GREYTOPS

“Greytops” Originally posted 2/27/2011
I am a 58 year old woman with a love for athletic endeavors of all types. I sit today in the stands at the Classic Softball Tournament in Cathedral City CA. Yesterday’s unsettled weather left several inches of snow on the distant mountains, and today’s sunny weather will warm the faces of thousands of spectators like me who have come to watch the athletic prowess of hundreds of female collegiate athletes gracefully and skillfully executing plays at their chosen sport of softball. The snowy peaks in the background will send a cooling breeze over the participants as they entertain us and grind out the game on the many fields at this fantastic venue. I contemplate that God has graced each of us lucky enough to be here at this time, in this place. The players are gifted with youth and strength. The family and friends who have come miles to watch have been given a beautiful day to see a game they love, played by young women for whom they have willingly sacrificed so much but in whom they vest their legacy of hopes and dreams. But on a larger, more profound scale, the grace of God has made this moment possible. For like the Greytop mountains in the distance that grace this setting, we Greytop attendees look down in love and support. With the majestic mountains as the backdrop, we see these fields bedecked with sparkling young female athletes as the realization of what was perhaps a glimmer of hope in our youth. And with wisdom and grace, we offer them our support and pass the torch to them to continue to forge new and exciting opportunities for their daughters and granddaughters.

In my youth, I was an athlete. Among the organized sports available to girls in my high school (and we were called girls in high school) was softball, a sport at which I found I excelled. By Senior year, I was lucky enough to be named Co-Captain of MY high school’s softball team, and I was surrounded by talented, graceful, enthusiastic girls who were eager to play. Our parents were not on the sidelines, and since one teammate had a VW Van, she became our team shuttle and parents did not even have to arrive to provide transportation home for us. Needless to say, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, neighbors and friends were not on the sidelines either. I cannot say that our town was not sports-minded, though. Saturdays in Fall all those same parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors and friends of football players were in the stands at our high school football stadium. Once Thanksgiving came and put an end to football because the New England snow fell, those same fans found their way on Friday nights to basketball games in our high school gymnasium. The difference, of course, was that in the 1960s and 1970s in my small New England hometown, it was boys’ sports that attracted townspeople to games. I never thought about this disparity regarding parental and general attendance at girls’ versus boys’ games. Whether it was field hockey, cross country, basketball or softball, there were few spectators at the girls’ sporting events at our high school, or at any that we visited in our league. Yet the thought really never entered my mind that there was an inequity in our programs.

As I look back today, I follow the money and find the reasoning behind the silent dance we daughters of the 1950s and 1960s danced when we entered the realm of athletics. It is a dance that was danced from San Diego CA to Sanford ME, with objection from neither mother nor daughter. There was no allocation of resources at the high school level. We wore bloomers taken from a bucket left behind by last year’s girls. We used the hand-me-down basketballs from the boys’ Phys Ed classes (which we called Gym Classes). To create opposing teams, we wore red or blue “pinnies” – essentially (and probably not coincidentally) the top halves of “pinafore” aprons. We had access to the gym and to the fields only when the boys were through with them. We were not an “organized sport” as we would see today. No feeder system such as Little League or Pee Wee existed. No after-high-school system such as American Legion awaited us. And certainly, there was no professional softball league for women sending scouts to our cities and towns to find players committed to excellence and gifted with talent.

A little research showed me how funding equality had actually begun, as were so many women’s initiatives, during World War II. In 1943, Phillip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, established the All-American Girls Softball League, the forerunner of the All-American Girls Baseball League (AAGBL). http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/timelne3.htm. In fact, there are notable benchmarks in the timeline of the “History of Women in Sports” which provide bold reminders of human pursuit in the evolution of women’s sports.


Challenges: • 1900 - Physical Education instructors strongly oppose competition among women, fearing it will make them less feminine.

Greatness: • 1950 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias is named “Women Athlete of the Half Century” by an AP poll for her outstanding performances in golf, basketball, baseball, javelin, tennis, diving, bowling, 80 meter hurdles, shot-put, high jump & discus. She won $14,800 during the LPGA's first season, a record one-year amount.

Recognition: • 1980 - The Women's Sports Foundation establishes the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

Universality: • 2011 - Yani Tseng, 22, from Taiwan, becomes the youngest player - male or female - in the history of golf to capture a fifth major title with her win at the Women's British Open.
• 2011 - 21-year old South Korean So Yeon Ryu wins the U.S. Women's Open, defeating Hee Kyung Seo by three shots in a three-hole playoff, to become the fifth Korean to win.

