Tag Archives: TitleIXTuesday

A coach steps up

Michigan State is the poster child for universities that violated Title IX in the way they treated (or, rather, didn’t treat) instances of sexual abuse. In 2019, it was found guilty of failing to stop Larry Nassar from criminally assaulting hundreds of female athletes in his role as team doctor (not to mention his criminal actions as a trainer for USA Gymnastics). But it’s not the only such sordid Title IX story.

In 2009, the head swimming and diving coach for San Jose State University, Sage Hopkins, began hearing stories about the athletic department’s trainer, Scott Shaw. Female athletes were coming to him with complaints about his behavior.

The swimmers said that Shaw often worked alone with them in the training room. He didn’t explain his treatments before beginning and he didn’t seek their consent. They said Shaw would touch their pelvic area and massage their breasts, and in some cases touch their nipples beneath their clothing. All the while, he was purportedly working on unrelated areas of the body, such as the shoulder, knee or back.

Seventeen swimmers ultimately complained about Shaw to Hopkins. The coach compiled their accounts into a nearly 300-page file. He notified the athletic department, the university administration and the campus police. In late 2009, the university opened an investigation based on the complaints.

Nope, not guilty

In 2010, however, the university ruled that Shaw was not guilty of misconduct. They said his methods of “pressure point” therapy were an acceptable treatment for muscle injuries. Shaw suffered no consequences and continued as director of sports medicine.

“I’m upset that this person abused his power, but I’m even more upset that this larger power allowed him to do that and then still keep his job there,” said former San Jose swimmer Caitlin Macky. “We weren’t taken seriously, and we weren’t protected at the time.”*

Meanwhile, Hopkins continued to confront the administration. In 2018, he re-reported the allegations. In addition, he documented instances of what he believed to be retaliation against him and his staff for speaking out against Shaw.

Along comes Title IX

So, here’s where Title IX comes in. Hopkins included the university’s Title IX office when he updated the athletes’ complaints. In June 2020, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office initiated a Title IX compliance review of the university.

During the review, the university reopened its investigation into the 2009 complaints. In addition, two current swimmers came forward with new complaints against Shaw. In this review, it came to light that in the original investigation, the university interviewed just one swimmer about Shaw’s behavior, ignoring all the other women.

The DOJ concluded that San Jose had violated Title IX. Shaw’s physical therapy “lacked medical basis, ignored proper protocols and violated the system’s sexual harassment policies.” It required the university to pay $1.6 million to athletes from six teams and mandated an overhaul of the university’s sexual harassment and abuse reporting system.

In 2021, the university review found that Shaw was responsible for at least five instances of sexual abuse. By then, however, Shaw had retired.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. In April 2021, Hopkins filed a lawsuit against San Jose State claiming retaliation for pursuing the athletes’ complaints. In the lawsuit, Steve O’Brien, former deputy athletics director, says he was fired after refusing an order from the university to discipline Hopkins and a staff member. O’Brien believes the order, and his firing, was in response to Hopkins re-reporting the Title IX violations.

In January 2022, the university settled with Hopkins for $250,000. In addition, the university also agreed to another two settlements totaling $4.9 million to the abuse victims. Hopkins remains the university’s swim coach.

He had their back

All too often, when it comes to Title IX violations, female athletes are on their own, filing their own lawsuits against their universities, with no one to back them up. In fact, most often they face censure and backlash. San Jose’s women were grateful that their coach had their back.

“I’m so thankful for Sage Hopkins and the perseverance he showed in advocating for all student-athletes, not just his own,” Caitlin Macky said.**

And so Title IX inches forward, one step — and most often, one lawsuit — at a time.

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** Emma Edmund, “San Jose settles retaliation lawsuit, apologizes to Sage Hopkins,” swimswam.com (January 13, 2022).

* Kenny Jacoby and Rachel Axon, “San Jose State reinvestigates claims athletic trainer inappropriately touched swimmers,” USA Today (April 17, 2020).

PHOTO: Sage Hopkins speaking during a ceremony commending him for his advocacy

Hair’s to Title IX

Is hair a Title IX issue? To cousins DeAndre Arnold and Kaden Bradford it was.

