Were it so inclined, Penn State could with no little amount of validity, lay claim to having the premier women’s athletic program in the nation, both in terms of scope and achievement.
In the past year the Lady Lions won a pair of national championships, finished second in the country in another sport, grabbed eight regional crowns, boasted two individuals who won six national titles between them, and had fifteen athletes accorded all-America status.
The question which begs to be answered is how did it all happen so fast. How did Penn State, while breaking trails in a relatively new frontier, manage to attain so much quality when the majority of other schools are now only coming to grips with the idea that women are athletically equal to men in the eyes of the government under Title IX?
The answer is simple: foresight.
“At the time the first drafts of Title IX were drawn up we were celebrating the tenth anniversary of women’s sports at Penn State,” recalled Robert J. Scannell ’59g, ’64g, dean of the College of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. “It’s ironic, actually, that on the night of the banquet celebrating that anniversary, one of our Washington people handed me a copy of the first drafts of Title IX as I was going into the Nittany Lion Inn. Here we were, celebrating our tenth anniversary, while other schools were going into shock.
“You have to give credit for our program to Ernie McCoy [retired dean and athletic director]. He made the decision back in 1964 that the women’s teams should be given varsity status. Until that time they were all competing on the club level or in intramurals, with only a few outside contests scheduled in a few sports.
“Lucille Magnuson also deserves a lot of credit. At that time she was the vice president of AAHPER [American Alliance for Health, Physical Education and Recreation] and also involved with the DGWS [Division of Girls and Women’s Sports], which has since become the AIAW [Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women]. We had a double impetus; we had people at the national level and Ernie was committed.”
The commitment having been made, careful consideration had to be given as to how it would be implemented.
“We felt there was only one way to go, morally and legally,” Scannell said, “and that was to eliminate the consideration of the athletes as men and women. We decided to just think of them as Penn State students who were highly skilled athletes competing on an intercollegiate level, some of whom were men and some women.
“And I think that has begun to show an impact now. It puts us way ahead of the game. All of our programs were in compliance with Title IX by summer.”
Now we’ve come to the bottom line—money. It’s one thing to make a commitment in spirit but it takes big bucks to put the plan into action. And anyone connected with athletics at Penn State in any way knows where those bucks come from.
“The success of our football program has been what’s made this happen,” Scannell said. “Without it, we wouldn’t have the funds to do it. In most other schools they do one of two things. They either go to the institution and say we [the athletic department] can’t afford this so you pick up the tab, take it out of general funds. Or they will drop several men’s sports in order to get the women going. We haven’t had to do either of those things, although our men’s sports have been forced to eat more of the inflation than they wanted. But they haven’t been cut or diminished. And the whole growth is because of the fund raising by the Nittany Lion Club [which last year netted $596,311 from 6,899 contributors].”
The money has gone to eradicate inequalities between the men’s and women’s programs. The women now have trainers, a training room, training meals, their travel expenses covered, and a woman, Mary Jo Haverbeck, added to the sports information staff. And there have been other improvements.
“We now have the same standards as the men,” said Della Durant ’57g assistant athletic director. “That includes travel, meal money, facilities, scheduling.”
But when the money first became available, the AIAW decreed that it could not be spent to award grants-in-aid to women athletes. That rule was later rescinded; and when it was, the Lady Lions proceeded with caution.
“We were one of the first schools to offer aid,” Durant said. “We began doing that in the fall of ’74. In May of that year we contacted all of the athletes in our programs and explained that they were allowed to apply for aid. But we took no new people.
“We started conservatively but with confidence. We gave only partial tuition at first. Now we have somewhere around seventy-five grants and most cover only tuition, although some are full grants.”
“The largest problem, both nationally and here, is that the women are into the big time now and they aren’t quite sure how to cope with it,” Scannell decided. “They want a gradual evolution of rules, which may be a fine philosophy but it doesn’t take into account the realities of the program.
“Basketball is now being televised and is drawing big crowds. Yet the women don’t recruit—supposedly. But when they’re giving out aid, very few of them give it out blind. It’s a problem the association has not yet begun to cope with.
“The AIAW doesn’t want to become as dogmatic as the NCAA. It allows transfers with immediate eligibility, and yet it assumes everyone is a lady and a gentleman and there will be no raiding. It’s impractical,” Scannell said.
