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ASU Athletics Department at head of pack; still
expanding with Title IX
Chris Boyce - Sports Beat
No piece of legislation has had as great an impact on women’s
collegiate athletics as Title IX, passed in 1972 as part of the Education
Amendments of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The amendment addressed gender equality in education stating that no
person based upon gender can be discriminated against in any educational
program receiving federal assistance.
The legislation made an immediate impact on women’s athletics,
both on the collegiate and high-school level.
According to NCAA statistics, women’s athletics rose from 32,000
participants in 1971 to 64,000 participants by 1977.
As colleges around the country scrambled to fulfill the requirements
of Title IX, few schools found themselves in the fortunate situation
officials at Appalachian State University did.
Mountaineer athletics introduced its first of two women’s athletic
programs in 1969.
Field hockey, considered by some the “grandmother of Appalachian
sports,” became the school’s first women’s athletic program
to receive funding for scholarships in the fall of 1969.
Appalachian State volleyball came next, and the Mountaineer women’s
basketball program was introduced soon afterwards in the winter of 1969,
beginning its first year of play in the 1970-1971 season.
Although the earliest Mountaineer women’s sports were several years
ahead of Title IX, they were funded on a very limited budget, said Appalachian
State athletics director Roachel Laney.
But an advantage was gained for Mountaineer athletics in its conference
because of the early start.
“That put us so far ahead of other Southern Conference programs
because we started funding early, before we were required to, so we
got out ahead of a lot of people,” said Laney. “When other
institutions were struggling to add sports we didn’t have to, because
we already had them.”
Track and field, and cross-country were the next Mountaineer women’s
sports to be introduced in the late 1970s.
Golf and tennis became the university’s seventh and eighth women’s
athletic programs, with women’s soccer in 1995, and softball in
2001 becoming the ninth and 10th women’s varsity sports, respectively.
Women’s soccer was part of another Title IX push experienced by
collegiate and high school athletics in the early to mid-1990s and was
implemented because of a large response from prospective students.
“The law tells you that you’ve got to look out for the interests
of those that would want to come to your university,” said assistant
athletics director/ senior woman administrator Debbie Richardson.
During that time, Richardson said Mountaineer athletics used the North
Carolina High School Athletic Association’s report which indicated
the sports offerings and what percentage of athletes play those particular
sports.
Both soccer and softball appeared on the report as popular women’s
sports that Appalachian State did not have.
It wasn’t in fact the first time softball had made an appearance
at Appalachian State University. Slow-pitch softball existed at Appalachian
State in the early 1980s but was dropped because the NCAA didn’t
recognize it as a varsity sport.
Once fast-pitch softball was recognized at the high-school level, Appalachian
State began efforts to assemble a program.
The legal ramifications of Title IX were simple to understand but harder
to implement. The law touched upon several issues including financial
assistance in regards to athletic programs and equivalent treatment
and benefits.
Title IX required the total amount of athletic financial assistance
awarded to both men and women must be proportionate to their athletic
program participation rates.
In addition, the law asked for equivalent but not identical benefits,
opportunities and treatment.
According to Appalachian State’s Gender Equity reports, Appalachian
female athletic participation has increased in the last three years.
There were 133 female participants constituting 30.3 percent of total
athletic participation in the 1997-1998 school year.
The percentage went up to 33.3 percent in 1998-1999 and last year was
at 34.6 percent participation. The percentage of operating expenses
that women’s athletics held rose from 32 percent to 33.5 percent
from the 1997-1998 school year to the 1998-1999 year but then dropped
to 26 percent in the 1999-2000 season.
Spending on men’s athletics in 1999-2000 increased $207,815 from
1998-1999 whereas spending on women’s athletics also increased
by $9,565 during the same time period.
The drop-off in the percentage of women’s athletics operating expenditures
in the 1999-2000 season was due to large athletic expenses from Appalachian
State football’s trip to Auburn, in addition to a $40,000 expense
on video equipment, said Richardson.
Also, the Appalachian State men’s basketball team had expenses
from its trip to the NCAA Tournament, including three airline flights
during its season.
Richardson said the large expenses that season were unexpected, and
the big drop in the percentage of women’s athletic operating expense
was addressed in a self-study for athletic certification.
ASU moves forward;
prepares for the Citadel
James Nix - Sports Beat
The Appalachian State University
football team will return to the field Saturday after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left the sports world
in a frenzy of cancellations.
The Mountaineers will kick off against The Citadel Saturday at 4 p.m.
in Charleston, S.C.
Appalachian was scheduled to travel to Troy (Ala.) State University last
weekend, but after much confusion, the game was finally cancelled.
It still seemed very likely for the game against the Trojans to go on
early last week.
However, after Major League Baseball and the National Football League,
along with several major college football conferences, decided to cancel,
ASU and Troy State did the same.
