Title IX Reduces Women's Track Opportunities for Succsess
Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 11:07 pm
There are no schools that I know of that have only men's track and no women's.
Women's programs are allowed 3 paid coaches and men's programs are allowed 3 paid coaches. Combined programs are allowed 6.
Not all programs that have men and women programs are combined but even those are not usually share coaches (I know not all, but those usually have a lot of volunteers).
So a typical combined program is set up something like this:
1 Head Coach
1 Sprint Coach
1 Distance Coach
1 Jumps Coach
1 Throws Coach
1 Extra Coach (Sometimes a second sprint, distance, jumps, or throws coach. Rare occasions this guy or gal is a pole vault only coach).
So this means practically all men's programs are allowed to have 6 paid coaches, while only the women at a school with men's track get 6 coaches.
A woman's program that has had the men's team cut would look something like this:
1 Head Coach
1 Distance Coach
1 Sprint Coach
If the head coach coaches something then the third coach could be something else. But in any case, the women are getting less attention and a less quality experience than male counterparts at other institutions.
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Now to cut to the chase. I hate Title IX as it is written and I think everyone should. There are some blatant policies that were used to defend having women's athletics that are not relevant and are now only used to cut men's programs.
Stupid things:
*Athletic departments need to represent the student body, if a university has 75% women and 25% men there needs to be three times as many women athletes then men.
-This would make since if people recruited athletes from their student bodies, but they do not.
-It would also make a little since if socially the same percentage of women as men actually wanted to do college athletics, they do not.
-This is also a two sided rule. If a school had 50% women and 50% men, but they had 60% women athletes and 40% men athletes, they would never get rid of women athletes in order to get the numbers equal.
I am currently at a program that has 40 men and 60 women. Each year we have more than 20 guys try out and almost none of them ever make the team although there are usually as many as 5 that could have gotten scholarships at smaller universities. In these same years we have at most 10 women try out. Of these 10, 9 probably would not qualify for a high school regional meet. All 10 will probably make the team unless the coaches are scared they are so nonathletic they will hurt themselves. Occasional a field event athlete like a pole vaulter will not make it because a 6'0 girl pole vaulter will just be a joke compared to 12-6 and 13-0 women on the team and require valuable time taken away from the coach just to make sure they do not hurt themselves.
So a rule that was designed to allow women to be able to compete has turned into a rule that usually ends up having opportunities taken away from the men as well as causing coaches to frantically search to campus for any woman that resembles an athlete just so they can keep the women's numbers up and keep the men's program.
Along with less coaches, the rule also prevents the women from being able to have as high of a quality of experience because there are so man of them, more less quality athletes to get in the way of their coaching, and less opportunity for them to compete just because they are feeling up spots to make the team Title IX compliant.
As an example of Equal Opportunity, if a team is really good a 15'6 pole vaulter is not always even guaranteed a walk on spot, but a 9'6 girl is.
Women's programs are allowed 3 paid coaches and men's programs are allowed 3 paid coaches. Combined programs are allowed 6.
Not all programs that have men and women programs are combined but even those are not usually share coaches (I know not all, but those usually have a lot of volunteers).
So a typical combined program is set up something like this:
1 Head Coach
1 Sprint Coach
1 Distance Coach
1 Jumps Coach
1 Throws Coach
1 Extra Coach (Sometimes a second sprint, distance, jumps, or throws coach. Rare occasions this guy or gal is a pole vault only coach).
So this means practically all men's programs are allowed to have 6 paid coaches, while only the women at a school with men's track get 6 coaches.
A woman's program that has had the men's team cut would look something like this:
1 Head Coach
1 Distance Coach
1 Sprint Coach
If the head coach coaches something then the third coach could be something else. But in any case, the women are getting less attention and a less quality experience than male counterparts at other institutions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now to cut to the chase. I hate Title IX as it is written and I think everyone should. There are some blatant policies that were used to defend having women's athletics that are not relevant and are now only used to cut men's programs.
Stupid things:
*Athletic departments need to represent the student body, if a university has 75% women and 25% men there needs to be three times as many women athletes then men.
-This would make since if people recruited athletes from their student bodies, but they do not.
-It would also make a little since if socially the same percentage of women as men actually wanted to do college athletics, they do not.
-This is also a two sided rule. If a school had 50% women and 50% men, but they had 60% women athletes and 40% men athletes, they would never get rid of women athletes in order to get the numbers equal.
I am currently at a program that has 40 men and 60 women. Each year we have more than 20 guys try out and almost none of them ever make the team although there are usually as many as 5 that could have gotten scholarships at smaller universities. In these same years we have at most 10 women try out. Of these 10, 9 probably would not qualify for a high school regional meet. All 10 will probably make the team unless the coaches are scared they are so nonathletic they will hurt themselves. Occasional a field event athlete like a pole vaulter will not make it because a 6'0 girl pole vaulter will just be a joke compared to 12-6 and 13-0 women on the team and require valuable time taken away from the coach just to make sure they do not hurt themselves.
So a rule that was designed to allow women to be able to compete has turned into a rule that usually ends up having opportunities taken away from the men as well as causing coaches to frantically search to campus for any woman that resembles an athlete just so they can keep the women's numbers up and keep the men's program.
Along with less coaches, the rule also prevents the women from being able to have as high of a quality of experience because there are so man of them, more less quality athletes to get in the way of their coaching, and less opportunity for them to compete just because they are feeling up spots to make the team Title IX compliant.
As an example of Equal Opportunity, if a team is really good a 15'6 pole vaulter is not always even guaranteed a walk on spot, but a 9'6 girl is.