Tag Archives: TitleIXat50

The path less trod

A while ago, I wrote about the women of Brown University’s 1992 gymnastics team who brought a Title IX lawsuit when their team was cut. This week, I learned that a coach at the university had a choice to make about this lawsuit — would she support it and risk her job or would she stay silent?

Margaret Degidio “Digit” Murphy chose the harder path. She chose to support the women, even though it meant taking a stand against the university that employed her.

In 1992, Margaret was head coach of Brown’s women’s ice hockey program. As a college student, he had played for Cornell in the early 1980s, where she was a star player.

I yam who I yam

As you can see from the dates, Margaret’s childhood predated Title IX. She was born in 1961 in Rhode Island, but was fortunate that her mother paid no attention to gender norms.

“My mom let me have short hair, she let me wear boys clothes because that’s what I wanted to wear,” Margaret says. “I climbed trees, I played street hockey, I played with G.I. Joes — everything that was atypical for a girl, but my mom never said no. My mom was just like, ‘Who cares? She is who she is.’”*

Still, that didn’t mean she had the opportunities boys had. She watched boys play from behind chain-link fences, unable to join in because of her gender. Margaret’s chance came when two women in her town started a girl’s ice hockey team.

But even when she arrived at Cornell, equality was just a pipe dream.

“We were a bunch of ragtag girls in hand-me-down equipment,” she recalled. “What you brought was what you wore. We were second-class citizens.”**

Men v. women

As a coach at Brown, she didn’t find things much better. A friend who coaches women’s hockey recalled that her team rode around in a rickety bus that had no bathroom and that filled with gas fumes. Margaret might not have minded that.

“Bus? We didn’t even have a bus,” she said. “We had vans. And I remember one time, driving in the snow, the transmission broke and the coach had to shift the fan with his hand, manually. That’s the kind of transportation we had.”***

So, when the Brown girls gymnastics team brought their lawsuit in 1992, Margaret didn’t hesitate to support them. The university had cut four teams — men’s water polo and golf, and women’s gymnastics and volleyball — in order to trim its budget by $1.6 million. It claimed it was acting fairly by cutting two women’s and two men’s teams.

But the women saw it differently. They were already underrepresented in sports at Brown, so the cuts disproportionately affected them. At the time, women comprised 53.8 percent of the 5,600 enrolled students, yet they represented just 38 percent of the 900 varsity athletes.

For Margaret, there was no question she would back the female athletes. But taking a stand comes with a price.

“It was hell going through a Title IX battle in the ‘90s,” she said. “You could actually sense the tension in the air at staff meetings. It really was a men vs. women issue that really didn’t have to be that way. I remember in 1994 being on the stand, testifying against my employer. I mean, that was pretty hairy. You get labeled.”†

Words to live by

The women ultimately won their lawsuit, and Margaret went on to coach at Brown for eighteen seasons. She later served as head coach of the Boston Blades in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, and in 2004, she coached the U.S. National team at the Lake Placid Olympic Festival. Today she’s the head coach and president of the Toronto Six of the National Women’s Hockey League.

Like other women whose lives bridged Title IX, Margaret credits the gender equality law with making her career a reality. Asked to explain what Title IX means to her, Margaret has just two words.

“Those two words are: Why not?”††

And those are the two words that have propelled Margaret to the life of her dreams.

_____________________

* Ryan Dixon, “The Tornado,” Sportsnet.ca (2020).

** Andy Gardner, “Matriarchs of women’s hockey reflect on how sport has grown,” Elmira (NY) Star Gazette (November 15, 2000), p. 11.

*** Kent Youngblood, “Coaching in first class,” Minneapolis Star Tribune (March 22, 2002), p. C10.

† Bill Littlefield, “Brown University: Revisiting the Case for Title IX,” WBUR, Boston’s NPR affiliate (June 23, 2012).

†† Steve Wulf, “Title IX: 37 words that changed everything,” ESPN.com (March 22, 2012).

Waves of injustice

Over the years, women (and some men!) have filed thousands of Title IX lawsuits claiming discrimination. It’s safe to say that 99.9999 percent of these lawsuits are settled before they go to court. But one major lawsuit in Hawaii might eventually make it to trial.

In December 2018, female athletes at James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, filed a lawsuit saying they were being treated unequally. Some examples they gave:

* Female athletes didn’t have a locker room, showers or bathrooms.

* With no lockers, girls had to lug their gear around with them and wear their athletic gear all day at school, or have to change under the bleachers.

* The portable toilets at the field were often locked to prevent vandalism. The girls would have to hike a quarter mile to a fast food restaurant or gas station to use a bathroom, or else relieve themselves behind bushes. They dehydrated themselves to avoid the humiliation, a dangerous thing to do in Hawaii’s hot climate.

