complaint process. This is feminism. It’s actually classic liberal feminism: using the tools already in existence in the current system to change the conditions to make them more equitable for women so they can do things like have equal access to education. I don’t see taking action as in any way behaving timidly.

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