Title IX: The birth of equal opportunity in sports for women.
Until the year of 1972 women always had the struggle of using their athletic ability to play against men who were bigger and stronger. Leagues were not formed of the same magnitude as men’s leagues and quite frankly, the funding for such women sports were not even comparable .
After many years of this struggle, and even being kicked off of her high school soccer team Donna Hoover decided to take a large step for women’s rights. She was kicked off her team by her high school principal for no other reason then the principal thinking soccer was too much of a contact sport to have a woman play with men. Not one person on the team, or even the coaches had a problem with Donna playing on team. This is when Donna decided to file a lawsuit against the board of education.
After going to court and winning her case, Hoover opened up an equal opportunity for women to participate in sports.
Title IX enabled women to receive athletic scholarships and have an equal opportunity in sports just as men.
However, years after people saw Title IX as a great accomplishment for women, they were blindsided by the news of schools fudging their numbers as to how many women were participating in sports at a certain school to keep their men’s sports in tact. There were news of track and field teams listing individuals on their rosters and even giving them scholarship money to attend school, but then telling the women to not show up to practice or competitions.
Recently, the Texas A&M Womens NCAA National Champions were caught up in allegations also. They had counted males which they used as practice players as female athletes because they were considered part of the Women’s basketball team, even though they were not allowed to participate in NCAA Competitions.
