Politics in Sports

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On July 10, 1999, more than 90,000 fans at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl and an American television audience estimated at 40 million watched the U.S. soccer team defeat China for the Women’s World Cup. Tied 0- 0 in regu- lation and ater two grueling overtimes, the game came down to a tense penalty shoot- out. When strong goaltending by Briana Scurry kept the Chinese from scoring, Brandi Chastain kicked the next penalty shot to win the match for the United States 5- 4. Overcome with emotion and emulat- ing the universal gesture of jubilant male soccer players, she dropped to her knees and tore of her jersey, revealing an incredibly ripped body and a black Nike sports bra. hat iconic image came to symbolize the triumphs of the women’s soccer team, and by extension, the new legitimacy of women athletes everywhere.1 While much had been writen leading up to the match about the con- nection between the team’s players and a younger generation of predomi- nantly female soccer fans, the event also resonated with an older genera- tion of women athletes — those who grew up long before the sports bra was

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invented. Whatever the sport, they too had wanted to play but never had the opportunities that girls and women of the Title IX generations did. To have dreamed of playing before 90,000 cheering fans on national television would have been absolutely incomprehensible in their sporting days. No wonder, noted the Pitsburgh Post, that these older, aging former athletes feel “a bit giddy as they relect on their careers and lives as pioneers. In a way, the broad- based fascination of the World Cup has become the happy ending every female athlete sought but seldom realized.”2 Of course, there was a precedent for such giddy feelings: the night Bil- lie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in 1973. Played before enthusiastic crowds and huge television audiences, both events riveted national atention and sparked nationwide conversations about the status of women in sports. Like the women’s soccer team, which came to symbolize the aspirations of female athletes everywhere, Billie Jean King stood for the aspirations of an earlier generation of women at a critical moment in American history. he Batle of the Sexes cemented Billie Jean King’s reputation as America’s irst female sports superstar; the World Cup match extended star status to an entire team. he charismatic members of the women’s soccer team were quickly dubbed “the daughters of Title IX” by the media, but the 1999 World Cup victory is best seen as part of a long and varied tradition of female athletic participation rather than the result of a single piece of legislation.3 Even though participation and opportunities seemed to explode in the 1970s, the story is more complex than that. Title IX did not invent women’s sports. As Billie Jean King’s early career showed, there were women’s sports and com- mited women athletes before Title IX — they just didn’t get much support or public atention. And changes were already underway before Title IX was passed, laying the groundwork for women’s sports seemingly spontaneous emergence in the 1970s. Just as second- wave feminists sometimes acted as if they had discovered sex discrimination, thereby erasing a long history of agitation for women’s rights, so too does a focus just on Title IX short- change all that went before in the history of women’s sport. Billie Jean King belonged to a transitional generation of American sports- women. Her career served as a link between older paterns of extremely limited sports opportunities for girls and women and the glimmerings of a brave new athletic future where women’s sports commanded respect and resources (almost) commensurate with men’s. he decade of the 1970s was when this sea change began, and, as always, Billie Jean King was right in the

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thick of it. Her ability to forge a professional tennis career at the same time she emerged as a public advocate for women’s sports was deeply inluenced both by long- term historical paterns and the contemporary context dra- matically unfolding around her in the 1970s.

For most of American history, sports have been a male preserve. Com- petitive athletics were seen as “natural” for men and boys, but somehow “unnatural” or illegitimate for women and girls. Shaped by a popular belief that women’s bodies were inherently diferent from — and weaker than — men’s, women’s sports developed along a path similar to that of segregated schools in the South before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision: separate and deinitely unequal. Even though society consistently discouraged girls and women from dis- covering physical activity and organized games, such disapproval never fully stopped the female sex from experiencing the freedom and joy associated with sport. American girls found multiple opportunities for vigorous exer- cise and play, either informally or through schools or recreational leagues. Especially ater they reached adolescence, however, girls were oten told to pin up their hair, lengthen their skirts, and start acting more conventionally feminine. Sprinter Willye White summed up the tension between athletic competition and femininity in this way: “A female athlete is always two dif- ferent people. A male athlete can be the same all the time.”4 he history of women and sports and the history of women’s higher education are intricately linked. With the founding of women’s colleges in the 1870s, physical exercise became a way to assuage critics who feared that too much intellectual activity would be deleterious to tender female minds. At irst students did calisthenics and gymnastics as part of the curriculum, but by the 1890s they began to participate in team sports such as basketball (introduced by pioneering physical educator Senda Berenson at Smith Col- lege in 1893), volleyball, sotball, tennis, crew, and ield hockey. Students en- joyed the chance to be physically active and seemed to grasp from the start that the emancipation of women’s minds and bodies were fundamentally linked.5 Just as important as developments in the women’s colleges were broader changes in society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that encouraged popular sporting and recreational activities for both men and women. he most important by far was the bicycle craze of the 1880s and early 1890s, when women and men took advantage of improvements in bi-

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cycle design to embrace a relatively inexpensive outdoor activity that al- lowed them to go places on wheels that had never been easily accessible before. Other new recreational sports that caught on were croquet, skating, tennis, and golf, all of which necessitated adaptations in women’s clothing so that they could participate more freely. Anticipating the modern emer- gence of sportswear, the new outits for sport featured a simpliied shirtwaist and somewhat shorter skirt, or sometimes divided trousers or pantaloons covered by a skirt, plus the increasing abandonment of corsets. Note, how- ever, that the focus for women’s athleticism is on exercise and recreation, not competition. As men’s sporting activities became more organized and popular in the twentieth century, especially in areas such as college football and baseball, competition remained entirely of limits for women.6 Swimming posed a special case, because of the challenge of coming up with a bathing costume that didn’t actually drown the swimmer in its at- tempt to preserve her modesty. By the 1890s women swam — or, more ac- curately, bobbed — in short (midthigh) dresses worn over bloomers and thick stockings, while men bathed in public in one piece knited suits that reached just above the knees. Australian swimmer Annete Kellerman is credited with developing the irst one- piece suit for women, which she proudly displayed in swimming exhibitions throughout the United States in the 1910s and 1920s. Even her early bulky versions were liberating com- pared to the bathing costumes of old; by the 1920s, a trim one- piece suit was standard apparel for most young women.7 he development and acceptance of new swimwear was critical to the emergence of competitive swimming for women in the 1910s and 1920s. An- other critical event was Charlote Epstein’s founding of the Women’s Swim- ming Association of New York in 1917, where hundreds of girls and women found opportunities to train and compete in the organization’s tiny indoor pool on Manhatan’s Lower East Side. Endurance swimming, a ield where women have a deinite advantage because of their higher body fat and lower center of gravity, was a widely followed sport in the 1920s. Perhaps the best example is the huge media atention showered on Gertrude Ederle when she swam the English Channel in 1926 in a record- breaking fourteen hours and thirty- one minutes, the irst woman to swim the channel, and faster than any of the previous men. As Will Rogers quipped, “Yours for a revised edition of the dictionary explaining which is the weaker sex.”8 he growth of competitive swimming for women was linked to the his- tory of the Olympics. he modern Olympics were revived in 1896 in Ath-

