Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company  
The Boston Globe
June 19, 2002, Wednesday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. F6

LENGTH: 1493 words

HEADLINE: SPORTS WOMEN;
TAKING STOCK OF TITLE IX AT 30, STATUTE HAS BEEN BOON TO FEMALE SPORTS

BYLINE: By Barbara Matson, Globe Staff

BODY:
You can't really disagree with Title IX: The gist of the law is that girls should have the same opportunity to play school sports as boys.

This weekend's special television programming, which recognizes the 30th anniversary of Title IX, includes nearly 40 hours of women's sports-related events, specials, documentaries, and series on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Classic.

Saturday's highlights include a two-hour "On the Basis of Sex" programming block that includes a documentary at 8 p.m., followed by a town meeting from Hartford at 9. Panelists will include Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma; former college football coach and current ESPN analyst Bill Curry; former tennis star Zina Garrison; Jessica Gavora, policy adviser for US Attorney General John Ashcroft and author of "Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex and Title IX"; Nancy Hogshead, Olympic gold-medal swimmer and former Women's Sports Foundation president and Title IX expert/attorney. Additionally, PGA Tour executive Donna Orender will participate, along with LPGA commissioner Ty Votaw. The panel will be moderated by ESPN's Bob Ley.

   On Equal Ground: This one-hour historical documentary at 5 p.m. Saturday on ESPN will focus on the landmark case, Cohen vs. Brown, that was brought by female athletes at Brown University after the school cut sports programs.

Events: Women's Tennis Assoc., LPGA, WNBA, women's boxing card on "Friday Night Fights," pro bowling, pro billiards, USA Track and Field.

ESPN Classic events: Replays of the 1999 Women's World Cup soccer victory over China, Battle of the Sexes match: King vs. Riggs, the 2002 NCAA women's basketball championship, and more.

Other specials: "Apple Pie (athletes and their mothers)," "SportsCentury" profiles on Billie Jean King, Sue Bird, Babe Didrickson, Wilma Rudolph, Martina Navratilova, plus topical editions of the weekly "Sports Reporters" and "Outside the Lines."

You can't say that's a bad thing, any more than you can say black students should not have the same opportunity to play sports, or Hispanics, or Irish Catholics, or tall people, or kids with blond hair.

The federal statute called Title IX of the Education Amendments, passed by Congress in 1972, bars discrimination on the basis of sex at schools and universities receiving federal financial assistance. Its primary purpose when passed was to open the doors to educational institutions for women, who were routinely barred from law and medical schools (among them Title IX coauthor congresswoman Patsy Mink of Hawaii), or only admitted in quotas. But Title IX also opened the door to the locker room, and girls began streaming through.

As the legislation reaches its 30th birthday Sunday, it is time to celebrate a stack of accomplishments: a nearly fivefold increase in female collegiate athletes - along with scores of college scholarships - and a jump from 295,000 to 2.8 million girls playing high school sports. In the last decade, US women's teams have grabbed Olympic gold medals, a World Cup soccer title, and started professional leagues. Those, too, are Title IX accomplishments.

Soccer moms know how sports has changed with Title IX; their daughters just know sports entitlement.

But an uneasy feeling remains that the gains are not secure. If we are beyond questioning whether girls want to play sports, we are not beyond questioning whether they should get the same scholarship money, the same facilities, or the same job possibilities.

Yesterday, the National Women's Law Center released results of an investigation into athletic scholarships, naming 30 colleges and universities in 24 states that fail to give female athletes their fair share of athletic scholarship dollars as required under the law.

"Thirty years after Title IX, our young women are still being shortchanged," said Center co-president Marcia D. Greenberger. "Sex discrimination in athletic scholarships has a harmful and practical impact on female students and their families who are trying to make ends meet while also paying for college tuition."

In January, the National Wrestling Coaches Association filed suit in federal court against the Department of Education, claiming its enforcement of Title IX was reverse discrimination, leading colleges to eliminate "minor" or non-revenue men's sports (e.g. wrestling) to accommodate women's programs. Several weeks ago, the Bush Administration asked for a dismissal of the lawsuit on technical grounds, but failed to express support for Title IX.

