In my last post, you met Sage Ohlensehlen, a swimmer for the University of Iowa who brought a lawsuit against the school after it cut four sports teams, including the women’s swim/dive team, claiming hardship from COVID-19.

            As it turns out, the UI lawsuit is only one of many that female athletes have brought against their universities for the same reason.

            “Under the cover of COVID, folks are trying to drop women’s sports,” charges Donna Lopiano, president and founder of Sports Management Resources.*

             Here are just a few universities whose purported COVID-19 cuts female athletes have challenged, along with the resolution:

Stanford — reversed its decision to cut men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, coed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling. Athletes on the five women’s teams challenged the cuts based on Title IX.

Brown — reinstated women’s fencing and equestrian in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Dartmouth — reinstated men’s and women’s swimming and diving and golf, and men’s lightweight rowing after the school received a letter from the women’s lawyer threatening a Title IX lawsuit.

William and Mary — reinstated women’s varsity gymnastics, swimming and volleyball after student athletes threatened a Title IX suit.

East Carolina State University — reinstated women’s swimming, diving and tennis in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Michigan State — last month, the Supreme court refused to hear MSU’s appeal of a lower-court ruling in favor of the women’s swim/dive team that had been cut due to COVID-19 (the university claimed). The lawsuit can now proceed.

An athlete’s view

            Lopiano — as well as many others — believe athletic directors are using the virus as a cover for cutting programs so they can increase the budgets of the juggernaut men’s programs like football and basketball.

            “The problem is that at the same time they’re pleading poor, they’re spending up the wazoo to protect their one or two revenue-producing sports,” Lopiano says. “That’s the mentality of the athletic directors. They are not treating it as educational sports, but as a business.”

            Lopiano isn’t an ivory tower theorist. She knows the athletic world from experience. She is a six-time National Champion, nine-time All-American, and three-time Softball MVP. She is a member of thirteen halls of fame.

            For ten years, she played for the Connecticut Brakettes, a national championship women’s softball team. As a pitcher, she compiled a career record of 183–18. She finished her Brakettes career in the top ten of several categories including hits, RBIs, runs and home runs.

            Overall, she participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American at four different positions in softball.

            Following her athletic career, Lopiano became an assistant athletic director at Brooklyn College, where she also coached basketball, volleyball and softball. In 1975, she became the first director of women’s athletics at the University of Texas, where she worked for seventeen years.      

            Early on at the University of Texas, though, Lopiano thought she might be fired. She testified against a proposed amendment to Title IX — the Tower Amendment — that would have exempted the powerhouse men’s programs from Title IX regulations. The amendment failed to pass and Lopiano kept her job.

No need to cut teams

            Lopiano says there are many ways for schools to cut athletic costs. For example, instead of cutting teams, they can cut expenses across the board.

            “Any athletic director worth their oats knows that they don’t have to cut any sports in order to keep their athletic program intact,” she says.

            “There is a lot of mythology here — 98.4 percent of all athletic programs are losing money and they are getting subsidized,” Lopiano says. “And it isn’t institutional money, rather it is student tuition dollars and mandatory athletics fees. There is no leadership in higher education that is saying ‘stop this madness’ in terms of expenditures in sports programs.”**

            Maybe a few more lawsuits will do the trick.

                                                _____________________

* Carrie N. Baker, “Athletes Win First Round in Title IX Challenge To Cuts To Women’s Sports,” Ms. (January 1, 2021). This quote and the next two come from this article.

** Dom Amore, “As Title IX turns 50, visionary Donna Lopiano still sees much left unfinished in gender equity in sports,” The Hartford Courant (June 21, 2022).

PHOTO: Lisa Helfert/Knight Commission