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ens. While women competed informally in its early years in sports such as golf, tennis, and archery, founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin had no intention of promoting an equal- opportunity sporting event. Even today, women make up a minority of Olympic athletes. he irst oicial American women selected to represent the country were swimmers and divers at the 1920 Olympics, soon followed by sprinters in track and ield competition.9 As always, women faced hurdles not placed in the way of men. At the 1928 Olympics, the press reported that women competitors were so exhausted by the inal of the 800- meter run that they collapsed on the ield. Later eval- uation of the contemporary coverage, including photographs, challenged this widely disseminated view of female weakness, but it was enough to have the race withdrawn from future Olympics. In fact, the longest footrace that women could compete in until 1960 was 200 meters. American women were a strong a presence at the 1932 Olympics held in Los Angeles, with Babe Didrikson winning two gold medals and a silver in track and ield. By 1936, however, American women’s participation was declining, even before World War II halted the games in 1940 and 1944.10 One reason for this decline was a concerted and highly efective cam- paign against female competition in the 1920s and 1930s, led, ironically, by women physical education leaders. Girls and women who wanted to com- pete and win were out of sync with dominant ideologies of both gender and sport. his anticompetitive thrust inluenced the history of women and sports up until the 1960s and 1970s, including the early years of Title IX. In the 1920s, control of the ield of women’s physical education rested with two interconnected organizations: the Commitee on Women’s Ath- letics of the American Physical Education Association and the Women’s Di- vision of the National American Athletic Federation, which was led by Lou Henry Hoover, head of the Girl Scouts and wife of future president Herbert Hoover. Women leaders in both groups grew increasingly concerned about the supposed ill efects of competition on their female charges, both physi- ologically and psychologically. In response they put forward a philosophy, carefully nurtured in schools and physical education departments across the country, that was summed up in the phrase “a sport for every girl and every girl in a sport.” his model, formalized in a sixteen- point platform in 1923, emphasized participation and play rather than the competition and winning that increasingly dominated intercollegiate athletics for men: “he Women’s Division believes in the spirit of play for its own sake and works for the promotion of physical activity for the largest possible proportion of

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persons in any given group, in forms suitable to individual needs and ca- pacities, under leadership and environmental conditions that foster health, physical eiciency, and the development of good citizenship.” Under this new philosophy elite female athletes found their chances to compete took a back seat to opening the competition to all comers, no mater the skill level. Between 1923 and 1930, the number of colleges ofering varsity athletic op- portunities for women dropped from 22 percent to 12 percent.11 his creed of sport took several forms beyond the discouragement of varsity competition. Schools instituted play days, where students from sev- eral schools were mixed together on teams. Telegraphic meets mandated that athletes compete at their own schools and then compare results with competitors in speciic events by telegraph or telephone, presumably to dampen the excitement and stress of head- to- head competition. Sports days brought various schools and teams together, but they were as much social as athletic meets. Other manifestations of this diferent approach to women’s sports were special girls’ rules for basketball (six players, no rov- ing, limits on dribbling) and outright bans on girls playing contact sports such as ice hockey and football.12 he sport of ield hockey, which was especially popular in the Philadel- phia area, highlighted some of the pesky inconsistencies that oten pop up where gender, sport, and competition come together. A rough and strenu- ous game, ield hockey escaped condemnation because it was played pri- marily in women’s schools. Recalled one physical educator ater witnessing a game, “And as long as they had tea and crumpets and it was all women, then it was perfectly legitimate.”13 he sport of ield hockey further under- scores the arbitrariness of gender in sports: it was okay for women to hit a ball with a stick on a ield but it was not okay for women to hit a puck on ice with a similar stick, at least not until well into the 1980s. In addi- tion, because ield hockey was a sport associated with women’s colleges and because players traditionally wore distinctive kilts as uniforms, to this day very few men learn to play it.14 While most girls experienced sports in the context of their educational experience, schools and physical education programs did not hold a mo- nopoly on athletics for girls. In addition to opportunities for informal play in their neighborhoods or more organized activities through schools, YWCAs, and setlement houses, more serious female athletes turned to the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which irst ofered national championships for women in swimming in 1916, followed by track and ield in 1924 and

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basketball in 1926. Women also played sports, primarily basketball and sot- ball, on industrial teams, which were sponsored by employers as a way to build employee morale. Babe Didrikson, for example, played basketball for the Employers Casualty Golden Cyclones in Dallas as well as competed for them in track and ield in preparation for the 1932 Olympics. Need- less to say, physical education leaders strongly disapproved of these AAU- sponsored competitions.15 Long before midcentury a deinite patern emerged as to how race and class afected athletic opportunities for women. In general, individual sports such as tennis, igure skating, and golf held higher status and broader public approval than team sports such as basketball or sotball. Not coincidentally, these individual sports were more expensive to pursue and thus tended to be available predominantly to elite, usually white, women. Conversely, working- class women found opportunities to play recreational sotball or basketball through industrial leagues or the AAU, although African Ameri- can women faced the additional hurdle of segregated facilities limiting their opportunities to play. Still, with a tradition of more physical and outdoor labor and accustomed to strong women in its midst, the African American community was oten quite supportive of its female athletes, especially in sports such as track and ield and basketball. In this context athletic achieve- ments became political statements about African American capabilities in a racist society.16 World War II disrupted many normal paterns of American life “for the duration,” including professional sports, since many male athletes either volunteered or were drated into the armed services. Concerned about declining baseball revenues, Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley estab- lished the All American Girls Baseball League in 1943. Over 250 women tried out for the teams, and 60 were selected. For talented competitors such as Rockford Peaches irst baseman Dotie Kamenshek, to be able to play professional baseball was the dream of a lifetime. he fact that players had to wear skirts as uniforms (not so good for sliding into second base) and follow strict dress, make- up, and deportment codes to project femininity could not dampen their joy, a story brought to modern audiences by Penny Marshall’s 1992 ilm A League of heir Own. he All American Girls Baseball League survived the return of male ballplayers from the war but inally suc- cumbed to changing paterns of sports and leisure in 1954.17 In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the world of women’s physical educa- tion was a small, insular world — separate from the men’s athletic program,

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dominated by women trained as physical educators, and mainly of interest to and only noticed by the participants themselves. So litle was at stake that the men were happy to leave women to rule their iefdoms with im- punity. Following the model developed in the 1920s, physical education leaders were concerned with encouraging sportswomen rather than hon- ing elite athletes, competition was downplayed, and the general participa- tion model still held sway. his philosophy had implications far beyond the gym, as National Organization for Women founder and sports activist Kathryn Clarenbach later realized: “his overemphasis on protecting girls from strain or injury, and underemphasis on developing skills and experi- encing teamwork, its neatly into the patern of the second sex. Girls are the spectators and the cheerleaders. . . . his is perfect preparation for the adult role of women.”18 For many girls, their main — and oten only — exposure to exercise and sport was in required gym classes at school. Gym teachers ran P.E. classes like army drills, at least in the memories of many unathletically inclined participants, hardly an inducement to the joys of lifelong physical activity. (Of course to budding lesbians, their gym teachers were oten the objects of endless fascination and unrequited desire.19) he dreaded gym uniforms remembered today by any woman born before 1950 — sacklike skirted gar- ments, with bloomer- type shorts underneath, usually in an unatractive shade of blue or green — didn’t help. And yet for those girls who loved sports, gym class and intramural competitions were a chance to revel in physical activity.20 Well before the feminist and sports explosions of the 1970s, this tightly knit world of women’s physical education was beginning to change. Play days were eliminated (“High school girls are bored to death at play days,” noted one teacher) and more teams set up. hese women’s teams were a far cry from post–Title IX ventures, however. hey generally lacked budgets and were coached — without compensation — by members of the physical education department; no trainers or supplies were provided. If students had uniforms, they generally made or bought them themselves, and then washed them, of course. Instead of a full schedule, teams might play ive or six games a year. To get to away games, the coach drove the team in her own car, and the team saved on expenses by packing as many girls as pos- sible into hotel rooms and bringing their own food. Of course there were no athletic scholarships. Probably the most trusted weapon in the women’s sports arsenal was the bake sale.21