In January 2020, Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, suspended the two Black students for violating the district’s dress code. Their infraction was the length of their locs.* The district’s dress code required that male students not have hair extending below their eyebrows, earlobes or tee-shirt collar.

If the boys did not cut their hair, the school said, they wouldn’t be allowed back in class. When they didn’t comply, the two were placed on in-school suspension, which Kaden says was like prison. They were confined to a room and got no instruction from teachers, leaving them to complete their studies and homework on their own. They couldn’t participate in extra-curricular activities, a huge blow to Kaden, who was in the marching band.

In addition, the school said it would bar DeAndre, a senior, from his graduation ceremony, while Kaden, a sophomore, would be indefinitely on in-school suspension.

DeAndre and Kaden filed a lawsuit, claiming discrimination under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit pointed out that the district had no such rule for female students.

It’s cultural, too

For DeAndre, the case was about both gender and race. Locs are a part of his culture and heritage, he said, as his father is from Trinidad. Both DeAndre and Kaden said they tied up their hair to comply with the dress code.

“I really wish the school would kind of be open to other cultures and just at least let us try to tell you some things,” he said. “Don’t just shut us out.”**

But the district doubled down in 2020, adding the phrase “when let down,” to the hair length policy, meaning that the boys’ hair didn’t comply even if they tied it up.

The district maintains that it can legally enforce a gender-specific dress code, and that the hair requirement for male students is just to ensure a neat appearance and doesn’t bar any particular style.

“There is no dress code policy that prohibits any cornrow or any other method of wearing of the hair,” the district’s superintendent, Greg Poole, said. “Our policy limits the length.”***

Poole even placed the dispute in the context of the civil rights movement, claiming that exempting Black students would enforce unequal treatment of Black and white students. (The district is 97 percent white, and 3 percent Black, Hispanic or other.)

Photo tell-all

But Christina Beeler, an attorney interested in the case, leafed through old Barbers Hill yearbooks and came up with photos of white students with long hair.

“White male students aren’t being held to same standard,” Beeler said. “It’s so clear that white male students and Black students are being treated differently.”†

No matter what the district says, to suspend students because of their hair is ridiculous, DeAndre’s mother said.

“It’s just hair, it’s not going to define how well they are going to do in school or how their behavior will be,” said Sandy Arnold.†† In the lawsuit, she also claimed gender discrimination, saying she was harassed after contesting the dress code.

Still with the hair!

The U.S. District Court in Houston eventually barred Barbers Hill from enforcing the hair length policy. Yet on the first day of school in 2021, the district tagged 36 high school students for hair length violations. Twenty-two of the students were white, 12 Hispanic and two “other.”

Meanwhile both DeAndre and Kaden left Barbers Hill to attend Ross S. Sterling High School in Goose Creek, Idaho. Kaden is finishing high school back at Barbers Hill, while DeAndre is at college studying to be a veterinarian. He got help with his tuition from Ellen DeGeneres and Alicia Keys, who presented him with a $20,000 check on DeGeneres’s show.

Despite the emotional and educational toll the lawsuit took on the cousins, Kaden says he’s just glad they could make a difference.

“Our main goal has always been to change the policy to where it wouldn’t discriminate against different racial groups,” he said.†††

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* The lawsuit uses the term “locs” instead of “dreadlocks,” noting that slave traders used the term “dreadlocks,” meaning “dreadful,” to refer to Africans’ hair.

** Associated Press, “Ellen DeGeneres surprises Texas teen told to cut dreadlocks with $20K for college,” The New York Post (January 31, 2020).

*** “Ellen DeGeneres.”

† Raga Justin, “Texas school district’s dreadlocks ban discriminatory, federal court rules,” The Texas Tribune (August 18,2020).

†† Tiffany Justice, “Barbers Hill ISD facing backlash once more about controversial dress code policy,” Fox News (August 25, 2021)

††† “After 2 Black students were suspended, court rules hair policy is discriminatory,” ABC13 (August 18, 2020).