* Some women’s teams had no coach.

* Girls often had to use fields late at night after the boys were finished.

* The girls only played locally, not around the country, like the boys. When they played tournaments, they weren’t allowed to stay overnight in hotels, like the boys did. They didn’t have time to shower or eat, or else they’d miss their connection home.

Meanwhile, of course, the male athletes had all of this and more. Just for context, we’re talking about inequities that persist 46 years after the passage of Title IX.

It’s all of us

One of the women who brought the suit, Ashley Badis, experienced the discrimination firsthand as a member of the water polo team. Her team had to practice in the ocean, battling winds and choppy waves, because they didn’t have practice time in the pool.

But when she started talking to other girls, she soon realized that the problem was more widespread than just one team.

“Hearing how many concerns and complaints that they had — it made me feel like I’m not alone in this, but it’s so wrong that we’re all being treated like this,” Ashley said.*

The suit also accuses high school administrators of retaliating against the girls who initiated the suit. Although the girls are identified only by initials in the lawsuit, the school ferreted out their names and warned faculty members to be cautious around them.

Ashley says that school officials repeatedly threatened to cancel the girls’ water polo season. They claimed that some of the program’s medical and consent forms were missing, even though every team member had submitted her forms.

Let’s be reasonable

For its part, the school claims that it is making “reasonable efforts” to address inequities. They built a new baseball and softball field with some lockers for the girls, or the girls have the use of the boys locker room. The state has kicked in $6 million, in part to construct a girls locker room. But in a dig at the girls who brought the lawsuit, the school says they aren’t due anything retroactively.

Ashley is now 21 and at the University of Hawaii. That’s the way it is with these lawsuits. They drag on and on, leaving the original plaintiffs in the dust.

What ho, Patsy Mink!

It’s sad that the discriminatory treatment is being claimed in the year of Title IX’s 50th anniversary. But it’s also ironic that the battle is raging in the state of Hawaii. Title IX was the brainchild of several members of the U.S. House of Representatives, most notably Rep. Patsy Mink, the revered legislator from Hawaii. In fact, the act was renamed for her in 2002, the year she died.

In July, a federal judge ruled that the case can proceed as a class action lawsuit. The outcome of the suit could have wide-ranging consequences. Most Title IX lawsuits have been brought against colleges and universities. Discrimination at high schools and lower grades has hardly been addressed.

“What strikes me in this 50th anniversary year is just how little we actually know about what is going on in the high school space,” said Ellen J. Staurowsky, a professor of sports media at Ithaca College. “This case has the potential to really be a wake-up call for schools that continue to ignore the law and don’t take it seriously.”

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* David W. Chen, “Sex Discrimination Case in Hawaii Could Change High School Sports Across the U.S.,” The New York Times (October 22, 2022). Both quotes in the post come from this article. It was surprisingly difficult to find details of the lawsuit in the media. I imagine the high school is pretty happy about that.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Badis (right) with her sister Alexis, also a water polo player. Marie Eriel Hobro for The New York Times

Toni storms the field

The World Series will go on without my Yankees, but here’s one more baseball story for you. Meet Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional ball in the Negro Leagues.

Marcenia Lyle Stone was born in West Virginia in 1921, but at age 10, she moved with her family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Her interest in sports was noted early, earning her the nickname “Tomboy.” Eventually, she chose “Toni” as her professional name.

Her mother was unhappy with Toni’s athletic interests. She bought her a pair of ice skates, hoping to dissuade her from less feminine pursuits. Toni wanted nothing to do with those skates! Neither did she want to play softball — it was baseball, and baseball only, for her.

“Baseball was like a drug,” Toni said. “Whenever summer would come around and the bats would start popping, I’d go crazy.”*

Toni’s parents considered that “drug” sinful, and she dutifully confessed to the family’s Catholic priest. Surprisingly, he didn’t extract penance from her — instead, he signed her up for the church’s baseball team, the first girl to play.

The coach couldn’t say no

Looking for more coaching, Toni showed up to watch the action at a baseball school run by Gabby Street, manager of the minor league St. Paul Saints. At first, the coach wasn’t thrilled.

“Every time I chased her away, she would go around the corner and come back to plague me again,” Street said. “I just couldn’t get rid of her until I gave her a chance.”**

Not only was Toni the first woman in Street’s program, she was the first Black player he had accepted. Until she came along, he had scrupulously maintained an all-white program.

By the time she was 16, Toni was playing weekend games with the barnstorming Twin City Colored Giants, where again she was a first. Eventually, she dropped out of high school and moved to San Francisco to live with her sister, hoping to make a living playing baseball.