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One clear glimmering of change on the horizon was the 1966 formation of the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (CIAW). his group was created to encourage the expansion of opportunities for colle- giate women’s athletics while also holding on to the more “woman- deined” approach of such groups as its parent organization, the Division for Girls’ and Women’s Sports (DGWS), and the National Association for the Physi- cal Education of College Women. As part of its mandate to build a gover- nance structure for women’s intercollegiate athletics, CIAW began ofering national championships in two sports (gymnastics and track and ield), with four more quickly added.22 he Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), founded in late 1971 and operational the next year with 278 charter mem- bers, grew out of CIAW’s realization that women’s intercollegiate athletics needed a permanent, national membership organization to coordinate its activities. Some educators applauded the eforts to expand opportunities in new directions, while others were fearful of change. Like its predeces- sors, the AIAW shared a commitment to a more participation- oriented, less elitist approach to sports that difered fundamentally from the reign- ing NCAA model that intertwined competition, winning, and commer- cialization. As the AIAW stated in a May 1974 position paper, “he sense of enjoyment, self conidence and physical well being derived from de- manding one’s best performance in a sport situation is a meaningful ex- perience for the athlete. hese inner satisfactions are the fundamental motivation for participation in sports. herefore, programs in an educa- tional seting should have these beneits as primary goals.” Another major AIAW goal, in the words of historian Mary Jo Festle, was “whatever the direction of women’s intercollegiate sports, it was women who should determine it.”23 Participation in the Olympics was another area of postwar Ameri- can society that showed glimmerings of change for women athletes. he cause? he Cold War and the need to stand up to the Russians, especially in the increasingly symbolic medal count. Once the Soviet Union entered the Olympics in 1952, its state- supported athletes enjoyed strong success against American amateur competitors who were basically let to fend for themselves in terms of coaching and training facilities. As Sports Illustrated put it on a 1963 cover featuring a Soviet Bloc athlete: “Why Can’t We Beat this Girl?” Since women’s sports were such a low priority in the United States, American competitors had litle hope for success, except in indi-

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vidual cases of outstanding talent such as Andrea Mead Lawrence in ski- ing, Tenley Albright in igure skating, Donna de Varona in swimming, and Wilma Rudolph in track. A $500,000 grant in 1960 from Doris Duke Crom- well, heir to the Duke tobacco fortune, to encourage training and coaching for potential women Olympians was a hopeful sign of more resources to come, as well as another indication that the most extreme hostility to fe- male competition was receding, at least when it came to elite athletes.24 he success of Wilma Rudolph at the 1960 Rome Olympics conirmed the dominant role that African American women played in track and ield, a trend that had its roots in the interwar years. As part of their anticompetitive campaign in the 1920s and 1930s, white physical education leaders deemed track events “too physical” for most girls and participation plummeted. Into this vacuum stepped the athletic departments of small, historically black colleges and universities in the South, especially Tuskegee Institute and Tennessee State University, ushering in several decades of athletic domi- nance by black women track athletes. In 1948 Tuskegee high jumper Alice Coachman became the irst African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal, in fact the only American woman that year to bring home gold. Tennessee State Tigerbelle Wilma Rudolph won a bronze medal in Mel- bourne in 1956 and then three gold medals in Rome four years later; in 1956 fellow Tennessee State alum Willye White won a silver medal in the long jump. Except in the African American community, this link between col- lege sports and the Olympics was an anomaly until well into the 1970s when Title IX–supported scholarship athletes began to predominate in Olympic sports such as basketball, volleyball, and rowing. And yet it foreshadowed another Title IX patern — the channeling of African American athletes into a tiny number of sports, mainly basketball and track and ield.25 he publicity Rudolph received as an African American athlete paral- leled the atention that Althea Gibson received when she broke the color line in tennis in the 1950s. Unlike track stars, Althea Gibson’s athletic tal- ent was not nurtured in a historically black college but in Harlem, where she honed her tournament skills in the all- black American Tennis Associa- tion. With the support of Alice Marble, in 1950 she became the irst Afri- can American to play in the national championships at Forest Hills, losing in the second round. Despite her size (she was ive feet ten, very tall for a player at that time) and athletic style of play, her career languished. Her breakthrough came in 1955 when the State Department invited her to be part of a goodwill tour to Southeast Asia. In 1957 Gibson, then twenty- nine

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years old, won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, repeating both crowns the next year before retiring from amateur competitive tennis because, in her trenchant observation, “I couldn’t eat trophies.” Although a reluctant civil rights trailblazer, Gibson’s triumphs opened further doors for black athletes and indirectly helped to challenge the racism and segregation of postwar America.26 he Cold War and the poor showing of American athletes in the postwar Olympics also provided the backdrop for a new focus on physical itness in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower created the President’s Council on Youth Fitness with a broad mandate to investigate “whether American youth was adequately and properly prepared — in a physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual sense — for the challenges that history is presenting to our civilization.” Although performance stan- dards were consistently lower for girls than boys (for example, only ten sit- ups instead of fourteen), girls as well as boys were expected to meet minimum standards of itness as judged by a set of standardized tests. he administration of John F. Kennedy ramped up the focus on itness as part of its efort to reinvigorate American society with the New Frontier. he over- all message of these campaigns that itness for girls was just as important to the nation as itness for boys provided yet another boost to the emerging demand for women’s sports.27 As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, there were many other stirrings un- derway for women’s sports, although they were scatered and not necessar- ily seen yet as part of a widespread trend:

• In 1967 Kathrine Switzer registered for the Boston Marathon as K. Switzer and completed the race despite an oicial’s atempt to push her of the course; women were allowed to oicially register in 1972.

• Bernice Gera began her quest to be the irst female baseball umpire in 1968.

• Mary Bacon and Robyn Smith invaded the male world of jockeys. • Vicky Brown served as the coxswain of the University of Washing-

ton men’s crew in 1972 until she was ruled ineligible by the NCAA. • Joan Joyce and Donna Lopiano led the Stratford Raybestos Bra-

ketes to repeated victories in the Women’s National Sotball Tournament.

• he Virginia Slims professional tennis tour debuted in 1970.

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• he DGWS issued a research report edited by Dorothy Harris on women in sports in 1971 which challenged many of the stereotypes limiting women’s participation.

