EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
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Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 says: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in all federally assisted education programs, which means nearly all high schools and colleges, since most receive some federal funds." As 7-year-old Miki Ratsula of North Tustin confidently dribbled a soccer ball along a walkway, en route to a photo shoot, she was the picture of the future. True, little girls have been able to dribble a ball forever. But in America today, young athletes like Miki have a place to play – in her case AYSO – and a possible brass ring that could place her among elite collegians – an athletic scholarship. Title IX is responsible: It’s a 34-year-old federal education amendment requiring equal opportunity that has now nurtured a first generation of women student-athletes, that fills colleges and universities with a second generation, and that has packed the fields and gyms with a third generation of girls like Miki. If sport is everything it is supposed to be – fulfilling a person physically and emotionally, the lessons of fair play, of beating odds, and of reaching potential as an individual and a leader – then Title IX can be nothing short of what it is, a miracle. Little more than three decades has helped shape an American woman who is more capable in decision-making, more competitive, with a permanently altered self-image. For whether or not young female athletes earn scholarships worth $100,000 or more, they have seen a glass ceiling shattered before their eyes. “You Go, Girl!” would not be a refrain without Title IX. Back then, in 1972... She could not have realized it, but Cinda Churm was on the front lines. She was a freshman at the University of Arizona. A graduate of Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, Churm had been a top swimmer and national competitor in high school but had decided not to swim in college, taking up gymnastics instead. She had attended high school at a time when only 1% of varsity sports were open to girls. Late that year, a coach approached Churm about joining the women’s swim team. The coach said the University of Arizona would pay Churm’s tuition. It had to do with Congress passing a law that opened up huge opportunities for women athletes. “It was a given boys would get the college scholarships,” says Churm, 51, of Irvine, who was among the first women college athletes to receive one, thanks to Title IX. “I was right there, and really, I was a much better swimmer than a gymnast, so I started swimming again.” Churm turned her athletic and academic abilities into a successful career as a public school health and physical education teacher. She believes her participation in sports helped her succeed in many ways. “I was very disciplined and organized in my life because I had to be. I came home and did my homework because I had to train. I did well in school and I did well in swimming.” Churm’s oldest daughter has followed in her mother’s footsteps and learned the same positive lessons in life. Katie Churm, 20, is a junior at Iowa State University on a volleyball scholarship. Katie, a graduate of Northwood High School in Irvine, was active in sports all her life, and she always aspired to play at the college level. Playing collegiate sports is a grind, a full-time, physically draining job on top of full-time, time-consuming schoolwork. Katie gets to turn to someone who has already been there – her mom. UCI and higher education Angie Ned, 20, a junior forward on UC Irvine’s women’s basketball team and a graduate of Perris High in Moreno Valley, does not minimize the trailblazing that has come before her. Neither does Kelly Cochran, 18, a 6-foot freshman. “The fight for (Title IX) is something that is always talked about,” Ned says. Her message: “Keep working hard, and believe in yourself. Take the right steps and…always be grateful.” Cochran knows that Title IX has “pushed females into sports, knowing that opportunity is there. We have this bond, being one of the earlier generations. We definitely appreciate it.” Thousands of girls have learned discipline and other positive life skills in early sports experiences that help them succeed first in college, then in an increasingly competitive world. Most importantly, since there remains few outlets for college women to become professional athletes, it has opened wide the option of higher education. In 1971, only 18% of all women – compared with 26% of men – had completed four or more years of college. This education gap is gone; women now represent slightly over half of all college students in America. By next year, women are projected to earn 55% of all bachelor’s degrees. Women also earn the majority of master’s degrees. The old attitudes that girls aren’t suited for sports – or college – have vanished. Consider this bit of anachronistic thinking: The year before Title IX passed, a Connecticut judge who ruled to disallow girls from competing on a boys’ high school cross country team even though there was no girls’ team at the school, said, “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls.” “It’s a good experience, you meet new people and it makes you try to accomplish something,” says Amanda Myers, 17, a varsity softball player at Riverside Poly High School in Riverside. The shortstop will attend Texas Tech University next fall on a softball scholarship – an educational opportunity she said she doubts she would get without her success in a sport. Research studies have found many wide-ranging benefits for girls in athletics, from greater academic and career success to lower instances of drug use, cigarette smoking and early pregnancy, according to the National Women’s Law Center. “In studies I did many years ago, I found that women leaders tended to be those who had participated in sports when they were young,” says Dr. Judy B. Rosener, a professor at UC Irvine who researches the areas of women and men at work. “Sounds reasonable: They have learned to be