There, a local pub owner got Toni settled with an American Legion baseball team. But there was a catch — Legion ball limited players to ages 18 and under. No problem! Toni just erased 10 years from her actual age and presented herself as a 17-year-old teenager. She played with the team for two years, until 1945.

Legion ball led Toni to the San Francisco Sea Lions, a barnstorming team that was part baseball and part vaudeville. But when she learned she was being paid less than the male players, she decamped to the New Orleans Creoles.

Replacing “The Hammer”

Now, let’s add on another layer of discrimination. In 1950, Toni married Aurelious Pescia Alberga, who ordered her to abandon baseball. She gave in for one year, but the pull of the game was too strong. “He would have stopped me if he could have, but he couldn’t,” Stone said.***

Toni caught the eye of the Indianapolis Clowns, who were hurting from the departure of Hank Aaron, who had been signed by the Atlanta Braves. The Clowns were looking for someone who could not only bring in crowds but was also good at the game. So, in 1953, Toni became the first woman to play in the Negro Leagues, as a second baseman.

No matter that it was a publicity stunt, Toni won the nation over. “She belts home runs as easily as most girls catch stitches in their knitting, and the sports boys are goggle-eyed,” reported syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.†

Leaving the bench

Not surprisingly, the Clowns restricted the team to one female player, and Toni left the team when two other women were signed. She joined the Kansas City Monarchs, the team Jackie Robinson left to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking through the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

But being the first woman on men’s teams wasn’t easy, and most likely never fun. She was shunned by her teammates, who taunted her and worse. Runners tried to spike her as they slid into second. She came to expect nothing less. “They never let up,” she said.††

In 1955, after spending most of her time on the Monarchs’ bench, Toni quit playing ball. In 1993, she was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. She died on November 2, 1996 at the age of 75, but not before making her mark on the game she loved.

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* Ashwanta Jackson, “This woman shattered the gender barrier in pro baseball,” timeline.com (June 7, 2018).

** “Woman Player Says She Can ‘Take Care of Self’ in Game,” Ebony (June/July 1953), p. 48.

*** “This woman.”

† “This woman.”

†† “Girl Star in Game at League Park Wednesday Night,” Jackson (MS) Advocate (May 2, 1953), p. 2.

Post-Title IX freeze-out

Did Title IX change everything? We like to think so, but in reality, women continued to face discrimination on the playing fields. I thought about that as I read Kendall Coyne’s book, As Fast As Her.

Kendall Coyne was born in 1992, twenty years after passage of the gender equality law. She’s well known today as an ice hockey player. But even as a young girl, she realized that her gender was going to be a problem.

When she was seven years old, she signed up for a baseball team in Palos Heights, Illinois. When she showed up to the first practice, the coach frowned.

“Who’s this?” he said. Kendall’s mother squared up. “This is Kendall. She’s here to play baseball.”

“Girls sign up for softball,” he continued. “This is baseball.”

“She wants to play baseball and she will be just fine. Go ahead, Kendall. You go play,” her mother replied.*

And Kendall did go play.

Cold shoulder on the ice

Kendall went on to play ice hockey in high school and at Northeastern University. As a senior, she was named the top female college ice hockey player in the United States.

But in this sport, Kendall faced even more pushback. In elementary and junior high, she played with the Chicago Chill, the highest level of youth hockey. During her third year on the team, she was invited to play on Team Powerade, the first all-girl hockey team to compete in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament, which is something like the Little League World Series is to youth baseball.

The fans weren’t happy to see girls on the ice. While they played, they shouted (in French) that girls should be in the kitchen, not on the ice. Even worse, they threw hot pennies on the ice near their bench. The pennies melted into the ice and if the girls skated over them, they could trip and fall. Who would do that to children?!?

Despite the opposition, Kendall excelled at the sport she loved. She played in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, where the team won silver; at the 2018 Games, where they won gold; and in 2022, when the team took silver again. As a professional, she played for the Boston Pride and the Minnesota Whitecaps. She has also had a career in sports broadcasting.

Faceoff against the guys

But Kendall really got the spotlight on one night in January 2019.

Kendall was attending the NHL All-Star Skills Competition in San Jose. She and other female players were there to demonstrate each skill to the fans. But at the last minute, a male competitor in the fastest skater segment backed out due to an injury.

An NHL official who knew Kendall got her on the roster of eight players. She went out onto the ice and turned in a time of 14.346, less than a second behind the winning time of 13.378.

But more importantly, she proved to a huge audience that women could skate. “While I happened to be the one skating, it was a combination of all the efforts of all the women players over the years showcasing that, hey, this game is real,” she says.**

The fame she enjoyed from that moment is both thrilling and disheartening.