• he New York Board of Regents approved coed competition in noncontact sports in 1971, in efect overturning a 1912 regulation that barred women’s varsity sports.28

By 1972, the year Title IX was passed and Billie Jean King was named Sports Illustrated’s irst- ever Sportswoman of the Year, women’s sports were ready to pop. Journalist Candace Lyle Hogan captured it perfectly: “Fueled by an almost chemical interaction of a federal anti- sex discrimination law, the women’s liberation movement, and what is called the temper of the times, women’s sports took of like a rocket in 1972.”29

In 1973 one of the hotest topics across the country besides the up- coming Billie Jean King–Bobby Riggs match was whether girls should be allowed to play Litle League baseball. hat summer eleven- year- old Maria Pepe of Hoboken, New Jersey, tried out for her local team but never played in a game because the national federation threatened to revoke the team’s charter if she did. Supported by the local chapter of the National Organi- zation for Women, Pepe appealed her case to the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, which ruled in 1974 in her favor with these words: “he insti- tution of Litle League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie. here is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls.” In the wake of the New Jersey decision, Litle League reluctantly announced in June 1974 that girls would be allowed to play “because of the changing social climate.” By then it was too late for Maria Pepe, who had aged out of Litle League.30 Maria Pepe’s atempt to join Litle League in the summer of 1973 brought out the best and worst in a country highly polarized by the escalating bat- tle between the sexes. Amy Dickinson, who became the irst girl to actu- ally play Litle League when her Tenaly, New Jersey, team deied the na- tional organization, pinpointed the absurdities of adult behavior as only an eleven- year- old could: “hey interviewed one man who said he was a coach. He said he didn’t want girls on his team because he didn’t want to be responsible if a girl got hit between the legs with a ball and he had to run out and pull her pants down. I started to think that maybe some of these people have problems.” Even though Tenaly took a stand in Amy’s support,

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it wasn’t exactly for feminist reasons, as local booster James Tuck let slip: “We just decided we’d rather have a few girls playing than have 360 boys be deprived of playing. . . . Let the girls play and get it over with. hen they’ll just disappear.”31 Tuck wasn’t far of the mark: girls did not exactly lock to play Litle League baseball. In State College, Pennsylvania, for example, there were only 10 girls out of 205 players on the roster in 1977. Starting in 1974 Litle League began its own sotball program, whose main efect (and probably its major purpose) was to siphon of the vast majority of girls from base- ball. his outcome conirms a patern oten seen in early assaults on the sports status quo: high proile and highly emotional legal cases revolved around girls trying to win access to boys’ teams, not necessarily because they wanted to play with the boys but because those were the only teams available. Ater the successful and well- publicized legal challenges, girls’ teams oten miraculously materialized overnight, in efect reestablishing the sports status quo: boys competing against boys, girls against girls.32 Challenges like Maria Pepe’s to Litle League baseball were happening spontaneously all across the country in the early 1970s, not just in recre- ational leagues but also in schools all the way from elementary to college. Some of these challenges were linked to Title IX, but many more were just spontaneous initiatives as parents and students looked with a critical eye at what was available to girls and said, “his is not fair.” hat, of course, is precisely what Title IX said, too, but public awareness of the law was still extremely limited at this point. Instead, the urgency of these demands was linked to the nature of youth and athletic competition, which transcended a speciic piece of federal legislation. Kids grow up fast; they can’t just put their athletic careers on hold while a case spends ive years working its way through the courts. hey want action now.33 his sense of urgency helps to explain the dramatic growth in girls’ sports participation that was already underway before Title IX could con- ceivably have had such a broad national impact. Participation igures from the 1960s and 1970s are not always the most reliable, but the general pat- tern is clear. Schematically, in 1971, one in thirteen high school athletes were girls; by 1973, almost one in ive; by 1974, one in four; and by the end of the decade, one in three (32.3 percent).34 Given that broad public awareness of Title IX’s impact on athletics was negligible until the irst months of 1974, the earliest a Title IX boost to participation could be expected would be in the 1974–75 season. According to igures from the National Federation of

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State High School Associations, the number of girls competing had already increased from 294,015 in 1970–71 to 817,073 in 1972–73, a threefold increase in just two years, and then again to 1,300,109 in 1973–74. he high school increases were especially pronounced in certain sports such as basketball, sotball, and track and ield. In almost every sport ofered, the sharpest in- creases occurred in the “take- of ” period of 1971–74, with continued strong growth until 1977–78, ater which the progress leveled of. hese dramatic increases occurred at a time when male high school participation rates re- mained basically stable.35 he changes were just as dramatic at the college level. In intercollegiate athletics, 15,727 women participated in 1966–67, a igure that doubled to 31,852 by 1971–72 and then doubled again by 1976–77 to 64,375; correspond- ingly, women’s percentage of all athletes rose from 12.5 percent in 1966–67, to 15.6 percent in 1971–72, to 27.4 percent in 1976–77. Note that unlike high school girls’ interscholastic opportunities, which basically started at zero before 1970, college women did have some opportunities by the mid- 1960s. Still, they experienced similar paterns of steady incremental growth until 1971–72, followed by a period of explosive growth that lasted until 1976–77. Paralleling the experience in high schools, sports such as basketball, ield hockey, volleyball, and swimming peaked at that point and then leveled of or declined, although sotball, soccer, and especially track and ield contin- ued to climb.36 While the changes in women’s sports seemed dramatic and revolution- ary at the time, in hindsight women’s athletics in the 1970s was in many ways more similar to women’s sports in the 1950s and 1960s than to what would come later. Ask any female athlete from the 1970s how she would fare in today’s competitive athletic climate, and chances are she’ll laugh and say she wouldn’t even make the team. Female athletes in the early days of Title IX were practically self- taught and self- coached, geting by on raw talent and a strong desire to compete, unlike today when athletes have oten been honing their skills in a speciic sport in recreational leagues and summer camps since grade school. Before athletic scholarships became the norm, it was still possible to walk on to a team, or sometimes even start one yourself if there was enough interest. In addition, it was not unusual for female ath- letes to participate in multiple sports, sometimes as many as three per year. hese female athletic pioneers from the 1970s probably came closest to the vaunted ideal of student athletes than at any time before or since.37 Both relecting the surge forward in participation opportunities and

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encouraging it, print media stories exploded about the hot new topic of women and sports. Sports Illustrated led the way with its three- part series in May and June of 1973; a year later authors Bil Gilbert and Nancy William- son followed up with a progress report. Newsweek ran a long spread called “Sportswomanlike Conduct” in June 1974. From its inception in 1973, Ms. magazine devoted regular atention to the issue of women in sport, provid- ing updates about breakthroughs and challenges from across the country as well as proiles of emerging female sports stars and sports “foremothers” from the past. Even women’s magazines such as Mademoiselle, Seventeen, and Ladies’ Home Journal jumped on the bandwagon. “Move over, guys,” said Seventeen. “he girls are coming — in gym classes and on the playing ields. Your high school sports program will never be the same. It will be beter.”38 he new emphasis on sports for women intersected with the itness craze of the 1970s. he focus on self- fulillment and personal liberation that characterized the counterculture of the 1960s in turn spawned a new em- phasis on recreation and leisure, with sport and itness seen as positive and enjoyable forms of self- improvement. While only 24 percent of Americans eighteen years and older in 1961 participated in some form of physical activ- ity on a regular basis, by 1979 59 percent of Americans — some 90 million adults — did so, with women’s rate of participation climbing more steeply than men’s throughout the 1970s. Millions of health- conscious joggers took to the streets, fueling the running craze of the 1970s. Also on the increase were aerobics, swimming, biking, and a range of activities that made exer- cise the province of daily life for a broad range of women, not just elite high school and college athletes.39 he 1970s also represented the peak of tennis’s popularity, a factor that goes a long way to explaining the opportunities Billie Jean King both seized and created at the height of her career. In the peak year of 1974, some 41 million Americans played the game, competing for court time at their local public parks or clubs as well as fueling consumer demand for rackets, tennis shoes, and clothes. Tennis tournaments such as the U.S. Open became big draws, both for spectators and the impressive television revenues they gen- erated. Tennis stars such as Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, and Arthur Ashe commanded atention in popular culture commensurate with football and baseball stars. For a sport that had until recently been associated solely with stodgy country- club ways, this was a huge breakthrough.40 All this activity gave a sense of rapid change, tempered, as always, by