Last Thursday, the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education released "Title IX at 30, Report Card on Gender Equity." Athletics got a C+. Among the report's findings: "For every new dollar going into athletics at the Division 1 and 2 levels, male sports receive 65 cents while female sports receive 35 cents."

Signed into law by President Richard Nixon, Title IX was ignored at first, except by a few prescient administrators who began upgrading, expanding, sometimes inventing, the women's athletic programs at their schools. But it took a series of discrimination lawsuits to establish a uniform policy for compliance.

The current longstanding policy offers universities three ways to comply with Title IX: proportionality, or having a ratio of male to female athletes approximate to the overall ratio of male to female students; demonstrating a history of women's sports expansion, or demonstrating an ability to accommodate interests of the minority gender.

Women's sports advocates admonish the wrestling coaches and their supporters for targeting the wrong group with their lawsuit. They say it's bloated football programs that eat up the athletic budgets, not the new softball or women's soccer programs. At Division 1 schools, football offers 85 scholarships and the excesses of big-time football programs are evident, from huge salaries for coaches to private housing for players.

On the other hand, a study last year by the General Accounting Office found 693 schools that added at least one team without discontinuing any.

"It's just good management," said Anita DeFrantz, president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles and a longtime International Olympic Committee member.

New England's Division 1 schools are havens for female scholar-athletes. In March, US News and World Report surveyed the country's Division 1 athletic programs, and included in its top 20 honor roll were Harvard, Boston College, the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts, the University of New Hampshire, and Brown. Furthermore, no New England schools were on the magazine's list of scholarship offenders.

"New England has always been ahead of the curve," said Harvard associate athletic director Patricia Henry.

But it is true that more than 170 collegiate varsity wrestling programs have been eliminated since 1972, including the one at BC. BC wrestling dropped to club status, along with men's lacrosse and water polo, as part of a strategic plan for the entire athletic department, prepared five years ago when Gene DeFilippo became athletic director. Over the five years, 47 scholarships for women have been added in several sports (38 from new funds, nine moved from men's programs), and women's crew was elevated to varsity status as the school moved toward providing equal scholarship opportunities.

"We have at Boston College approximately 800 student-athletes," said DeFilippo. "Approximately 400 of them are men, 400 of them are women. We have 250 athletic scholarships at BC, 125 for men, 125 for women. It's something we've done because we think it is the right thing and the fair thing to do."

DeFilippo has two daughters; one played basketball at Villa nova, the other is a high school field hockey player who appears to be headed to BC. He can't get out of the house without endorsing Title IX.

DeFilippo knows what sports can mean to girls. And to boys. He has a son as well, now an assistant football coach at Notre Dame. "All of my children have been involved in athletics and I realize how much they benefit," he said. "I'm a better AD now that I've sent children to college."

It is hard now to remember the landscape before Title IX, but Henry, who graduated from Gettysburg College in 1971 when women had few opportunities in sports, does. And she believes it is important to tell today's students about Title IX's history.

Because it was Title IX that paved the way for that memorable July day in 1999, when a Rose Bowl packed with 90,000 people rocked and rolled as the US women's soccer team beat China to win the World Cup. "People have to live it and feel the passion of it to know this is a good thing. But I didn't envision it coming that quickly," said Henry. "We're not done yet. Those of us who have experienced these changes in our lifetime - I think we always have to be vigilant. Because it can easily be repealed and we can't let that happen."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, 1. With added money and scholarships, women's programs - such as UMass softball (above), Harvard hockey (below left), and BC basketball - have burgeoned thanks to Title IX. / 2. GLOBE PHOTO / NANCY PALMIERI 3. GLOBE FILE PHOTO / JIM DAVIS GLOBE FILE PHOTO/BARRY CHIN

LOAD-DATE: June 20, 2002