“So many times, women only get attention when they do something in a man’s arena. It is unfortunate, but it is the reality we face,” said tennis great Billie Jean King.***

Is anybody there?

Today, Kendall is a player development coach for the Chicago Blackhawks. She scouts NHL prospects, watches games and video and gives feedback to the players. She is president and co-founder with her husband Michael Schofield of the Schofield Family Foundation. They are part owners of the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). She is founder of the Kendall Coyne Hockey Camp.

But even now, she sees discrimination. USA Hockey spends millions on development for boys, she says, but girls have no equivalent program. Women get no feedback on their play, and no one is out there recruiting women for the Olympics.

“Something that I struggle with is that there’s not a head scout, a full-time head scout for the women’s national team,” she said. “Who’s watching college hockey? Who’s watching youth hockey? Who’s watching pro hockey?”****

If Kendall gets her way, maybe someone will be watching soon.

________________

* Kendall Coyne, As Fast As Her: Dream Big, Break Barriers, Achieve Success (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022), p. 16.

** Tracey Myers, “Five Questions With Kendall Coyne,” NHL.com (October 29, 2019).

*** As Fast As Her, p. vii.

**** Alex Azzi, “Kendall Coyne Schofield has first-hand look at what women’s hockey is missing,” NBC Sports (August 29, 2022)

Wyomia for the W

Wyomia Tyus is a name I hadn’t heard before, and I should have. When you mention Olympic runners from the 1960s, it’s Wilma Rudolph’s name that is remembered.

But Wyomia Tyus was an equally accomplished track and field sprinter. In 1964 and 1968, she won the 100-meter sprint in back-to-back Olympics. Only six runners can claim this feat.* At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tyus she set a world record of 11.08 seconds in the 100-meter.

So, let’s meet Wyomia.

Surviving the South

Wyomia was raised on a dairy farm in Griffin, Georgia, the only girl of four children. The family suffered the degradations of the Jim Crow South.

“I grew up with colored bathrooms, colored water fountains, all those kinds of things,” she said.**

Wyomia had to take an hour-long bus ride to a segregated school each day, even though there was a white school within walking distance. She wasn’t allowed to play with the white girls in her neighborhood, and the nearest Black family lived a mile away.

But Wyomia’s dad encouraged her ambition in sports. Yay for the dads! She played basketball with her brothers and began her track career as a high jumper in high school.

In 1960, she was invited to a summer track clinic at Tennessee State University, where she transitioned to running sprints. She was coached by the famed Ed Temple, the university’s women’s track coach for 44 years and an Olympic women’s track coach. Wyomia credits Temple with every success she has enjoyed in her life.

Calling out racism

In addition to her athletic triumphs, Wyomia should also be remembered for her silent protest at the 1968 Olympics.

Of course, what grabbed the headlines in that Olympics was the 200-meter medal ceremony. Gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos raised black-gloved fists in a gesture of Black power. Smith and Carlos also wore black socks without shoes, to represent Black poverty. Along with them, silver medalist Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badge.

(My publisher, Norton Young Readers, has just published a fantastic book by Smith — Victory. Stand! — about the moment. It’s a National Book Award finalist. Good luck to all!)

Two days before the men’s protest, Wyomia carried out her own protest. As she ran her event, she wore dark navy shorts instead of the team-issued white shorts.

“I was not doing it for any type of glory or anything,” Tyus says. “It was just for me as a person, as a human being, and my feelings and what I thought about what was going on in the world, and how women — Black women especially — were treated.”

It wasn’t that Wyomia was in on planning of the protests. The OPHR left out the Black female athletes.

“No one came to us,” she recalled. “The whole movement started, and it was more like, ‘Well, this is what we say, and the women are going to follow.’”

After the Olympics, Wyomia and teammate Edith McGuire, who came in second in the 100-meter, were feted with a parade in Atlanta, but the parade route only went through Black neighborhoods. The athletes’ protests, both quiet and flamboyant, apparently went unnoticed.

Repping the women

Wyomia went on to coach high school track in California and was a founding member of the Women’s Sports Foundation, along with Billie Jean King, Donna de Varona and Suzy Chaffee. In 1985, she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, and in 2018, she published her memoir, Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story.

Having lived through the before-and-after times of Title IX, Wyomia sees its effects not only in the opportunity to play sports, but in the new voice it gives all overlooked female athletes.

“It’s not that women weren’t speaking out in previous decades,” she says. “But now, women have a platform, and people are seeing them totally differently. I think Title IX has a lot to do with that, too.”