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HEW’s foot dragging as it debated how to implement Title IX in late 1973 and early 1974. Despite the stalling in Washington, the momentum really seemed to be with women. As sports activist Jan Felshin was quoted in Sports Illustrated in 1974, “he day is over when you can tell women who want to take part in athletics, ‘Go away, we haven’t room. Men are using all the equipment and ields.’ ” By 1978, Joan Warrington, executive secretary of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, could assert, “Women no longer feel that taking part in athletics is a privilege. hey be- lieve it is a right.”41 he AIAW, which went into operation in 1972 just as women’s sports began to explode, found itself functioning in an exciting but challenging environment, one not always of its own choosing. Before, women’s sports had been a backwater, of litle interest except to those in the phys ed depart- ment. Now women athletes were players, literally. All the changes underway proved quite unsetling, both for the student athletes and especially for the educators who had spent most of their careers dedicated to a participation- based ethos that set itself deliberately at odds with the prevailing male model of sport. In part this was a generational issue — younger, more politi- cal (although not necessarily feminist)42 activists all hopped up about the exciting new opportunities for women’s sports versus an old guard wedded to the status quo, inadequate as it was. he diferences were as much philo- sophical as generational, and they manifested themselves irst over the issue of athletic scholarships.43 Why would physical education leaders be opposed to scholarships for their students? To their minds giving a student a scholarship based on ath- letic ability undercut the real reason that students should be coming to col- lege in the irst place: to get an education, not to play on a team. Giving female athletes scholarships, they feared, would mean aping a male model based on competition and winning that put the needs of the institution above the needs of the student athlete. So strongly did the AIAW believe in their antischolarship stand that they initially barred any school that of- fered athletic scholarships (a tiny number in the early 1970s, but there were some) from competing in their national championships.44 Female students had diferent ideas. If their brothers could qualify for athletic scholarships, why couldn’t they? Wasn’t it patronizing to be told that accepting scholarship money in return for playing a sport would cor- rupt or demean them? Why shouldn’t they be able to make that choice for themselves? Even within the AIAW there was hearty debate over whether

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scholarships were okay: “hat kind of thinking — the kind that says ‘if you give a girl an athletic scholarship, she’ll be tainted’ — has held back women’s athletics too long,” reasoned one proponent of change.45 At irst the prohibition against scholarships held, but then in February 1973 tennis players at Marymount College and Broward Community Col- lege in Florida went to court to challenge the rule. he Kellmeyer case never went to trial, but it accomplished its purpose. Within months, the AIAW reluctantly withdrew its ban. In retrospect, this change was inevitable. Even if students hadn’t sued, denying women access to scholarships that men received would surely have been deemed illegal under Title IX, one of the few clear- cut issues in the otherwise murky ield of athletics.46 he issue of recruiting proved just as troubling to the AIAW. Recruit- ing excesses in men’s athletics were well documented; when they started to happen in women’s sports, educators and parents were appalled. he father of a six- foot- tall high school volleyball star compared recruiting to runaway inlation, noting that his daughter had been ofered scholarships to seven colleges without anyone even asking about her grades. “Do you think anybody really cares about my kid?” he asked. “hey never talked about anything but the volleyball program.” On the other side of the equation, longtime physical education leaders were appalled at the entitled atitudes of recruits who basically demanded, “What can you give me if I decide on your school?” “hat really bothers me,” said Nancy O’Connor, head swim- ming coach at Colorado State University, in 1976. “I know that’s being naïve, but you’d like to see people doing things for the love of it.” Relecting its ambivalence, the AIAW adopted a complicated set of restrictions designed to put steep limits on scouting and recruiting while also grudgingly admit- ting that these practices were going to take place.47 he AIAW transfer policy, which allowed students to transfer to an- other school without siting out a year of sports eligibility like the NCAA demanded, also became progressively out of sync with the increasingly competitive world of college athletics. Its justiication was noble: the right of a student to seek out a beter education. But the transfer rule was ripe for abuse as coaches and administrators atempted to lure female athletes with promises of larger programs and more resources without any cost or penalty to either the school or the athlete. In part this was a straightforward example of supply and demand: the supply of gited female collegiate ath- letes in the 1970s was far smaller than the needs of a range of institutions commited to building up their women’s programs in response to Title IX.

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It was also an unexpected byproduct of the new focus on winning as the jus- tiication for all the resources institutions were redirecting toward women’s sports. “I’d be dumb to say I wasn’t supposed to produce winning teams,” said Judith Holland, director of women’s intercollegiate athletics at UCL A, in 1976. As big schools stepped up their recruiting, scholarships, and com- mitment to building successful (i.e., winning) women’s programs, smaller schools felt the squeeze.48 Within just a few years of the founding of the AIAW, therefore, spurred in part by Title IX and in part by broader changes in the ield of sports, a governance model that tried to chart a separate path from the prevailing model of sports organization was already proving itself ill suited to the new demands of the 1970s. Ironically, when the AIAW made a commitment to support Title IX, many of the steps that the organization took to comply with the law, such as sanctioning athletic scholarships and allowing recruit- ing, moved it further along the slippery slope of accepting a competitive model of sports instead of its woman- centered, women- led approach. As Cal Papatsos of Brooklyn College told Sports Illustrated in 1978, “When Title IX came along we had to take the whole bag, and that started the di- lemma. Men were geting blazers, so we wanted them too. Women are no diferent from men when it comes to handling power. When we get it, the same negatives will apply.”49 Sports Illustrated summed up the philosophical split in the AIAW in this way: “he problem is that half of the AIAW membership wants to run a sophisticated physical- education program for college women; the other half wants to get involved in the business of big- time sports.” In a period of explosive growth and under pressure to conform to the dominant ath- letic model, many women’s programs began to look and act a lot like men’s, even before the NCAA formally took over the governance of women’s col- legiate sports in the early 1980s. “It’s funny,” observed Judith Sweet, athletic director at the University of California, San Diego, in 1977. “Before Title IX, women were saying they never wanted their athletic programs to be like men’s. hey were not going to stumble into those pitfalls. hey didn’t want that grind, all those pressures. Suddenly, because of federal legislation, they’re doing exactly what the men did.” Nowhere were these changes more evident that in the ield of women’s basketball.50

From the 1890s, when Senda Berenson introduced the sport to her stu- dents at Smith, to the present, basketball has been the most popular sport

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played by women and girls. Even though the history of the game now spans more than a century, its story, at least where women are concerned, is hardly one of linear progress. As such, it ofers a window on the history of women’s sports before and ater the passage of Title IX.51 As was common with many other sports, rules were developed for bas- ketball to make it acceptable — that is, less strenuous, sweaty, and rough — for the supposedly weaker, more excitable sex. Berenson divided the court into three sections, to which players were restricted; contact was banned, and dribbling limited. In 1936 most schools switched to a two- court, six- player format, but this still made for a slow, plodding game with a lot of standing around while the action was in the other half of the court. In 1962 a roving forward was allowed to cover the entire court, and in 1966 unlimited dribbling added. Finally between 1969 and 1971, the ive- player men’s game prevailed. hese restrictions were done in the name of protecting women from undue exertion and competition, but they could not take away the sheer pleasure that many girls and women got from the game. Novelist Caryl Rivers, who played Catholic Youth Organization basketball in the 1950s, boasted: “If you have played basketball — really played it with pride and passion — you can never really be docile again.”52 Basketball proved a popular sport in many schools and communities, both white and African American. It was much cheaper for a community or school to support than football, was open to both sexes, and did not place too many demands on gymnasium space. In the 1920s thirty- six states had high school tournaments for girls, and many colleges also ielded teams, including historically black colleges in the South. Relecting her school’s insistence on proper etiquete for African American young women, one Bennet College player from the 1930s remembered, “We were ladies too,” before adding subversively, “We just played basketball like boys.” Even such subterfuges were not always enough in the anticompetition atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s. For example, educators concerned that basketball was “too strenuous for young ladies” decided to shut down the program entirely at Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi, in 1933. “We cried and burned our uniforms,” remembered Delta State player Margaret Wade, “but there was nothing else we could do.” Delta State did not reinstate women’s basketball until 1973.53 With the college game under atack in the interwar period, the only way for most skilled players to keep playing ater high school was AAU compe- tition, which added a national basketball tournament in 1926. According