The team learned the game was cancelled about 30 minutes before they were
going to get on the bus to go to Troy State.
Moore said he feels the cancellations last weekend were the right thing
to do. Appalachian State, however, would still have gone to Troy State,
even in the midst of the chaos.
“If we’re going to play, I want us to play at our very best
regardless,” said Moore.
The Mountaineers have dealt with the tragedies in New York and Washington
pretty well, said Moore. No one on the team was directly affected by it.
“We all recognize the terror of it,” said Moore. “After
that, everyone handles it their own way.”
As of now, the Troy State game will not be made up, according to Moore.
If an opportunity arises, then the game will be played, but that looks
unlikely right now.
Now the team is faced with the challenge of getting back to normal.
“I keep hearing the words ‘get back to normal’,” said
Moore. “Well, I don’t think any of us are going to get back
to ‘normal.’
“I think we try to get all four wheels back on the ground and rolling
in the same direction again, but things aren’t going to be at normal
for a long, long time.”
Appalachian’s game against The Citadel Saturday should be a step
in establishing some sense of normalcy.
“If sports is a part of getting back to normal or getting us pointed
in the right direction, then God bless it,” said Moore.
The Mountaineers have not lost to the Bulldogs since 1993. However, Moore
still has great respect for the team.
“They’ve always been a team that has played hard,” said
Moore.
“Their kids give great effort, and I don’t see that changing.”
The Citadel has only played one game this season. The team lost 35-7 to
the Georgia Institute of Technology (Ga. Tech).
This is The Citadel head coach Ellis Johnson’s first year with the
Bulldogs. Johnson spent the last four years as the defensive coordinator
at the University of Alabama. Before that, Johnson was the defensive coordinator
for Clemson University.
Johnson graduated from The Citadel in 1975.
“He’s been around awfully good programs,” said Moore. “He’s
obviously a very good football coach.
Another step to get things rolling in the right direction is practice,
and the team had great practices this week, said Moore.
Moore said he feels one of his jobs as coach is to get things back in
the right order.
“I’m not sure if that isn’t the hardest part of my job
right now.”
File Photo
Last season marked the seventh consecutive
victory over the Bulldogs for Jerry Beard (34) and ASU.
Cross country
gears up for 2001 Great American Cross Country Festival
Andy Morris - Sports Beat
The Appalachian State University cross country team will travel to Winthrop
University for the 2001 Great American Cross Country Festival this weekend.
The event was originally scheduled for last weekend, but the tragic events
in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania caused the postponement.
Located in Rock Hill, S.C., the Winthrop Farm Meadows will host the event,
which includes 670 teams and over 5,000 athletes.
The festival is a massive cross-country event involving teams from all
across the United States, Canada and Great Britain.
Twenty-three races will be conducted, ranging from high school junior
varsity races to collegiate races.
Assistant coach Ben Bissette, recent ASU grad and former Appalachian cross
country runner, said the team was not originally scheduled to compete
in the festival, but due to the cancellation of last week’s Winthrop
Invitational, the team members decided to compete.
“We didn’t want to take a whole month off,” he said. “We
wanted to get another race in.”
The collegiate races, both men’s and women’s, will take place
Friday evening against more than 30 teams.
Many Atlantic Coast Conference runners and other teams from the Carolinas
and Virginia will compete.
Runners from the University of Michigan, the United States Naval Academy,
University of Arkansas, Brigham Young University and Yale University will
also compete in the race.
Head coach Mike Curcio said the number and quality of teams changes the
focus behind the festival.
“It’s definitely an event and more than just a race,” he
said.
“It gives us the opportunity to race against the finest collegiate
athletes and could have regional or national implications for some of
the teams here.”
“It is such a huge meet,” Bissette said. “The number of
teams will make the race more competitive, and it will give us a chance
to see how we can do against national teams. It’s almost a pre-Nationals
meet.”
Curcio expects the men’s team to finish around the top 10 and the
women’s team to place within the top-15 teams.
“The women’s race has more nationally ranked teams, while the
men’s race has a lot of regionally ranked teams,” Curcio said.
Curcio said they will face tough competition this weekend and the frame
of mind for the race will be different.
A typical cross country race focuses on beating individual people and
getting the most people from a team to cross the finish line first. But
due to the large number of runners competing in the race, it will be more
of a race against time.
“You just try to run fast and then see what your score is,”
Curcio said.
With Appalachian’s last race on Aug. 31, the festival will provide
the team a chance to see if their current training routine has been beneficial.
“I’m very interested in seeing where we are at in our training,”
Curcio said.
The inclusion of high-school races with the collegiate races provides
the Mountaineers with the chance to talk to younger runners about Appalachian.
“Anytime we can run in front of high-school runners, it is a recruiting
opportunity,” Curcio said. “It gives us a chance to show our
stuff in front of family, friends and recruits.
“It is definitely a positive.”
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