__________________________

* The others are Carl Lewis, Gail Devers, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Usain Bolt and Elaine Thompson-Herah.

** Allison Torres Burtka “Wyomia Tyus: the original athlete activist hiding in plain sight,” The Guardian (December 23, 2021). All of Wyomia’s quotes come from this article.

What’s in a name

In my romp through the sports world this year, the name of one university has popped up in conversation more than any other — UCLA.

Here’s one instance:

In 1939, UCLA enrolled baseball great Jackie Robinson. He became the school’s first athlete to letter in four varsity sports. He was one of four Black players on the football team, making UCLA college football’s most integrated team. Of course, Robinson then went on to become the first Black player on a Major League Baseball team.

And another:

In 1974, UCLA awarded the first athletic scholarship to a woman. Ann Meyers Drysdale was a standout basketball player, the first high school athlete to be chosen for a woman’s Olympic team. She was the first woman to sign an NBA contract (the men’s team!) and the first woman to broadcast an NBA game. She went on to have a stellar career in sports broadcasting.

Yet one more:

I’ve talked with people who said Title IX’s impact wasn’t felt for many years. Sportswriter Melissa Isaacson said no one really knew about it for at least three years after it became law. Others pointed out that before Title IX could really have an impact, women’s teams needed equipment, scholarships, high level coaching and competitive leagues. That all took time.

But one day, a friend begged to differ. “We felt the impact right away,” said Roger Freberg.*

Guess where he was in the 1970s. UCLA!

Tracking the new reality

Roger Freberg was on a track and field scholarship at the university when Title IX was enacted. He says women appeared on the track almost immediately.

“It might be because you don’t need much adaptation in track and field,” he says. “And it was a sport that had both men and women. We all adjusted pretty quickly.”

Most coaches were supportive, Roger says. The pushback — at UCLA and other universities — came from the sports programs with the biggest budgets. In most cases, that meant the football and basketball programs. Coaches were afraid that Title IX would drain resources from their programs.

UCLA’s track program wasn’t immune from the effects. Men’s scholarships were cut in half, Roger says, and when the team traveled, they no longer stayed in fancy hotels and the per diem allowance for meals was more modest.

Still, the women were welcome. When asked why, Roger’s answer might sound sexist, but it was the reality of the time — and maybe not so different today.

“The guys welcomed the women because they were extending the dating pool!” he says. “They’d help the women adjust their starting blocks, even though clearly they didn’t need the help. They played that old, old game.”

Well, the other men did. Roger had gotten married in 1972, his sophomore year in college. He welcomed the women simply as fellow athletes.

Devil in the details

Overall, Roger says any resistance was more practical than ideological. How would men and women share the weight room? Could the workout schedule be rearranged or would new facilities have to be built? How should tournaments be run to allow all athletes to remain warm and limber for their events?

Roger doesn’t minimize the reality of the scholarship issue, though. The opportunity to attend college on an athletic scholarship narrowed.

“You’d hear teammates say, ‘Well, now my younger brother might not make it unless he gets better,’” he says. “Universities began to offer partial scholarships, but a lot of athletes come from families that need the money and now they can’t afford the college bills.”

One more first

As for Roger, he was UCLA’s first player to be an amateur in one sport and a professional in another. He was an All-American at UCLA; NCAA runner-up in discus; PAC 8 champion in discus and runner-up in shot put. He was caption of the team his senior year, and they were NCAA champions for three years and runner-up his fourth year.

He was drafted in 1974 as a defensive lineman by the Los Angeles Rams. Although his premier events were the discus and shotput, football scouts were impressed by his sprinting times and figured he could take his ability to run short bursts to the football field.

I asked Roger why he thought UCLA was so progressive in racial and gender reform.

“Southern California has a history not so much of tolerance but of practicality,” he muses. “If you have a good athlete, you’re thinking, ‘What can we do to help this person get to the next level?’ We just want to see people recognized for their ability.”

______________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Roger on October 5, 2022.

PHOTO: From the personal collection of Roger Freberg.

A first on the court

All too often, a woman’s reputation as a “first” overshadows her many other accomplishments. That’s the case for Becky Hammon, the first woman to serve as head coach for a National Basketball Association (NBA) team, even if briefly.

On December 20, 2020, San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was ejected in the second quarter of a game against the Los Angeles Lakers in San Antonio after arguing with a referee. He turned to Becky.

“He officially pointed at me,” Becky said. “That was it. Said, ‘You’ve got them.’”*

Becky joined Popovich’s staff in 2014 as an assistant coach, one of six women who held an assistant coaching role in the NBA that year. For three years, she served as the head coach of the Spurs’ summer league team, the first woman to be a head coach in that league. In 2015, she lead the team to the title.