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to historian Robert W. Ikard, the AAU is the missing link in the history of basketball between Senda Berenson and her physical education students at the turn of the century and the revitalization of the game from the 1970s on because of Title IX.54 Most of the women competing in AAU events played on industrial teams sponsored by their employers. hese teams were especially popular in the South and Texas in the 1940s and 1950s, where they provided cheap and wholesome entertainment for small towns and communities in the days be- fore television. he powerhouses of the game — such as Nashville Business College (NBC) from Tennessee or the Hanes Hosiery team from Winston- Salem, North Carolina — became legendary for their domination of the game and the skill of their players; many consider NBC’s Nera White the inest all- round female basketball player ever. Even though many of these women played pickup games using the full- court, ive- player format, the AAU still ielded six- person teams. Remembered Hanes star Eunie Futch: “I would have given anything to play men’s rules. But the people over in Greensboro [professional educators] said it was too hard on us.”55 In the 1950s and early 1960s, a time which two historians of women’s basketball call “a dark age” for the sport, AAU basketball was practically the only game in town. Perennial contender Hanes Hosiery disbanded its team in 1954, which let Nashville Business College as the dominant force. hen for the irst time a four- year- college team, the Wayland Flying Queens, challenged in the A AU. (Remember there were no national collegiate championships until the CIAW and AIAW began ofering them.) Wayland Baptist College in Plainview, Texas, was not your usual college team. he players, lavishly backed by prosperous local business leader and Wayland alum Claude Hutcherson and his wife, Wilda, traveled by private Beech- crat airplanes (hence their name), atended school on scholarships, wore spify blazers and matching skirts of the court, and were literally treated like queens. Starting in 1954, they won the irst of their seven national championships.56 Teams such as the Wayland Flying Queens and National Business College also provided the majority of players for the international com- petitions that began in 1953. Playing in South America or Europe was a wonderful dream for many small- town girls, but the U.S. teams were ham- pered by lack of support and the diiculties of switching to a full- court game. Just as in the Olympics, which added women’s basketball in 1976, a Cold War desire for American women to hold their own against foreign,

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especially Soviet bloc, competition, worked in favor of changes on the homefront.57 he one place where girls’ basketball truly lourished was the state of Iowa, a shining beacon of what can happen when girls’ sports are given the same kind of community encouragement and support as boys’. Iowa girls’ basketball was like Friday Night Football in Texas. When sportswriter and broadcaster Heywood Hale Broun was asked to describe the most excit- ing sporting event he had ever covered, he chose not the Kentucky Derby or the World Series or the Super Bowl but the Iowa girls’ state basketball championship.58 Even in Iowa, girls’ basketball faced challenges that almost killed it. When female educators called for the abolition of the increasingly popu- lar girls’ tournament in 1925, dissenting schools decided to form their own organization, the Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU). Why did basketball do so well in Iowa over the next ive decades while it declined elsewhere? Having its own organization was critical, especially under the farsighted leadership of its longtime director, E. Wayne Cooley. So too was the generally rural nature of Iowa: basketball lourished in small towns and communities, plus Iowa girls were used to hard labor on the farm, so ques- tions about the strenuousness of the game were moot. In fact, the girls’ tournament consistently outdrew the boys’. In the oten- quoted baseline pre–Title IX igure of 294,000 female high school athletes throughout the country in 1970–71, 20 percent of them were from the state of Iowa alone! Bucking the national trend, Iowa kept the six- player game until the 1993–94 season.59 As the rest of the country abandoned girls’ rules, the AIAW came into existence. For the irst three years, 1972–74, the AIAW national basketball title was won by the Mighty Macs of Immaculata College, a small Catholic girls’ school outside Philadelphia. Girls who went to Immaculata weren’t recruited, they didn’t get scholarships, and they didn’t play in a fancy gym- nasium; the nuns banged buckets in the stands to cheer them on and their part- time coach, Cathy Rush, was paid $450 a year. But the players were competitive and talented, and they loved the game. In 1972 the Mighty Macs almost could not go to the inaugural national tournament in Nor- mal, Illinois, for lack of money — there wasn’t time to drive, and lying was too expensive. So players sold toothbrushes to raise money; college trust- ees each adopted a player; and inally they scraped together enough to ly eight players (less than their full roster) and their coach — standby. When

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they won the tournament by defeating their crosstown rival, West Chester State, the president of the college told them to ly home irst- class, no mat- ter what the cost. hey repeated as champions the next two years.60 In 1975 the AIAW crowned a new champion, Delta State, which beat Immaculata in the inals. What a sweet victory for Delta State’s coach, the same Margaret Wade who had burned her uniform in protest when the school shut down her program in the 1930s. “he ball is still round,” ob- served Wade. “I guess that’s about all that’s the same as it was in my playing days.” Showing yet another sign of change, the Mississippi team included both white and black players (Wade’s teammates in the 1930s had all been white), including the talented Lusia Harris. Delta State repeated as cham- pions the next two years.61 By the mid- 1970s, however, the days of a small college winning a national title were fast receding, in large part because of changes brought about by Title IX. Said one Immaculata starter, “It was a very narrow window. I mean, you could see it. You knew it was going to change and it did.” As larger col- lege programs began to beef up their women’s oferings, largely in response to Title IX, the popular sport of basketball was an obvious place to start. Once the AIAW rescinded its ban on athletic scholarships in 1973, schools could aggressively recruit high school standouts or transfer students. In 1974 Ann Meyers, the younger sister of a male UCL A basketball star, be- came the irst woman to win a full athletic scholarship to the school. In 1978, UCL A won the national title, the irst time that a large school was vic- torious. Never again would schools like Delta State, West Chester, Queens College, or Immaculata contend for the title.62 By now women’s basketball was well launched on its journey as the success story of the new women’s athletics. In January 1975 the irst tele- vised women’s basketball game saw Immaculata beat Maryland, the same year Immaculata and Queens College illed Madison Square Garden for a closely contested match.63 Coverage of the 1976 women’s basketball silver medal team at the Montreal Olympics also boosted the sport’s proile. Ri- valing the records of legendary coaches such as John Wooden at UCL A, the seeds of new female dynasties were being laid: in 1974 Pat Head Summit, age twenty- two, took over the program at the University of Tennessee and started her historic rise to prominence as the highest- paid women’s coach in history, and the irst to crack the million- dollar salary barrier in 2006.64 As far back as the 1970s, the women’s game was already beginning to mimic the men’s in terms of level of play, exposure, and fan support, but also in things

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such as recruitment scandals, declining opportunities for female coaches, and the like. Ater all, this was what women wanted from Title IX, right? Or was it?

