With next year being the 40th year in which the Federal law Title IX has existed, it is noteworthy to see the way athletic participation has grown among the girls of the U.S.
The year I graduated, 1971, was the last year in which there was no real interest or effort put forth by government of governmental bodies regarding the lack of opportunity for girls to participate in athletics. Throughout my high school years in Missouri, there were no sports sanctioned as official school sports for girls. While my school offered me the opportunity to participate in football, basketball, track, cross country, wrestling, golf and tennis with each sport having state competition, my school offered only high school tennis for girls and even that was just for local competition.
Title IX was brought into play in 1972 with my youngest sister being given the chance to compete in track. Basketball soon followed, then volleyball, cross country, golf, tennis and softball.
The first sports years for Monett saw maybe 10 girls involved as opposed over 100 boys participating in a high school with a 400 enrollment.
Nationally, boy athletes outnumbered girl athletes 3,670,000 to 297,000 in 1971, nearly a 12 to one margin. This past year, the boys athletic numbers were ahead of the girls but by a much smaller margin of 3,960,000 to 2,808,000.
The boys numbers have grown, though only about 10 percent, with the girls numbers increasing 1,000 percent.
Sometimes the growth happened cooperatively or cordially, and sometimes it happened through court intervention marked by rancor and conflict. To avoid conflict, the fedsusually use what they call a three-pronged question to generally determine if a school is compliant or not.
Number one, are there as many girl athletes as boy athletes? Number two, is there a conscience effort by school leaders to boost numbers of girl participants? And number three, are the parents of school children happy with their schools offerings?
Generally speaking, any Title IX case that comes before a judge will result in his honor splitting athletic funds right down the middle to give 50 percent to the girls’ and 50 percent to the boys’ programs.
With boys’ football being so expensive, meeting that 50 percent target is just about impossible without seriously downgrading a lot of programs, so it behooves schools and parents to work out their differences before submitting such disputes to the courts to settle.
Razorbacks harder to tackle?
The Arkansas Razorbacks unveiled their 2010 team jerseys the other day, and not only are they significantly more stylish than last years duds, these new Nike outfits are way tighter that last year’s Adidas version.
Players complained the looseness of last year’s uniforms helped opposing teams pull down our ball carriers, while also helping the opposing offensive lineman have a lot of opportunities to “hold” Arkansas defenders. The Nike brand might well aid the Hogs into becoming even more productive this season.
The Razorbacks are now rated the number 17 collegiate team as determined by the Associated Press.
AAA gets 100 percent passage
In their annual “let’s make or change some more rules,” the AAA managed to pass every one of their new proposals, a rather rare event.
Most of them dealt with forms, forms and more forms. They were needed, some more than others, and their passage might help the state keep predatory people away from public school programs.
With the headlines coming out of Springdale about a succession of volunteer coaches being arrested there through criminal conduct, a new form is available that is designed to speed up the “vetting” process and to help keep some people from being around young people.
Another form was voted in to be given to transfer students to sign that states that the said move was not as a result of recruitment and that they are not transferring to participate in athletic activities.
The AAA also passed a new rule that won’t take effect until the 2012-2013 school term. They will allow private schools to transfer into higher classifications if they want to.
This would give schools like, say Shiloh, the opportunity to play with the big boys in the 7A West like Bentonville, Fayetteville, as well as 6A Siloam Springs.
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Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The TIMES. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.
Sports, Pages 11 on 08/25/2010