PHOTO: DeAndre Arnold (l) and Kaden Bradford (r)

“We do not accept girls”

Susan Kaplowitz grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ‘60s. But her baseball loyalty didn’t lie with the Bronx Bombers. Instead, her grandmother turned her into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

When she was 10 years old, Susan learned that before each Dodgers game, a child was chosen to play catch with a player.

“I said to my Grandma and Dad, ‘Wow, I want to do that!’ she recalled. “So they sent in my application.”*

A form letter came back.

“We do not accept girls.”

“I was heartbroken,” Susan recalled. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ But the idea of equality, or fighting for equality, wasn’t on our radar yet.”

Cleanliness before competition

Susan loved sports of all kinds. But she had few opportunities to play. Girls had no recreational teams or school teams. Gym classes were separated by sex, and while the boys had a full array of sports, in the younger grades, girls classes were mainly exercise, jumping rope and marching. She says they were graded on the cleanliness and color of their sneakers and gym uniforms!

In high school, Susan finally got to play sports in gym class. In addition, the school had play days for girls. We’ve talked about “play days” before — after-school inter-scholastic events for girls. The teams were mixed between the schools and afterward the girls were made to socialize with each other. The structure of play days discouraged competition, which was thought to be unfeminine and detrimental to women’s health.

Most women I’ve talked to remember play days scornfully, but Susan welcomed them.

“I finally got to meet girls who were interested in sports,” she recalled. “We’d take buses to each other’s homes to play tennis or whatnot. It had a positive impact on me.”

When she could, Susan played with her father, a male cousin, and her brother, although he wasn’t that interested in sports. She would play anything — basketball, baseball, tennis, touch football.

But again, when she’d walk around her neighborhood and see boys playing Little League, she’d think, “Why can’t I do this?”

In the summer, Susan’s family would go to the Catskills. It was there at the Windsor Hotel that she finally got to play on a team. She practiced with the hotel’s summer softball team every day. At 11-years-old, she was five-foot-ten and strong. Everyone agreed, “She can play if she wants to play!”

Playing, kind of

The first time Susan got to play for her school was in 1962 at Hunter College, where she was on the women’s basketball, softball, tennis and field hockey teams. She was ecstatic to finally play! But the inequities weren’t erased. The women’s basketball team, for example, had to practice at 7:30 a.m., while the men got the gym in the more reasonable afternoon hours.

And although she got to play basketball, the game was ultimately unsatisfying. The college played the ancient “girls” game that had been started by Smith College’s Senda Berenson in 1892. The rules were intended to prevent “nervous exhaustion” from a game that was too strenuous for girls.

In this game, the team had just six players, and the court was divided into three sections. Players couldn’t leave their section. They couldn’t dribble more than three times before passing or shooting the ball, and they couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Guarding was forbidden and falling down was a foul. Players couldn’t grab the ball from another player.

Susan chafed under the rules.

“I loved to shoot and I couldn’t shoot!” she said. “The coach looked at my height and put me on defense, where all you did was rebound.”

Women have to make do

At Hunter, the women’s softball field was poorly maintained, while the men’s baseball team had an immaculate field. The men had varsity locker rooms, while the women used the gym class lockers. The women’s uniforms were hand-me-downs while the men’s teams had new uniforms every year. The women traveled to away games on old school buses while the men went on chartered buses.

Most disappointing of all was that women did not have athletic scholarships. Because of that, college was out of reach financially for many women. Fortunately, Hunter College was doable for Susan’s family. Hunter didn’t even charge tuition until 1963.

In my next blog post, Susan talks about how she made a life in sports with the little opportunity and encouragement she was given.

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* All quotes come from my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

PHOTO: Susan Kaplowitz with students from Rutgers University. I’ll explain later!

A walk-on wonder

It’s almost December, that dreary time between the World Series and spring training, and I’m so happy to have a baseball story for you!

Last week, Olivia Pichardo made college baseball history. The 18-year-old freshman at Brown University became the first female athlete in NCAA Division 1 history to be named to a varsity baseball roster.

Here’s how she describes finding out that she’d made the team.

“It was definitely a surreal moment for me because it’s something that I’ve wanted since eighth grade,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy to know that I’m living out my dream right now and my ideal college experience that I’ve always wanted.”*

Softball? Nope!