It is impossible to tell either the story of Title IX or the broader history of women in sports without confronting the persistent — and pernicious — patern of homophobia, that is, the irrational fear or intolerance of gay, les- bian, bisexual, or transgendered people. he labeling of women athletes as “dykes” is a time- tested way of discrediting them and their athletic accom- plishments by implying that they are not “real” women; in this view sexual deviance goes hand in hand with female athletic prowess, suggesting that there is something wrong or transgressive about women’s desire or ability to play sports. Women who are interested in team sports such as sotball and basketball are especially suspect, although individual sports such as golf and tennis are also popularly assumed to harbor large numbers of les- bians. (his perception is oten referred to euphemistically by sports pro- moters as “the image problem.”65 ) Whether there are in fact more lesbians in the world of sport than other areas of American life is an open question, but there is no doubt that those who are gay oten choose the strategy of “play it, don’t say it” as a way of delecting public scrutiny. Billie Jean King is a prime example: for years she dodged rumors about her personal life and probably would have stayed in the closet indeinitely if she had not been so brutally and publicly outed by a former lover in 1981.66 he issue of homosexuality plays out very diferently in men’s and wom- en’s sports. As sports scholar Pat Griin points out, “While women athletes must constantly prove their heterosexuality, most people assume that male athletes are heterosexual unless they provide evidence that they are not.” he ethos of male athletics is one of aggressive, combative, oten violent masculinity, where catchphrases like “playing hurt,” “never let them see you sweat,” or “game face” prevail, especially in sports such as football. In such a context the worst thing a male athlete can be called is the antithesis: pussy, wuss, fag, or faggot, to name a few of the most derogatory epithets. he idea of a gay man who is just as strong and competitive as his straight teammates undermines the core value structure of much of contemporary male sports culture. To provide cover for any suspicion of homosexuality, heterosexuality is enforced and homophobia rampant. As one sports agent said, “Frankly, it would be easier for someone convicted of bank robbery to get a job in the NFL than an overtly gay player.”67

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he widespread association of lesbianism with sports afects all women, gay and straight. Women athletes are encouraged to play up their hetero- sexuality and femininity through grooming, makeup, and other ploys such as ponytails and hair ribbons; boyfriends, husbands, and other heterosex- ual credentials are paraded in public. As early as 1974, Jan Felshin labeled this strategy the feminine “apologetic.” Such dodges can have severe per- sonal and psychological consequences for women athletes who basically are forced to pretend they are something they are not in order to partici- pate in the sports and competition they love. Pat Griin coined the phrase “strong women/deep closets” to capture “the apparent contradiction of physically strong and competent women who feel compelled to hide their deepest personal commitments, families, and love relationships in order to be members of the women’s sports world.”68 Despite these deep closets, lesbians have oten found a safe and support- ive haven in the world of women’s sports. Because women’s sports were generally not highly valued, they provided a welcoming environment for girls and women not interested in traditional gender roles; they also ofered an alternative vision of athleticism that was focused less on competition, more on participation. Even if players never talked about lesbianism spe- ciically, it was an “open” secret that there were lesbians in sport. Lesbians new to town oten joked that if they found the local women’s sotball league, they would ind a ready introduction to the gay community.69 Yet oten this space was safe and welcoming only if lesbians stayed quiet and closeted. If they didn’t, the repercussions could be quite real. College athletes feared losing playing time, or even worse, their athletic scholar- ships, if they were too open about their sexual orientation, by joining cam- pus gay pride groups or participating in public events with their partners, for example. Unfortunately this hostile environment was sometimes abet- ted by closeted lesbian athletes and coaches themselves who participated in puting other gays down as a mode of self- protection.70 Much of the fear around this issue was driven by parents and administra- tors who were unwilling to face the fact that there were lesbians in sport, as players as well as coaches, departmental administrators, and teachers. Pat Griin is especially critical of “the hypocrisy of championing equality for women’s sports yet tolerating discrimination and prejudice against lesbian athletes and coaches.” One of the most pernicious tactics was the use of negative recruiting — where a coach, when talking to prospects and their parents, casually let slip that a rival team was known to harbor lesbian play-

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ers or possibly even a lesbian coach. Pennsylvania State University wom- en’s basketball coach Rene Portland took this one step further, running her team on a “no alcohol, no drugs, no lesbians” basis until she was publicly confronted in 1991 and forced to rescind the policy. Alas, this is the same Rene Muth who helped lead the Immaculata Mighty Macs to three national championships in the 1970s.71 hese rumors built on the longstanding if misleading image of the pred- atory lesbian out to seduce your daughter in the locker room or on the ield. In fact, the fear of lesbian coaches may be one reason behind the trend to- ward more men coaching female sports, one of the most dramatic changes in the more than thirty- ive years of Title IX’s existence. While there are isolated examples of female coaches who enter into improper relationships with their players, a far greater problem is sexual harassment of female play- ers by their male coaches. his phenomenon, which has been widely docu- mented in academic studies as well as memoirs by former athletes such as Mariah Burton Nelson and Leslie Heywood, happens both in educational setings and professional sports but has yet to cause the kind of widespread outrage or fear that lesbianism has.72 As a result, the number of openly gay women coaches remains small, and they tend to congregate in smaller schools and minor sports. At the top of the female coaching hierarchy, the trappings of femininity are very much on display. Case in point: basketball coaches stalking the sidelines in skirts and high heels.73 Why weren’t women physical education leaders more in the forefront of making sports welcoming to gay and straight players alike? Various factors conspired to limit their ability to provide leadership. he world of athletics in general is a fairly conservative one, and women athletic administrators within this “near- total institution” function in an unsupportive climate for activism or social change. Many of these women had originally gravitated toward sports and coaching long before feminism or gay liberation, and they were still securely in the closet in the 1970s. Already marginalized by their involvement with women’s sports and under atack as athletic depart- ments aggressively merged formerly separate men’s and women’s programs ater the passage of Title IX, they feared added disapproval if not outright dismissal from their jobs if their sexual orientations were known.74 Over the years, as sports have become a more acceptable outlet for girls and women, in large part because of Title IX, the threat of being labeled a lesbian has lost some of its force, although homophobia still causes many female athletes to hide or be less than open about their sexual orientation.

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he biggest change is that the pre–Title IX jock subculture that nurtured many lesbians — and nontraditional girls who weren’t afraid to be called lesbians — has increasingly been replaced by a more generic athletic culture where all girls are encouraged, indeed expected, to participate and play. In the words of Lucy Jane Bledsoe, “Wouldn’t it be ironic if, by complying with Title IX, schools ruined sports for young lesbians?” Like other unin- tended consequences of the law, Title IX brought progress for many, but at the cost of diluting what had been a special haven for some.75

With the exception of the women’s tennis tour, the 1970s proved much less hospitable to the take- of of women’s professional sports than to the opening of opportunities to women athletes at the high school, collegiate, and recreational levels. Alas, no Title IX legislation required that women get an equal shot at making it as professional athletes. In fact, women’s profes- sional sports have struggled ever since to get a toehold in an increasingly crowded ield, held back by the lateness of their arrival on the sports scene and the diiculty of atracting corporate and inancial backing. hese eforts were also hurt by lingering atitudes that once the curiosity factor wore of, women’s sports just weren’t as interesting or exciting to watch as men’s.76 he atempts to set up a professional basketball league in the 1970s ofer an instructive — and cautionary — tale. Hoping to capitalize on the popular- ity of the debut of women’s basketball at the 1976 Olympics, a group called the Women’s Basketball Association (WBA) announced the formation of a league that year. Unfortunately its ambitious marketing plan failed to win support either from the players or, more important, the inancial backers it would have needed to pick up the individual franchises. It folded before it ever played a game. In 1978 UCL A star Ann Meyers forged a new path when she was invited to try out for the Indiana Pacers. She earned a contract, but was cut from the team ater several months. Soon Ann Meyers was back playing with the girls when the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WPBL) got of the ground in 1979.77 he WPBL was beter inanced and conceived than the earlier WBA, but still a hard sell. he league began with eight teams and quickly expanded to fourteen; all of its owners and coaches were men. Women players were paid salaries in the $15,000–20,000 range, sometimes lower; then as now, the women’s salaries were far below their male National Basketball Association counterparts. Nor did NBA players have to sleep three to four players to a room to save money, or change in their hotel rooms before games, which on