First class all the way

So how did it come about that a woman was on the coaching staff of an NBA team? Pure chance!

Becky was undrafted out of Colorado State University but played in the WNBA for 16 years, becoming a six-time All-Star. After being passed over for the United States Olympic team, she gained Russian citizenship and represented that country in the 2008 and 2012 Games.

On her flight home from the 2012 London Games, Becky was seated next to Popovich. She recalls the conversation.

“So if you were an assistant for me, and I asked you something, you’d tell me the truth?” he asked her.

“I don’t know why else you’d ask if you didn’t want me to tell the truth.”

He answered, “Good, I don’t want a bunch of yes men.”

Passing the test

In 2013, Hammon tore a ligament in her left knee, abruptly ending her WNBA season. While she was in rehab, she served as a coaching intern with the Spurs.

After her debut as head coach in the 2020 game, players had nothing but good things to say about her coaching.

“It’s a beautiful thing just to hear her barking out calls, barking out sets,” said Lakers player LeBron James. “She’s very passionate about the game. So congrats to her, congrats to our league.”

Said retired NBA player Pau Gasol: “I’m telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period.”**

All because of Title IX

Although everyone was looking — and hoping — for Becky to move into a head coaching role in the NBA, she chose a different path. Today, she is head coach for a WNBA team, the Las Vegas Aces. She signed a seven-figure contract, making her the highest-paid coach in the WNBA.

Clearly, Becky has benefited from the gains of Title IX. She was born in 1977, five years after passage of the gender equality law.

“Obviously, I’m a product of Title IX,” she said. “My whole life, my whole livelihood was because Title IX was in place.”***

She understands the debt her generation owes to the women who came before her, the women who had to fight year after year just for a chance to play.

“We’re super grateful for the people that came before and fought much tougher battles so that we didn’t have to fight those kind of battles,” she said.† “We have to continue to push that line. For me, it’s still about the perception of the next generation seeing women and girls are great athletes, period.”

_________________________

* Victor Mather and Marc Stein, “Becky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. Game,” The New York Times (December 31, 2020). This quote, Becky’s next quote and LeBron James’s quote all come from this article.

** Paul Gasol, “An open letter about female coaches,” The Players’ Tribune (May 11, 2018).

***Annie Costabile, “50th anniversary of Title IX exposes how much work remains,” The Chicago Sun-Times (June 25, 2022).

† Mark Anderson, “In their own words: What Title IX means to Las Vegas sports women,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (June 22, 2020) and “50th anniversary of Title IX.”

And yer OUT!

The World Series is on deck and that reminds me of a baseball player I’ve been meaning to write about. Jackie Mitchell — the girl who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell was only the second female to play professional baseball.* Born in 1913, she learned the game from her father, which as you can imagine was unusual for the time.

But a neighbor, Charles “Dazzy” Vance, also coached the budding player. He was a Major League pitcher who had lead the league in strikeouts for seven seasons.

When Jackie was 16, she joined the Englettes, a woman’s team in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The lefty-throwing Jackie’s skill as a pitcher — and her sinking curveball — caught the eye of Joe Engel, also owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a AA minor-league team. On March 25, 1931, Engle signed Jackie to the team.

It’s game day

On April 2, 1931, the Lookouts played an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, who were traveling north from spring training. The stands were filled with 4,000 spectators.

Seventeen-year-old Jackie took the mound in the first inning as a relief pitcher. The starting pitcher had given up a single and a double. Ruth and Gehrig were next in the lineup.

Mitchell was throwing her trademark sinker. Her first pitch to Ruth was called a ball, and Ruth swung at and missed the next two pitches. Dramatically, he asked the umpire to inspect the ball, and the umpire threw out a new one. The fourth pitch was called a strike — Ruth had struck out.

At that, The Bambino charged the ump, while teammates hiked onto the field to lead him back to the bench. He stomped off the field and threw his bat against the dugout.

Next up was Gehrig. Jackie threw three pitches; Gehrig swung at and missed all three. The crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation. She walked the next batter and was pulled from the game. The final score was 14-4 Yankees. But who really cared about the score!

“Girl Pitcher Fans Ruth and Gehrig” blared the headline in the next day’s New York Times.

What’s the score?

To this day, people debate the question: Did Jackie really did strike out Ruth and Gehrig? Engel was widely known as a stunt promoter. In the middle of the Great Depression, his team managed to attract large crowds despite the hard times.

It was absolutely not a stunt, counters one sports historian. Being a lefty against the two left-handed sluggers gave Jackie an advantage.