Olivia grew up in Queens, New York, and has been playing baseball since she was 5 years old. Her father, Max, had played street and sandlot ball in the Dominican Republic, and was equally in love with the game. He teamed up with his daughter to make her goal a reality.

She played varsity ball for Garden School in Queens and travel baseball on Long Island. She played club ball for the New York Crush and Next Level Baseball and made the Olympic Women’s National Baseball Team. She went on to intern in the New York Mets’ amateur scouting department.

Over the years, coaches and mentors pressured her to play softball, where she would undoubtedly succeed and have a secure athletic future. But Olivia pushed back.

“Each year, I would be told that the game I love would leave me behind,” Olivia said. “I just kept playing and working harder.”**

Olivia was determined to play baseball, even if it wasn’t at the D1 level. She had several offers to play college ball, but Olivia chose Brown, having no guarantee of playing. She participated in a walk-on tryout followed by an intense assessment process. Head coach Grant Achilles was impressed with her athleticism, versatility and strength as a middle infielder, outfielder and pitcher.

“Olivia put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach,” said Achilles.***

Team spirit

Olivia’s teammates have been equally as supportive. When Achilles introduced her to the team, they gave her a round of applause.

“I’m getting an overwhelming amount of support and it definitely feels very good to feel supported like this,” she said.†

Baseball For All, an organization that advocates for girls and women in baseball, keeps a list of colleges and universities that consider talented players, regardless of gender. Eight women, including Olivia, are on varsity college baseball rosters for the spring of 2023. That makes Olivia happy.

“I’m just really glad that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level. No matter what division, it’s just really good to see this progression,” she said.†† “It’s paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”

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* “At Brown, Olivia Pichardo makes history as first woman on an NCAA Division I varsity baseball team,” Brown University press release (November 21, 2022). Read about other female baseball firsts here.

** https://oliviabaseball.com

*** “At Brown.”

† Julian McWilliams, “A lofty plan by a dad and his daughter 14 years ago produced Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, the first woman on a Division 1 baseball roster,” The Boston Globe (November 22, 2022).

†† “A lofty plan.”

Stemming the bias

Title IX’s most visible impact has been in athletics, but the law dramatically changed the academic universe for women, too. Evelynn Hammonds was in the first wave of women to break through the barriers women interested in science had faced.

Born in 1953 in Atlanta, Evelynn was intrigued with science and the physical world from the very beginning.

“As a young child, I was always very interested in science,” she said. “I had all these different kinds of science kits — I had a chemistry set, I had a microscope, I had all kinds of building kits, and it just spurred in me an interest in wanting to understand how the world worked.”*

In high school, Evelynn’s interest in physics emerged. A National Merit Scholar, Hammonds attended Spelman College, where she entered a joint engineering program with Georgia Institute of Technology. She also took physics courses at Morehouse College. She graduated in 1976 with degrees in physics and electrical engineering.

Evelynn got her first chance to work in a physics lab in Bell Labs’ Summer Research Program for Women and Minorities. After graduation, she began a PhD program at MIT, but instead of finishing, went to work as a software engineer for five years. She completed her PhD at Harvard in the history of science.

Making inroads

Today, she is Professor of the History of Science and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard. She was a dean at Harvard for five years, but returned to teaching in 2021.

Women like Evelynn are paving the way for women in the sciences. Many of the degrees women seek today are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. In 1970, two years before Title IX was passed, women comprised just 8 percent of STEM workers. Today, that number is 27 percent.

But men still dominate: men make up half of all U.S. workers, but 73 percent of the STEM workforce. Engineering and computer science — two of the most lucrative STEM fields — remain heavily male. Only 21 percent of college engineering majors and 19 percent of computer science majors are women.

It’s the culture, stupid

Part of the problem is a culture that is unwelcoming, and even hostile, to women. Evelynn found that to be true as early as her college years.

