Title IX

For four years, senior Tania Hults wrote e-mails to set up field hockey tournaments. For four years, she washed uniforms she bought with her own money.\n So when the athletics department decided to elevate her team to the varsity level, she elected to stay at IU for a fifth year. \nHults was the president of the women's field hockey team. Now, because of Title IX, she focuses on being a varsity athlete.\n"Thank God for Title IX, because it's given women a chance to be college athletes," Hults said. "But it's sometimes difficult because there's often not so much money involved."\nTitle IX, a clause of the 1972 Education Act, requires all educational institutions that receive federal funds to follow requirements that include providing scholarships and facilities to female athletes and promoting their sports in a way that equals the men's sports.\nWhile Title IX has provided more opportunities for female athletes like Hults, some men's clubs teams are being held back from achieving varsity status. IU has refrained from cutting any men's varsity sports, but no men's teams will be added in the near future. They also want to avoid cutting rosters in the men's varsity teams to remain competitive in the Big Ten, associate athletic director and compliance coordinator Mary Ann Rohleder said.\nIn the last four years, the university has elevated women's field hockey, crew and water polo to varsity status to comply with Title IX, Rohleder said. The promotion of women's water polo and women's crew to varsity status has increased the percentage of IU athletes who are women from 40 percent in the 1997-98 school year to 46.6 percent in 1999-2000.\nHults petitioned the athletics department for promotion to varsity status four years ago, but water polo was chosen over field hockey because of expenses and the water polo team's notoriety, she said.\nShe had to wait another four years to get her chance.\n"Ever since I was a freshman, we kept trying to make field hockey Division I," Hults said. "I was so happy they did because I was so happy to see the program built and add another player in the Big Ten. It will grow rapidly from here."\nFor Coach Barry King and his women's water polo team, attaining varsity status in 1997 has been a blessing.\nWhen they were still a club team, the water polo athletes had to pay for their flights to away games. They slept on floors in friends' houses when they traveled to tournaments and begged parents to pay for hotel rooms. Now the athletics department pays for the team's swimsuits, goals, balls and other expenses.\n"Certainly the athletics department needs to be congratulated for the decision to add these sports and not cut men's sports," King said. "It's about inclusion -- not exclusion. That's what Title IX is about."\nBesides opportunities, promotion to varsity also means tough beginnings. Field hockey coach Amy Robertson left behind an assistant coaching position at the nation's third-best field hockey team at Wake Forest to start IU's program in August. She struggled during her team's first year at varsity.\nShe had to learn how to tolerate losing, as her team was outscored 73-8. She had to tolerate nights at the office past 7 with no paid assistant coach. She had to tolerate weekends on the road recruiting because Indiana high schools don't offer field hockey.\nBut she said she doesn't mind the extra hours.\n"When I was younger, there weren't half the opportunities there are with field hockey," said Robertson, 35. "In schools, women always had the second slot. We had to pay for our own shoes and sticks."\nNow IU's athletics department pays around $170,000 for her team's equipment and facilities. But Title IX has not meant a sudden infusion of money or scholarships for first-year varsity teams. The three newest women's sport teams were not given the maximum amount of scholarships in their first years. The field hockey team was given three scholarships -- nine less than the maximum -- for the 2000 season.\nBut like the coaches of the other first-year varsity teams, Robertson does not feel slighted. She said she received full support from the athletics department, adding that it would have been unrealistic to give her rookie team full benefits.\n"I think it was really fair with the scholarships," Robertson said. "They gave me exactly what I asked for. I feel very confident that it's set up for success."\nRohleder explained that a new team should not get the full amount of scholarships in its first year because the entire first recruiting class would graduate in four years, leaving little money for future recruits.\n"You can't build a team in one year," she said.\nThe three newest women's teams have not had immediate success. The field hockey team lost 11 of 12 games, and the women's crew team finished last in the Big Ten in its first season. But the teams' coaches remain hopeful for future success.\n"There are seven teams in the conference this season, and we hope to be in the top three," crew coach Mark Wilson said. "We've got realistic goals. We want to improve on all fronts. We want to make sure the girls are rowing well and make sure they're all strong." \nWilson was a volunteer assistant coach for the women's club team before he was promoted to head women's varsity coach in 1999. He now gets paid and his team can compete and practice on the revamped Lemon Lake, with its new dock and boathouse.\nBut the crew team's costs have accumulated to more than $350,000 in the past two years, straining the athletics department's budget, associate athletics director Harold Mauro said. The outdoor AstroTurf field for the field hockey team, which will be ready for the 2001 season, adds another $1 million to the already strained budget.\nRobertson's team might be the last to attain varsity status for a while. The athletic department does not plan to add any varsity sports in the near future to comply with Title IX and avoid further strain on the budget, Rohleder said.\n"We watch our rosters," she said. "In a period of four years, we just added three sports, so we need to now step back and see what our plans for the future would be."\nShe added that the department has asked its varsity teams to modify their rosters to stay compliant with Title IX. The department has also urged women's teams to add members to their rosters and men's teams to stay within limits.\nThis has affected field hockey and crew. Robertson said she was asked to boost her team's roster to 30 athletes, which is difficult because female athletes often don't want to sit on the bench, Rohleder said.\n"There are a lot of walk-ons in the men's sports," she said. "Men's soccer is a perfect example. (Coach Jerry Yeagley) could probably have 35 people out for soccer if he wanted to keep that many. But I think his number is something like 30."\nWith the athletics department's urging to increase women's teams and limit male athletes, popular club teams like men's ice hockey have had to continue relying on fund raising and their own money to pay for equipment, competition and facilities.\nWomen's participation in NCAA championship sports has been triple that of men from 1981 to 1999, according to the NCAA. IU mirrors that national trend, not having added a men's varsity sport since men's soccer in 1973.\n"One Title IX argument is that this is hurting men's sports because we're taking money from men's sports to give to women's sports," kinesiology professor Dr. Larry Fielding said. "That's not the intent of Title IX. It's a choice of where you take it. It might be a very logical choice, but it's still a choice."\nAlex Kyrias, the general manager and assistant coach of the club men's hockey team, disagrees with the athletics department's varsity sport priorities. He said he thinks IU should add men's and women's varsity ice hockey teams with equal-sized rosters.\nKyrias described ice hockey as a fast-growing collegiate sport, adding that a women's hockey team could add 16 to 18 scholarships. A big drawback is that $7-8 million would be needed to build a facility, along with $2 million for equipment and scholarships.\n"I don't think the university has done the proper investigation into how profitable this could be and how this would make sense," Kyrias said. "Title IX is all about providing opportunities."\nMen's lacrosse and rugby club teams have also petitioned for varsity status but were rejected by the department, assistant athletics director Jennifer Brinegar said. She stressed that the athletics department cannot afford to add another men's varsity sport -- both legally and financially. If a university does not comply with Title IX, federal funding can be cut and the school could face a lawsuit.\nBut not all men's club teams are upset.\n"We've always had interest in becoming varsity, but we're pretty comfortable with where we are at the club level," said lacrosse club president Tom Fell, a junior. \nRemaining a club team has its benefits. Fell said he enjoys helping choose his team's opponents. Kyrias said an advantage of club is not having to abide by NCAA guidelines.\nAnd he said he feels some athletics departments have decided to comply with Title IX for the wrong reasons.\n"Some schools, when looking at cutting sports, look at what wouldn't hurt so much to cut," Kyrias said. "It's not fair to those guys when they're in a sport that's expendable. Some schools are in financial situations and decide to cut men's sports.\n"Athletics in college, unfortunately and fortunately, has become a business"