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a good day might draw 1,000 spectators, oten less. By 1982 the league had folded.78 Explanations for the failure of the WPBL ranged from the lack of depth of talent in women’s collegiate ball to poor iscal decisions to lack of televi- sion exposure to increased competition for the discretionary sports dollar. Mainly, it was just premature, as events since then have conirmed. Ater an atempt to set up a small, six- team league in the 1980s, nothing happened on the professional front until the late 1990s when the NBA- sponsored Women’s National Basketball Association started up in 1997, crowding out the rival American Basketball League which had started in 1996 but folded in 1998. While the WNBA draws loyal crowds, no one would ever confuse it with the NBA.79 Women’s sotball fared no beter in its atempt to sustain a professional league. In 1975 Billie Jean King aggressively recruited other women athletes, including golfers Jane Blalock and Sandra Haynie and tennis player Mar- tina Navratilova, to put up money for the Women’s Professional Sotball League, proudly announcing with a nod to the upcoming bicentennial: “Women supporting women in a new professional sport is a revolutionary idea.” Realizing the need for a sound management plan, King recruited pro- moter Dennis Murphy, who had been involved in starting up the American Basketball Association, the World Hockey Association, and World Team Tennis. he league’s organizers hoped to draw on the deep talent that al- ready existed in sotball to build fan loyalty and support. Joan Joyce, for example, was an amazing athlete and dominant pitcher; if she had been a man, she could have made millions in professional baseball. Instead she played for the league for four years until it folded in 1979, the victim of in- lated expectations and lackluster support, both inancial and from fans. Disappointed but not defeated, Joyce returned to playing on the amateur Raybestos Braketes.80 Basketball and sotball were both team sports, which helps explain their fates. he history of women’s sports since the 1970s has conirmed again and again that it is much harder to build professional franchises in team sports than in individual sports. “Until team sports are accepted the same way they are for men,” argued Billie Jean King in 1981, “we haven’t arrived. Everyone talks about our success; all I can think about is, we haven’t even started.”81 Women did in fact fare beter in individual sports in the 1970s, although only slightly. Figure skaters such as Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill

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were able to parlay Olympic medals into careers with the Ice Capades. Women also competed in professional bowling, skiing, and track and ield, while the running boom ofered women a supportive climate to run races and earn prize money alongside men. Once again, the biggest success story, practically the exception that proves the rule, was professional tennis, aided by the tennis boom of the decade, which provided the fast- growing and popular sport with a large fan base, augmented by consistent (if controver- sial) corporate support from Virginia Slims. In other words, if Billie Jean King had been a crack sotball player, bowler, or skier, she would have had a much harder time creating a persona as a national sports celebrity in those years. Once again, tennis proved the perfect platform for her ambitions on and of the court.82 Ater tennis, the women’s golf tour was probably the most atractive op- portunity for women professional athletes. he women’s pro tour dated to the late 1940s with the establishment of the Ladies Professional Golf As- sociation (LPGA), dominated by the phenomenal golfer and all- around athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, as well as stellar players such as Bety Hicks, Louise Suggs, and Paty Berg. Ater Zaharias’s premature death in 1956, Mickey Wright emerged as a tour leader, and the LPGA grew in terms of television exposure, increasing purses, and corporate sponsorship. When Wright abruptly retired in 1965, the growth of the tour stalled until Colgate Palmolive stepped in as the main sponsor in 1972. In addition to the infu- sion of corporate cash and celebrity support, especially from Dinah Shore, whose name became practically synonymous with women’s golf, the game proited from the promotion of new stars such as Nancy Lopez. As golfer Carole Mann noted in 1978, “Five years ago litle girls never walked up to tell me that they wanted to be a professional golfer. Now it happens all the time.”83 hings were also changing in the previously all- male world of NASCAR racing, thanks to Janet Guthrie. Always very much of an individualist (her background was in aeronautical engineering and physics), Guthrie had been racing cars since the 1960s, gaining experience that allowed her to be the irst woman to qualify for the Indy 500 in 1977. She qualiied again the next year, inishing ninth overall. Overcoming lingering — and oten overt — prejudice that women couldn’t drive as fast or as well as men, Guth- rie put her success in wider perspective: “It was the women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s that made it possible for a woman to drive at Indianapolis and Daytona. I was simply the woman at the right place at

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the right time with the right background, and an overwhelming passion for the sport.” In Billie Jean King’s opinion, “Brave women like Janet Guthrie made it more acceptable for women to be elite athletes. She dared — no, demanded — to compete at the highest level of her sport in an era when entry and acceptance were a much greater challenge.” Access and the right to compete were the watchwords of women’s sports in the 1970s; accep- tance, respect, and professional viability would take much, much longer.84

This chapter began with the image of Brandi Chastain in her black Nike sports bra, so it seems appropriate to end this survey of the history of women’s sports by returning to that piece of underwear, which, like so much else in this history, had its birth in the 1970s. Even as women’s sports participation opportunities exploded in that decade, there was not yet a comparable explosion in gear and equipment for women. In the meantime female athletes were forced to make do with men’s shoes in smaller sizes, uniforms that were cut for men’s bodies, and a range of compromises and adaptations that reinforced that the norm in sports was male and women were still interlopers. A prime example: Kathrine Switzer ran the 1974 New York City marathon in a tennis dress.85 One of the most vexing problems was bras, which were designed for fashion and everyday wear but not for serious athletic activity. For all but the most lat- chested women, going without a bra (the image of feminists as bra burners notwithstanding) was not really an option, for reasons of both comfort and modesty. In 1977 marathoner Lisa Lindahl grew tired of bouncing breasts while she ran. “Why isn’t there a jockstrap for women?” she asked herself. he next year she teamed up with Hinda Miller, a profes- sional costume designer, to develop such a product. heir ingenious solu- tion? Sew two jockstraps together. All they needed was soter fabric and beter elastic, and the basic concept behind today’s sports bra was born. At irst they called the product Jock Bras, but when the sporting good stores where they planned to market the product (note: not in women’s lingerie departments) objected to the name, it became Jogbra.86 Marathoner Ellen Wessel had a similar “eureka” moment in 1977 when she grew frustrated by the ill- iting and poorly designed clothing available to active women like herself: “You go through a period of time thinking you’re too fat, too thin, too this or that instead of realizing the clothing is really the problem.” With a $7,000 loan, she and Elizabeth Goeke founded Moving Comfort, based in Springield, Virginia, to design and market

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running clothing speciically geared to women. Unlike most start- up busi- nesses, they had no cash low problems at irst because, Wessel later joked, they were too stupid to know they should give credit: everything was cash on delivery. With very litle initial competition, they developed their prod- uct line and reined their business plan. he company doubled in size each year and by 1983 had gross sales of more than $4 million.87 Long before Reebok hired Rebecca Lobo or Nike told women to “Just Do It,” a band of far- sighted women entrepreneurs saw a niche and began to ill the needs of all those female athletes whose lives were being changed by the revolution in women’s sports, right down to their underwear. No won- der a Washington Post writer in 1999 described the now- ubiquitous sports bra as “the cloth symbol of Title IX’s success.”88