“Think about a pitcher coming in they’ve never seen before,” said Leslie Heaphy, an associate professor of sports history at Kent State. “She’s a lefty with a very deceptive pitch.”**

About Gehrig, many people say he just wasn’t as skilled a hitter as Ruth. And people doubt the King of Swat would have agreed to a stunt that made him look bad. But Ruth tipped his hat to Jackie when he stepped up to bat. And the runner on first didn’t try to steal a base against her.

Whatever the case, male sportswriters had a field day.

“The very fact that such a thing should come to pass, even in burlesque, is cause for every male in the land to quake in his boots!” cried Alabama writer Ralph W. Callahan.***

You’re benched

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis intervened and voided Jackie’s contract. She joined the barnstorming circuit — traveling teams that were equal parts sports and vaudeville — but in 1937, Jackie retired from the game.

Jackie was angry that she was scorned as a sideshow act. (“She swings a mean lipstick!” smirked the New York Times). Even when she had the chance to play again — when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League started up in 1943 during World War II — she refused. And in 1952, Major League Baseball banned women from the game. Jackie threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chattanooga Lookouts game in 1982, but that was it. She died in 1987.

These stories of female firsts can be inspiring, but all too often they end like Jackie’s, a sad story of thwarted ambition. She was truly a woman scorned. That’s why Title IX is so important for female athletes. They just want the chance to play.

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* Lizzie Arlington was the first woman to play on a men’s team. She pitched for the Reading (PA) Coal Heavers fifteen years earlier in 1898.

** Leslie Heaphy, “Overlooked No More: Jackie Mitchell, Who Fanned Two of Baseball’s Greats,” The New York Times (Nov. 7, 2017). Healey is also co-author of The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016)

*** “Morning Musings,” The Anniston (Alabama) Star (March 29, 1931), p. 12.

Gentlepeople, start your engines

Today I’m talking about something I know nothing about. Could be dangerous! But not as dangerous as auto racing. In the 1970s, one woman broke the gender barrier in this once all-male sport.

In 1977, Janet Guthrie was the first woman to qualify for and drive in the Indianapolis 500. The race was first held in 1911, so Janet was breaking a 66-year-old tradition.

Janet was born in Iowa in 1938 and grew up in Florida. Her love for machines led her to learn to fly planes when she was only 13 years old. She made her first parachute jump at 16 years old. She was off and running!

At the University of Michigan, she studied physics. “The beauty of it just entranced me,” she said.* She started her career as an engineer for an aircraft manufacturer.

Her first car

Janet needed a car to get to work, so she bought a used 1953 Jaguar XK120 M coupe. She loved that car! And she loved speed. In 1963, she began competing in solo events called gymkhanas. A gymkhana features a starting point, a finish line and obstacles to maneuver though in between, all within a stated time limit.

By 1972, Janet was racing full time. She had learned the craft at the Sports Car Club of America driver’s school and began racing in another Jaguar, an XK 140. She built the engine of that car, did her own body work and sometimes slept in the car.

In the 1976 World 600 (now the Coca Cola 600), Janet finished 15th, becoming the first woman to compete in a NASCAR Winston Cup Superspeedway race. It’s the longest closed-course NASCAR race, 100 miles longer than the Indy 500. She competed in four more races that year.

The allure of speed

What attracted Janet to this all-male — and very dangerous — sport?

“You have to think about what you are doing all the time. You have to commit yourself to going very fast. It commands every faculty you have,” she said. Besides, she added, “It is exhilarating and it’s fun!”**

Although she admitted at times to being hurt by the negative comments from men who didn’t think a woman had the strength and stamina to race, she had a pretty good comeback.

“I don’t carry the car, I drive it,” she said.***

Janet competed in her first Daytona 500 in 1977, finishing 12th, when her car’s engine failed with 10 laps to go. When she competed in the Indy 500 that year, she finished 29th, again slowed by engine problems. She competed in two more Indy 500s, finishing ninth in the 1978 race. In total, Janet competed in eleven IndyCar events, with a best finish of fifth place.

Money’s the problem

So, why do so few people know about Janet Guthrie today? The answer to that is money. Despite her historic firsts, Janet was unable to find sponsors. She was puzzled by that fact — surely, a female driver would attract a lot of attention for her sponsors? But without financial backing, she was forced into retirement.

In 1982, she spoke at a 10-year celebration of Title IX on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

“We are here to celebrate our accomplishments, but also to point out how much work remains to be done,” said Guthrie. “We have the framework in place to insure equality, to insure what is morally and legally just. We have to call attention to the progress that is being made.”****

Billy Jean King, the tennis great who broke ground in her sport, understood the stakes for Janet. King had put her reputation on the line in the “Battle of the Sexes,” her 1973 match against Bobby Riggs.