“And it allows a coach to go watch a kid but not to talk to her. What’s a coach supposed to do if she’s spotted by a parent who wants to come over and talk? One of the definite problems confronting women’s sports is that as an organization, the governing body, the AIAW, is going to have to learn to cope with the realities, the pressures, the crowds, and the careers.”
Ed Czekaj ’48, ’54g, athletic director, is well versed in the transfer situation.
“It’s a problem right now,” he said. “They’ll have to change that rule. Schools are out raiding. Some are going to go out and have a national championship in every sport. There’s going to be a lot of grief over it.”
One of the sources of pride at Penn State—the large number of varsity sports it supports—may be a double-edged sword.
“Right now we have a broad-based women’s program with few of the sports at full aid. As other schools go to the maximum amount of aid in a particular sport, we’re going to have to decide if we want to zero in on a few,” Scannell said. “If we do that, we may have to pull some money out of other sports, including the men’s.
“The thing is, we have this great machine driven by one motor, Beaver Stadium. If that bubble ever bursts, we’ve got to try to figure out how we’re going to make this machine run again. Of course, you could say that if interest goes down in football it will come up in gymnastics; but reality says that we’re basically dependent on football,” Scannell said.
“But this is not unique to women’s sports; it’s the total program. And it’s the same at all big football schools. The big programs are at the schools with big football programs. We have a big program and thousands of people get opportunities because of our ability to ride this football phenomenon.
“Now you can take the philosophical approach to the situation and say, ‘Isn’t that interesting?’ or you can be realistic and try to figure out how to ride it as long as it lasts, as long as the interest continues to go up. But I’ll tell you what, some day when an archaeologist digs up Beaver Stadium, he’s going to have a helluva time explaining it.”
The sociologists will also have their hands full when at some distant date they look back on the evolution of women’s sports, at the battles fought and won, and finally, when they look at the recognition given, grudgingly at first but more readily as time passed. In terms of recognition, the accomplishments of the Lady Lions this year have already been duly recorded and it’s of no small value to them or their school.
“You can never put an absolute value on recognition,” Scannell said. “But whether people think of Penn State in terms of nuclear engineering or women’s gymnastics, I want them to think in terms of quality.”
How Do the Coaches Feel?
“Our administration is very aware of what’s going on,” said Patty Meiser, women’s basketball coach. “Ever since I met Dean Scannell, I’ve been impressed with his ability to predict the future.
“We’ve been able to develop our program; no one has held us back. We’ve been given the support we need to compete nationally. I’m very pleased with what they’ve done. I feel I’m tuned in to what’s going on nationally, and in all areas we’re right up there.”
Gillian Rattray, who coaches field hockey and lacrosse, and whose lacrosse team recently won the national championship, agreed with Coach Meiser.
“Our administration has been very supportive,” she added. “Anything we’ve asked for that is reasonable, they’ve looked into and we’ve gotten, although it may have been tough for them at times.”
It has been tough enough to have caused some bad vibrations to travel between Rec Hall and White Building, the operations center for the majority of women’s sports.
“We are definitely not on an equal basis with men’s sports,” said Judi Avener, coach of the national women’s gymnastics champions. “There are definitely discrepancies. But we’re now moving toward a unified program, although it has taken us awhile to get there.
“There are certain differences which are inherent in the fact that men are men and women are women. I think if you look at the situation by comparing analogous sports, you get a better picture. I think we are closer to the men in equality in gymnastics than is the case in some of the other sports. I’d like to say that everything is absolutely perfect, but it’s not. We’re not one big happy family.”
Nor is it likely they ever will be. The men’s programs are not without difficulties among themselves, even after a half century or more of trying to resolve their differences. Competition is not always confined to the arena.
“I’d hesitate to say that we have reached complete equality with the men,” said Chris Brooks, women’s track coach. “The opportunity is there but there are one or two people who are hesitant to recognize that we’re here to stay. But we’ve all been given ample opportunity to bring our programs up to par. However, there are a couple of people who will fight us to the end. They think we should have to spend fifteen years to build up a program the way they had to.”
It needn’t take that long anymore, particularly with the transfer rule, which allows an athlete to transfer to another school and lose no eligibility at all.
The effects of this rule are most evident in track and basketball, where recruiting and raiding of other squads brings to mind the old bidding wars between the NFL and the AFL.
