The Title IX law changed the perception of female athletes

Some thought sports were too rough for women.

By Dave Benson of The News-Sentinel

News-Sentinel photo Even gold wasn't enoughSharon Wichman-Jones won an Olympic gold medal in 1968 for swimming, but she couldn't win an athletic scholarship before Title IX. She had to swim on a boys team prior to Title IX's passage.

Women have been competing in sports since before the birth of Christ. Yet, female athletes have faced discrimination every step of the way.

Some of the first recorded female athletic efforts were by bull jumpers on the island of Crete in 1,500 B.C. Although they proved their skill and daring by jumping bulls, females in ancient Greece were forced to compete in the female-only Herean Games instead of the Olympic Games.

The women of ancient Greece took up the fight for equality, however. One such effort saw female athlete Kallipateira sneak into the Olympics, which led men to devise a sex test to keep out women. Greek men finally relented, and in 396 B.C., Princess Kyniska of Sparta was the first female Olympic champion by virtue of her win in a chariot race.

Although women had proved themselves in ancient times, when the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896, no women were allowed to compete. They did play in the second, in 1900, despite warnings from physical education instructors that athletic competition would make them less feminine.

Progress came slowly.

"Basically, at the beginning, they didn't understand girls playing in sports," said Dottie Collins, 78, who played in the 1940s for the Fort Wayne Daisies, a professional women's baseball team in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. "They thought girls would be harmed physically if they played sports."

Conditions for female athletes were still substandard even after athletes such as Mildred "Babe" Didrikson, who helped start the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, put notions of girls being harmed to rest.

"I was aware of the differences probably the day I was born," said former Saint Francis athletic director and South Side High School coach Roberta Widmann-Foust. "There were no athletic scholarships for girls and very few academic scholarships."

Widmann-Foust worked her way through Purdue University, graduating in 1965. She played the accepted form of women's basketball at that time -- six players to a side. She also competed in track, soccer, volleyball, softball and gymnastics. All women's sports were under the direction of the physical education department and not the athletic department.

Diane Karst remembers those dark ages. She graduated from Huntington Catholic High School in 1971, when girls high school sports were governed by the Girls' Athletic Association (GAA). The defining characteristic of sports under the GAA banner was lack of organization.

"It was pretty much, 'We'll set this night aside and throw out a basketball for anyone who wants to come,' " said Karst, who is now an associate athletic director at Bishop Luers High School. "It was pretty unorganized. We didn't have much of a facility."

Karst attended college at Saint Francis, and if she thought women's sports were a mess in high school, at least she had the option of participating at Huntington Catholic. Sports weren't offered for female students at Saint Francis.

Desperate to satisfy her competitive drive, Karst tried out for and made coach Mike Sanders' baseball team -- along with two other women -- in her junior year in 1973-74. Her bold step helped lay the foundation for women's sports at Saint Francis.

"We were trying to organize and generate enough interest to get women's programs started at Saint Francis," Karst said. "The baseball coach didn't have enough guys for the team. He was willing to help us out. That helped us to pursue women's sports at Saint Francis."

Women's basketball was offered by Saint Francis' athletic department in Karst's senior year as a result of her effort.

Karst wasn't the only local female athlete who competed against males in those days. Snider didn't have a girls swimming team when Sharon Wichman-Jones attended high school there in the late 1960s, so she talked the coaches at Club Olympia into letting her swim against boys. She honed her skills, winning a gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics in the 200-meter breast stroke.

Wichman-Jones may have earned a gold medal, but she couldn't earn a college athletic scholarship. Her collegiate swimming was for Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Ill. "I didn't know anything about this college. I was asked out of the blue one day," she said. "They didn't have any scholarships. This was the first year this college had a swim team. The only reason they had it was that the coach was able to talk the college into having a swim team if he could get enough people."

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Title IX turns the tide

Teri Rosinski is among those athletes who can vouch for what conditions were like before and after Title IX.

Rosinski was 13 years old when Title IX was passed. She was named Miss Basketball and graduated from Norwell High School in 1977. She also played collegiately on scholarship at Illinois State.

"I grew up in a neighborhood with boys and played pickup basketball games with them in the summer," Rosinski said. "We had ready-made teams in my neighborhood. Basically, I made my own opportunities."

The Indiana High School Athletic Association began sanctioning girls' basketball in the 1975-76 school year. Finally, Rosinski had a chance to pursue athletics in a more organized manner and parlay it into a college scholarship.

"I was excited that we were going to have a girls state tournament," Rosinski said. "I wanted to win that first state championship my junior year. My mom got Sports Illustrated for me. I remember reading about girls who got full-ride athletic scholarships. It was my goal to get a full-ride scholarship."

Title IX not only sought to provide athletic scholarships, but also equal treatment between male and female athletes in facilities, equipment, uniforms and travel. Changes were slow.

"My first collegiate game was played in the phys-ed building and not in the coliseum where the guys played," said Woodlan High School girls basketball coach Tonya Burns-Cohrs, who graduated from Leo High School in 1981 and played at Iowa State from 1981-85. "The guys' locker room in the coliseum was high-class. They had a vanity with their name on it and mirrors. We just had a locker room. As I got closer to my senior year, that started to change a little bit. I would say uniforms and things like that were equal. Shoes were equal. Traveling was pretty equal."

The progress made under Title IX was threatened in 1984, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only programs and activities receiving direct federal financial assistance were bound by the law.

The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988 re-established Title IX's original boundaries. But female athletes continued to make strides during the four-year interim. Current Michigan State University track coach Angela Goodman attended South Side High School and Purdue University when the Supreme Court removed the applicability of Title IX from college athletics, but she did not notice any discriminatory practices at that time.

"I honestly don't remember any differences," she said. "Maybe South Side was unique. In basketball, the boys practiced in the main gym and the girls had their own gym. We were able to practice at the same time. It wasn't like one had to practice at 7 a.m. and the other right after school.

"In volleyball, there wasn't an issue. The track and field teams practiced at the same time.

"I think the only inequality in college was the fact that some programs had more money than others. You became aware which were the revenue producing sports."

Title IX got more clout in 1992 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs filing Title IX lawsuits are eligible to receive punitive damages if they can show the institution intentionally violated Title IX.

Title IX may have gained clout because of this, but female athletes still have a long way to go to reach equality.

"Comparing the two, I think male athletes get treated a lot better than female athletes," said Ball State senior thrower Janee Langhorne, who graduated from Northrop in 1998.

For example, she pointed out a subtle difference in treatment between men and women.

"The women's volleyball team gets bumped to the other gym. I know they get to use the main gym, but they get bumped to the other gym a lot, and I don't know why."