Gathering Places
Gathering Places
I AM AMONG the Rainbow Wahine basketball team's newest fans. Watching Crystal Lee bury a three, Janka Gabrielova defeat a full court press or Christen Roper swat away a jump shot, I've seen the grit, the heart, the intensity that was inspiring. Watching the Wahine, I also came to appreciate Title IX. Title IX: Still
leveling the fieldI first saw girls play ball almost 30 years ago. It was the inaugural year of Bobby Sox softball in Hawaii and my sister's team had an early-season practice at the neighborhood school, not on the baseball field or even an open field but in a small courtyard between classroom buildings. Their field of dreams was smaller than many people's living rooms.
I remember being amused by young girls playing a game they were only vaguely familiar with. I didn't see anything wrong in that several hundred yards away I had played on a manicured baseball field. Neither did I realize that, as unequal as it was, my sister, one year younger, enjoyed an opportunity not given to my mother or to my other sister, who was only three years older that I.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, I was unaware that I was seeing real sport. My sister had waited several years for the day in that cramped courtyard after late afternoons of playing catch with me and Saturday mornings at the ball field where she mimicked my batting swing from behind the backstop. Now she had her chance and played with an enthusiasm that was unknown to my teammates and me. It wasn't pretty, just beautiful.
Title IX, the law that outlaws sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs, makes 30 years in 2002. (Hawaii Rep. Patsy Mink co-wrote the passage that provided equity to women). The law almost certainly will come under withering attack from sports writers, radio talk hosts and armchair quarterbacks. They will say that Title IX has gone too far, that the growth of women's sports has come at the expense of men's programs, that colleges have cut swimming, wrestling and gymnastics because of those damn women.
Never mind that in 1971, one in 27 high school girls participated in athletics and by 1998 that number was down to one in three. Never mind that when my sister played her first games, only 50 women received college athletic scholarships nationwide compared with 50,000 men. Never mind that to date no school has lost federal funding for not complying with Title IX.
Too equal? I don't think so. Women's athletic programs today get 37 percent of the operating budgets, 38 percent of the scholarships and 27 percent of the recruiting budgets. From 1992 though 1997, men's athletic budgets increased by 139 percent while women's increased by 89 percent. Some threat.
THIS IS NOT TO SAY that eliminating non-revenue producing men's programs is to be ignored. On the contrary, this tragedy illustrates what's wrong with college athletics. Academic bureaucrats have chosen to cut lower-profile men's programs, pitting have-nots against have-nots and playing a divisive game of gender politics.The true solution to inequality is more fundamental and difficult, and would upset the very very large apple cart that is college athletics. A couple of questions: Does a football team really need 85 scholarships? Is that sacred cow and its bovine sister, college basketball, immune from the belt-tightening that a university should undergo?
Title IX should be protected because it is right. It needs to be complied with because it is what sports should be about. Title IX makes both girls and boys their own role models because it is about playing fair. It reaffirms that athletes should not be judged by how many tickets or sneakers are sold but by the intensity of effort and the size of one's heart.
Title IX needs to be upheld because the ultimate arenas where athletes perform aren't the Staples Center or the Superdome but the home and the workplace.
Title IX is an antidote to a sports world that has become more about watching and buying than about doing and learning. Sports have been invaded by contract-hit-dealing-thug athletes and chair- and player-throwing coaches.
It is a world that even the most ardent fan -- in his heart of hearts -- hates with a passion.
David K. Choo is managing editor of Hawaii Business magazine.