“The biggest difference between my challenge match with Bobby Riggs and Janet’s historic races at Indianapolis and Daytona is the difference between hitting a ball into the net and hitting a concrete wall at 200 mph. Janet put everything on the line, including her life.”†

But for Janet, being a female first isn’t foremost in her mind. She knew that her racing career was in part a result of the women’s movement, and she’s glad to have moved the needle. But what’s really important to her is her achievement on the track.

“I want to be remembered as damn good racing driver,” she said.††

And that indeed is her true legacy.

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* Automotive Hall of Fame, 2019 inductee.

** Tom McEwen, “Janet Guthrie: She’s Paid Her Dues for Indy,” The Tampa Tribune (May 25, 1977), p. 29.

*** Bill Lyon, Janet Guthrie has paid her dues and is ready to roar,” The Chicago Tribune (May 27, 1979), p. 161.

**** Ronn Levine, “A Celebration for Title IX,” The Washington Post (June 17, 1982).

† “Qualified,” ESPN 30-for-30 documentary (Debut: May 28, 2019).

†† Patrick Donovan, “Janet Guthrie: The First Woman to Qualify for the Indy 500,” The Hollywood Times (May 28, 2019).

Collegiate fencer parries

Sometimes when your alma mater is in the news, it’s not something to be proud of. This week, I learned of a Title IX lawsuit brought against Penn State by Zara Moss, a student athlete who fenced for the university.

In her suit, Zara accuses head fencing coach Wes Glon of abusing her and other female fencers and the university of failing to address these complaints.

Now a graduate, the All-American fencer alleged that the team was a “hotbed for sexual assault and gender discrimination.” She accuses Glon of subjecting female fencers, including Moss, to physical, verbal and psychological abuse.

“No one pursuing educational or athletic excellence should ever experience abuse for any reason,” said Zara’s lawyer, Chelsea Weaver.*

The lawsuit falls under the banner of Title IX because abuse based on gender disrupts a student’s college years, making it impossible to have an equal educational experience. In many cases, abuse leads its victims to drop out of college or fail to pursue their educational or athletic goals.

A litany of complaints

As an example of the abuse, Zara, once an Olympic hopeful, said that Glon, who has coached at Penn State since 1985, injured her by forcing her to spar against him without protective equipment. Glon struck her as she “sobbed and pleaded with him to stop,” the lawsuit says.

In her sophomore year, Zara suffered an ankle injury, and she says Glon forced her to return to fencing before her injury had healed. In addition, Zara says Glon bullied the female fencers about their weight, but didn’t level the same abuse at male fencers.

“Wes’s conduct towards women fencers was no secret,” her attorney said. “Penn State athletic directors and administrators knew about or had observed Wes’s egregious behavior towards female fencers. But Wes’s prestige, influence, and connections were more important to Penn State than protecting its athletes.”**

Zara says she suffers from an eating disorder, body dysmorphia (a mental health condition), panic attacks and anxiety as a result of the alleged abuse. She’s being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and is under the care of a psychiatrist. She hasn’t fenced for more than a year.

They didn’t learn

After the suit was filed, Penn State put Glon on paid leave. USA Fencing forced him to resign as president of the Central Division of USA Fencing and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit that monitors abuse in Olympic sports, began an investigation.

This is the second time that Glon has been suspended. In August 2021, USA Fencing and SafeSport placed him on a three-year suspension after Jennifer Oldham, a North Carolina fencing club owner and instructor, accused him of failing to act on a sexual misconduct complaint she brought against an assistant fencing coach. She accused George Abashidze of groping and sexually assaulting her on a flight after a national fencing competition in 1917.

Glon was reinstated before the three years were up, after a favorable ruling from an arbitration panel. Oldham’s suit ultimately failed, the judge determining that it didn’t apply because Oldham had no ties to the university. But in 2019, USA Fencing suspended Abashidze, leading Penn State to fire him.

At first, Zara resisted filing a lawsuit, afraid of making life hard for women currently on the team. But she ultimately decided it was worth coming forward.

“Things need to change,” she said.*** “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anybody else, and the way to do that and to make sure that happens is to tell my story.”

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** Susan Snyder, “Penn State places head fencing coach Wes Glon on paid leave after allegations surface,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (September 12, 2022).

** Matt DiSanto, “Former Penn State Fencer Sues University, Coach Wes Glon for Alleged Abuse,” StateCollege.com (April 12, 2022).

*** Bret Pallotto, “Zara Moss explains why she came forward with allegations of abuse on Penn State’s fencing team,” Centre Daily Times (April 13, 2022).