competitive, graceful losers, they gain self-esteem, know how to interact as a team, and they know that success is never final and failure is never fatal.” Alexandra Koran is a senior varsity water polo player and top student with a 4.44 gpa at Tustin High School. The 17-year-old has been invited to play water polo next year at UC Irvine, but she also has an opportunity to apply to Stanford University. “It always was a dream for me to attend Stanford,” says Alexandra, who learned how to swim competitively the summer before she started high school and has been a varsity water polo player since her sophomore year. Alexandra believes girls should participate in sports. Academics are important, she says, but “it’s the sport that gives the extra passion to your life. It’s such a growing experience. You make friends for life.” Grace Reynolds, 18, a senior at Foothill High School in Santa Ana and a varsity water polo player who will attend UC Berkeley next year on scholarship, says she also has made many close friends through participating in athletics. “It’s the camaraderie that really matters. It’s not just the individual, it’s the whole team.” A story of change Numbers and statistics tell a compelling story: In 1971, fewer than 300,000 girls participated in varsity athletics in high school, comprising 1% of all high school varsity athletes. At the college level before Title IX, fewer than 32,000 women competed in athletics; female college athletes received only 2% of overall athletic budgets. Athletic scholarships for women were virtually nonexistent, according to the Women’s Educational Equity Act Equity Resource Center in Massachusetts. Now, of the approximately 375,000 athletes competing on NCAA teams, about 43%, or 161,250 players, are women, says the NCAA. In 2003-2004, the average NCAA institution sponsored 17 sports teams, eight men’s and nine women’s. The trend in the NCAA has been toward adding more women’s teams and reducing men’s. In 2003-2004, for instance, the NCAA added 142 women’s sports teams and 119 men’s. The result of NCAA schools adding and dropping teams that year was a net gain of 57 women’s teams and a net loss of nine men’s teams. “It’s the camaraderie that really matters. It’s not just the individual, it’s the whole team.” – Grace Reynolds of Foothill High School Achieving equal opportunity for women in intercollegiate sports has not been easy. Some colleges complain about dropping men’s teams, and a gender disparity in spending remains, in large part because of enormous football programs. And in January, Division I delegates voted to rescind an NCAA plan to add a scholarship in women’s volleyball and two each in gymnastics and track and field. Only soccer got an addition of two scholarships. More than half of high school and college students are female, but female athletes still receive about 36% of all sports operating expenditures, 42% of all college athletic scholarship money and 32% of all college athlete recruitment spending, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. While football remains a typical campus’s sacred cow, the program does tremendous good. With football’s high profits, most every other sports program benefits. Remove football from the equation and women are almost on equal financial footing. Today, women receive more than $180 million each year in athletic scholarships, the Women’s Sports Foundation reports. The soccer field Soccer has especially emerged as a favorite sport among girls and women. A 1999 study by the Soccer Industry Council of America found that one-third of the 18 million soccer players in America are girls under 18. Soccer is a preferred sport for college women too. According to the NCAA, since 1999, soccer has been the college sport with the highest number of female participants, followed by softball, basketball, volleyball, cross country, swimming and diving, and tennis. Since 1988, 551 new women’s soccer teams from NCAA member institutions have joined the NCAA. (Title IX has diminished men’s participation in some sports as colleges have evened the playing fields. These include wrestling and volleyball.) Simon Davies, the women’s coach at Irvine Valley College, explains the sport’s appeal to girls this way: “Soccer is perfectly suit ed to anybody that wants to play. You don’t have to be big to play it, it’s a cheap sport, and you have a good time playing it.” The players on the U.S. women’s national soccer team became pop icons when they captured the 1999 World Cup at the Rose Bowl in front of a worldwide television audience of 1 billion viewers. The players made the covers of Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and People magazines, and the team won Sports Illustrated’s 1999 Sportsmen of the Year Award, as well as being named ESPN’s Team of the Year. This is a team that, in part, grew up on Orange County’s youth soccer fields (think Julie Foudy of Mission Viejo and Joy Fawcett of Foothill Ranch), in a sport new to girls. Title IX allowed them to fine-tune their talents; those girls were the women who won the World Cup. Now that women have more chances to participate in the Olympics, world championships and professional leagues, they have shown they are fully capable of being as successful in high-level sports as men. Consider athletes such as soccer’s Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain, volleyball’s Misty May, basketball’s Sheryl Swoopes and tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams. A fast-growing, high-profile sport is volleyball, says Dennis Steers of San Luis Obispo, co-publisher of Dig magazine, a beach volleyball publication. Steers says that in the past two years, women’s beach volleyball has eclipsed the men in popularity, with women’s games drawing huge television ratings, thanks in large part to Orange County’s Misty May and her teammate, Kerri Walsh. “Women are able to play it at a very high level. It’s a sport women can excel in and not suffer the comparisons to men,” Steers says. He also notes that since the passage of Title IX, almost every university offers 12 