“You’re in a culture where, on any given day, somebody might think you were a secretary, or a janitor, or anything but a graduate student in physics,” she said. “It was made very clear to us by some people that we didn’t fit, that we didn’t belong, that we were only there because of affirmative action, that we could never be successful. We were constantly finding those attitudes.”**

Because of that, Evelynn authored her first published paper as E.M. Hammond, so people couldn’t tell she was a woman or African American. She was following in a long line of female scientists who have had to fight for recognition. Women in earlier generations had always been victims of the culture.

“I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin,” said Nancy Grace Roman, the first female executive at NASA. “She looked down her nose at me and sneered, ‘What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?’”***

What’s to be done

Evelynn and others are working to erase the hurdles that still exist for women in STEM fields. Some possible fixes: universities should diversify their faculty and courses should teach social issues, journals should reject research that doesn’t consider gender and sex, and Title IX should be used as a lever to force institutions to comply.

“We’ve fought our fight as my generation, but we’re going to have to keep fighting for a while,” she said.† “We have a lot of work to do. The attitudes and the culture haven’t changed as much as they absolutely have to.”

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* Jennifer Berglund, “Challenges and Change for Women of Color in Science – A Conversation with Evelyn Hammonds, Chair and Professor of the History of Science,” Harvard Museum of Sciences and Culture (August 20, 2020).

** Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, “Women in STEM need more than a law,” Harvard Gazette (June 20, 2022).

*** Report: “The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics,” American Association of University Women. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018) is known as the “Mother of the Hubble Telescope” for her role in planning the telescope.

† “Challenges and Change” and “Women in STEM.”

Can Title IX curb hazing?

In a lawsuit wending its way through the courts, a college student’s grieving parents are testing Title IX as it applies to hazing deaths on college campuses.

In 2017, Max Gruver entered Louisiana State University, declaring a communications major. The 18-year-old from Roswell, Georgia, wanted to be a sports journalist. He had published almost 400 sports articles while in high school.

Max decided to rush Phi Delta Theta. It was a small fraternity Max thought might give him the opportunity to move into a leadership role.

Alcohol-fueled night

On the night of September 13, 2017, Max participated in a hazing ritual called “Bible study.” In this ritual, pledges must chug 190-proof liquor for giving wrong answers to questions about the fraternity or incorrectly reciting the Greek alphabet. Max died the next morning from alcohol poisoning.

At the time of Max’s death, he had a 0.495 percent blood alcohol level. That’s more than six times the legal limit in Louisiana. He also had THC in his system, a chemical found in marijuana.

The Gruvers filed a lawsuit in 2018 against LSU, Phi Delta Theta and several members of the fraternity, seeking $25 million in damages.

Gender bias in reverse

Here’s where Title IX comes in. The suit claimed that LSU discriminates against men by policing sorority hazing more strictly than fraternity hazing. Specifically, the suit claimed that LSU imposed greater sanctions on sororities than those imposed on fraternities, even though the women’s rituals are non-life-threatening.

Max’s parents claim that fraternities’ practice of hazing is based on outdated stereotypes of men, exposing them to a greater risk of hazing death. They point out that the school distributes glossy brochures promoting the benefits of Greek life without mentioning any risks.

The fraternity and five fraternity members settled with the Gruvers. One fraternity member, Matthew Naquin, was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to five years in jail. Witnesses testified at Naquin’s trial that he didn’t like Max, wanted him cut from the fraternity and played a central role in the hazing. He went to jail in January 2020. But 2.5 years of his sentence were suspended, and due to good behavior, he was released in April 2020, after less than three months in jail.

Phi Delta Theta has been banned from LSU’s campus until at least 2033, but the university is a holdout. It pressed a countersuit up the legal chain, but an appeals court ruled that because the university accepts federal funding, it isn’t immune from hazing lawsuits. And in December 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected LSU’s request to hear arguments.

“This ruling means that a school can face liability for violating Title IX if it disregards or minimizes reports of Greek male hazing,” said Jon Fazzola, an attorney for the family. “In doing so, it creates a greater risk of danger for males compared to females in Greek life.”*

Stopping the rituals

A trial has not yet been scheduled. But in 2018, Louisiana’s governor signed into law the Max Gruver Act and other anti-hazing bills.