Timelessness: • 2011 - On her third attempt since 2008, 60-year-old Pat Gallant-Charette from Westbrook, Maine swims across the English Channel in less than 16 hours. She is now the oldest American woman to swim the English Channel.

Most notable, however, was the transformational legislation called “Title IV:” • 1972 - Congress passes Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. “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 education program or activities receiving Federal financial assistance.” Title IX, renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002 in honor of its principal author Congresswoman Mink, has had a rocky history. In a 1984 Supreme Court Grove City College vs. Bell, the application of Title IX was denied to non-federally funded sub-units of educational institutions such as college departments of physical education and athletics. (It is worth noting, however, that in 1984 1.8 million girls participated in high school sports versus 817,000 in 1972). In 1988, over President Ronald Regan’s veto, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which prohibited sex discriminations throughout educational institutions receiving federal funds, and effectively restored Title IX. The most recent piece of Title IX legislation is the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act of 1994, requiring federally-assisted higher education institutions to annually disclose information on roster sizes for men’s and women’s teams, as well as budgets for recruiting, scholarships, coaches’ salaries, and other related expenses.

Title IV will turn 40 in 2012. Thanks to supporters and participants, its success is codified in America, and its effects have been replicated around the world. But has equity been achieved in the numbers? The participant counts? The funding dollars? One answer to that question was given in Potsdam NY at the 35th anniversary event of Title IX “Breaking Barriers...Building Bridges...Expanding Opportunities...Celebrating Success!” Mitzi Witchger, a gender equity consultant advocating for equitable sports opportunities for girls as well as for boys, spoke at that conference as an advocate who had been with the cause since its inception, as her interest in sports equity began when her daughter was born in 1973, the year after Title IX became law. Her work as a chapter president and featured writer for the American Association of University Women, as well as founder of GREAT! Girls Really Expect A Team! had exposed her to the constraints, challenges, attitudes and opportunities for youth involved in sports, especially females who want to be athletes. She had spent 35 years working with students, parents, interested community members and administrators to address Title IX athletics compliance issues in educational institutions across the country, and had seen basketball, soccer, softball, badminton, volleyball, synchronized swimming, lacrosse, speedskating, equestrian, and Nordic skiing improved for females. In her speech entitled "Title IX at 40: In it for the Long Run," she said, "Thirty five years ago.... that's nearly 9 generations of students who have matriculated in school since then…thirty five years ago.... one in 27 females participated in high school sports. Today, about one in 3 does. For every 2 high school boys in 1972, one played a sport. That number remains the same today. Female participation in actual numbers in high school sports improved from 294,000 in 1971 to 2.8 million in 2002. According to the National Collegiate Athletics Association, the number of women participating in sports prior to 1971 totaled just fewer than 30,000. More than three decades later, that figure has skyrocketed to over 150,000 female athletes at the college level. Those numbers are certainly worth celebrating!” http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/mitzitlk.htm#panel

My female peers and marvel today at the fact that, on February 1, 2012, we will celebrate 26th Annual National Girls & Women In Sports Day, thanks to the commitment and diligence of many forerunners and pioneers of women’s’ athletic programs. For the ladies who are in their 30s and 40s, memories of the results of Title IV include financial commitment to programs, feeder systems, and resources. But for my friends in their 70s and 80s, and those of us in our 50s and 60s, no such programs even existed. Our “gym classes” consisted of square dancing and jumping jacks; our stories consist of coaches and Phys Ed teachers who contributed to the change. We are all Greytops, but we take credit for being enthusiastic participants in the sports we loved, recognizing that our unattended games were perhaps more evidence of the pure love of the game we played. The dream was spawned in the 1940s, fed in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and took shape in the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the 21st century, high school and collegiate tournaments dotted the landscape across America in in all women’s sports. Across this country and across the world there was finally money backing female athletes. Scholarships and sponsorships endowed programs that ensured the slow-but-sure athletic equality with our male counterparts of which we Greytops and middle-agers only dreamed.

And today the dream is a reality. I have been privileged to attend high school and traveling team softball, basketball and volleyball games across California and see teams competing from all over the country. I play golf and enjoy being paired with younger girls playing on high school and college teams as much as I enjoy watching the development of the women’s professional tour. I am a Greytop, but I share a distinction with all women over 30. We pioneered the path for the girls of today, and we can look at the availability of sports options given to them and smile.