indoor volleyball scholarships for women; there are only about 20 men’s scholarshiped volleyball teams remaining in the NCAA’s Division I. “Obviously, Title IX opened the doors,” says Steers. “The opportunities out there in just volleyball for women are tenfold what they are for boys.” To Iowa State Three years ago, former collegiate groundbreaker Cinda Churm bid a tearful goodbye to her then-freshman athlete, Katie, who was ready for her first class at Iowa State, and her first match with the Cyclones. Katie’s goal took her to the college in Ames, a small Midwestern farming town that loves its student-athletes. Katie says she enjoys traveling to several states each season for games and visiting towns she never envisioned she’d get to see. She and her teammates are recognized around campus and have become role models to scores of young girls who visit with the team. The experience has been a big boost to Katie’s confidence and drive to succeed. “Growing up, I’d go to a UCLA volleyball game and those players were my role models,” she says. “Now, students look up to me and recognize me on campus and from the newspapers. It’s made me more outgoing.” A commitment to sports, Katie Churm says, “has kept me structured and disciplined. I’ve learned to be team-oriented. ” As for little Miki Ratsula, the soccer player in the photo shoot with UCI’s Ned and Cochran, it is a given that today she looks up at the basketball stars. It is also a possibility that in a few years, she will be looking down into the eyes of another young athlete, just waiting her turn. Amy Bentley is a Temecula-based writer and regular contributor. Executive Editor Craig Reem contributed to this report. GOOD SPORTS To the boardroom! For the working woman (and that includes mom), competition in sports has been a signal to success. That is the key finding in a nationwide study of women, business and sports released by MassMutual Financial Group in 2002. Of successful women business executives, 81% played organized team sports while growing up. And, of the 401 women surveyed, some 297 (74%) have children. Nearly all of them (96%) said they would promote sports involvement with their daughter as much as with their son. Also, for those women who played competitive sports after grade school…: • 86% say sports helped them to more disciplined. • 81% say sports helped them function better as part of a team. • 69% say sports helped them develop leadership skills that contributed to their professional success. • 68% say sports helped them deal with failure. • 59% say sports gave them a competitive edge over others. As the survey noted: “For women, the road to the boardroom may well lead through the locker room.” IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU Help, don’t hinder, your young athlete By Craig Reem An evocative new book on guiding amateur athletes has been written by a pair of sports psychologists. And, while it may be a tough read for parents who seem to know exactly how to chart their young athlete’s career, it’s a must-read in any event. “Whose Game Is It, Anyway?” is written by Drs. Richard D. Ginsburg and Stephen Durant, along with former Olympic athlete Amy Baltzell. The authors focus deeply on three strategies, equal in weight: Know your child; know yourself; know your child’s environment. The book is organized into age groups and stages. Potential challenges that are addressed include parental pressure; losing teams; use of food supplements and steroids; relationships with coaches; and quitting/burning out. Here are general tips from the authors, broken into age groups. Additional comment from OC Family Magazine appears in parentheses: The early years – birth to 6 • Introduce sports and physical activities in a safe and enjoyable environment. (Seek out teams in which there is no scoring to avoid early conflict with a win-at-all-costs attitude and pressure.) • Teach the new sport first at home. (This way, the child isn’t learning how to catch or kick a ball for the first time among children who already have the knack.) • Introduce yourself and your child to new coaches at the beginning of the season. Concerns? Raise them then. • If your child is unhappy with the chosen sport, have an exit strategy early in the game. • Don’t read too much into your child’s abilities at this age. (Superman may become average as other children catch up, or the child with hand-eye coordination challenges may awake one day ready to stand out.) Elementary years – 6-12 • Don’t let your child suffer alone. (If he’s in the front yard, crying, after a game-ending strikeout, go and be with him.) • Keep the balance between organized sports and free, unstructured play. • Create quiet time for your child. (This may force you to consider avoiding sports that, even at these early ages, require five-day-a-week practices; football tends to be the biggest consideration.) • Create positive post-game rituals. • Try for a 5:1 ratio of accurate praise to constructive criticism; avoid all criticism for at least an hour after a game. • Focus on instances when the young athlete perseveres, overcomes adversity, demonstrates discipline, courage, responsibility, camaraderie and good sportsmanship. The teen years – 13-18 At this age, they still need parental help and support. Find great coaches to play for. A love of playing is the fuel for hard work and ongoing success needed to perform at the highest levels in sports. (Remember the exit strategy of some years earlier. At no age should an athlete play a sport because dad says so.) Quitting isn’t always a copout. Only 2%, or less, of adolescent athletes will receive college scholarships or play Division I. (This may be the best wakeup call for a parent who is determined that the athlete succeed; success in high school may still fall way short of the next step, if the scholarship is the goal. Consider the costs of building a scholarshiped athlete. With club team costs, showcases, camps, tournament fees and private lessons, you could end up spending a like amount.) |
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