The Gruvers created a foundation in Max’s name and are working to stop murderous hazing rituals. Since 1838, they say, more than 200 American university students have died from hazing. Max was one of four young men to die from fraternity hazing in 2017 alone.

“We don’t want to live in what happened to Max at the end, but at the same time, we want to change things for other young kids,” his parents have said. We don’t want this happening to another family.”**

I hope the Gruver family is successful in its pursuit. I remember clearly the death of Timothy Piazza that same year, a Penn State student who died from alcohol-fueled fraternity hazing. Whether redress comes through Title IX or some other path, we all want to know that we can safely send our students to college.

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* Betsy Butler, “What This Title IX Case about Hazing Means for Women on Campus,” Ms. Magazine (August 19, 2019).

** Natalie Anderson, “The Hazing Edition: Remembering Max Gruver,” the LSU Reveille (September 11, 2018).

Title IX gets failing grade

Earlier this year, the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism teamed up with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland to assess the level of Title IX compliance at the high school level when it comes to sports.

Their four-month study raises concern for the 3.4 million high school girls playing sports in the 23,882 public high schools across the United States.* This is what they found:

It’s mostly up to teens and their parents to report violations of the law. State and federal governments don’t actively police Title IX.
But students and their parents don’t know much about the law. Many don’t even know it exists! Schools aren’t required to offer education about Title IX and sports.
Reporting Title IX violations can have grave consequences for teens and their parents. It means standing up to coaches, teachers and principals who have a lot of power over a student’s academic and athletic life.
Seeking Title IX relief is cumbersome and plays out over a long period of time. The study showed that, on average, two years elapses between reporting a violation and getting to a resolution. Girls who suffer unequal treatment often graduate before they see results.

What’s really sad is that girls — and even parents — are conditioned to accept unequal treatment.

“Most of these athletes just presume that there must be a reason that they’re getting second-class treatment,” said three-time Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group. “It’s everywhere they look. They see that men are getting more than women everywhere. In high school, in junior high school, in college, men are getting more.”

Access doesn’t equal equality

There’s no question that girls’ participation has increased exponentially since Title IX was enacted in 1972. That year, just 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. Today, about two in five do.**

But that doesn’t mean that treatment of female athletes has advanced at the same rate. In many cases, girls might still have less-equipped locker rooms, or no locker rooms at all. Their uniforms might not be as nice as the boys uniforms. They might play on neglected and dangerous fields, if they have their own fields at all. Their coaches might not be as experienced as the boys coaches, and their practice times might be scheduled around the prime time the boys get. They might get less publicity in their school’s athletics reporting.

Why the silence?

So why don’t more people speak out? I don’t know about you, but I remember my son’s high school baseball years. If you saw something you thought was wrong — like the coach’s son getting more playing time than anyone else’s son! — you didn’t want to say anything, because you didn’t want to jeopardize any chance your child did have of playing.

Plus, the high school years are stressful enough for parents, without adding in a Title IX dispute, and possibly a lawsuit. That’s what a group of parents found when they brought a lawsuit against the Stillwater, Oklahoma, school district for the unequal treatment of their softball-playing daughters.***

“It’s been quite an emotional toll. I think we’ve all lost sleep over it,” said Angela Morgan, a plaintiff in the case.

Step up to the plate

So, here we are, beginning the next 50 years of Title IX, and in many ways, girls are no better off than they were.

“We still estimate that the majority of schools are likely out of compliance with the law,” said Sarah Axelson, vice president of advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Let’s hope that going forward, more brave families are willing to step forward to erase the continuing disparities female athletes face in their high school years. More importantly, let’s hope that state and federal entities step up their enforcement efforts.

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* Jacob Richman and Alexandra Gopin, “Title IX at 50: Girls are still fighting for equality in high school sports,” Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland (April 22, 2022). All quotes in this post come from the press release reporting the results of the survey.

** “50 years of Title IX: We’re Not Done Yet” (May 2022)

*** The lawsuit was settled in September 2021. Details are provided in Michelle Charles, “Stillwater superintendent meets with softball parents after Title IX suit settled,” Stillwater News Press (September 8, 2021).

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.

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* 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).

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.

_________________________

* 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)