“Right now track is very cutthroat,” Coach Brooks said. “it’s especially that way on the West Coast, although in the East it’s catching on fast. Programs are being built overnight. The transfer rule is encouraging coaches to raid. Cal-State Northridge has a team that was built overnight. They just went out and recruited the top performer in each event. It makes a mockery of the AIAW committee, which thinks this isn’t going on.
“I haven’t lost any athletes because of it yet, although it’s not from lack of trying. When Kathy Mills (left) was at the Olympic tryout camp she was highly recruited.”
Had she taken what she was offered, Mills could have left Penn State without so much as having to notify her coach, and begun competing elsewhere. It’s the type of situation that can ruin a summer vacation for a coach.
“You go away for the summer and you don’t know who’s coming back in the fall,” Meiser said. “These players are working at camps with coaches all over the country on a very casual basis. You just cross your fingers and see who walks in the gym in the fall.
“But it will be awhile. Before any sort of strong rule will be passed. The situation is so bad in basketball right now, it’s ridiculous. One of the big programs is the same one encountered by the NCAA—the small schools are in a position to dictate policy to the larger ones, which are giving out aid.”
The transfer situation is not so rampant in gymnastics, lacrosse, field hockey, and many of the other women’s sports. But the recruiting dilemma is universal. Particularly troublesome is the stipulation that a coach cannot talk with a prospect unless the prospect pays her own way for a trip to campus.
“It’s really disturbing to me that I have to travel four or five hours to watch a girl play, but I can’t talk to her,” Coach Meiser said. “Particularly when, if you’re talking about the out-of-state girl, you’re looking at about $17,000 in potential aid. We should be given the opportunity to get to know the prospects as well as possible.”
“In terms of recruiting,” Coach Avener said, “we have a lot to learn. The men have set an example that we don’t want to follow. We want the benefits but we don’t want the problems they’ve encountered. Yet saying I can’t talk to a student unless she shows up on campus, when I teach at four camps, is ridiculous.”
How Do the Players Feel?
Until recently the image attached to women athletes was a less than flattering one, which portrayed them as some sort of genetic freaks with athletic abilities society had deemed acceptable only for the male of the species.
But through the exposure accorded the women in both the print and electronic media, that image has been drastically altered in recent years.
“When people find out I play field hockey and lacrosse they’re amazed. They say, ‘You don’t look like an athlete.’ But what’s an athlete supposed to look like?” asks Chris Larson, an all-American in field hockey.
“You can’t really tell who the athletes are anymore,” says Jen Bednarek, a standout on the Lady Lion basketball squad.
Ann Carr has no problem with image, due in large part to the nature of gymnastics, where she won national titles in four events last year, as well as to her relatively small physical stature.
“My sport is pretty different from the rest of women’s sports,” she said. “It’s one of the most feminine of the women’s sports and I think that’s why it’s so popular.”
As for achieving parity with the long-established men’s programs, and knocking down residual, chauvinistic attitudes that cling like barnacles to many of the traditional jocks no controlling the purse strings: Penn State women believe that the farsighted and liberal-minded administration has prevented that sort of difficulty from surfacing, despite the few additional privileges accorded the football squad, which other athletic teams of both genders do not receive.
“Sure, I feel like we’re treated equally,” Carr adds. “And it doesn’t bother me at all that football is treated differently. They’re special; people really like to watch them, they draw big crowds and they deserve what they get.”
There is a suffix to that last statement which generally runs along the line of: “and they also foot the bill for the rest of the sports.”
Money enables Penn State to support thirty-one varsity sports, fifteen of which are for women, and support them in a style to which many other women’s programs are not accustomed.
“We’re treated very well compared to girls at a lot of other schools,” observes Kathy Mills, who last May won the 3,000-and 5,000-meter races at the AIAW track meet and set a world record in the latter. “We get to compete a lot more than the others. The school pays for our travel expenses, while some girls don’t even get meal money.”
The Lady Lions get that and a lot more.
“When I talk to girls from other teams a lot of them are so disgusted,” Chris Larson (left) says. “They don’t get the money we get, top to bottom. It’s so professionally run here, so high class as opposed to other schools, right down to the little benefits like different uniforms for practice, training meals, and things like that.”
The Lady Lions are also finding that the recognition they’re receiving has its drawbacks, even if they are small. Now, for many of them, even lunch can be a hassle, their appearance in a dining hall creating a swell of whispers.
“Sometimes when I’m in the cafeteria people will recognize me and come over and sit beside me. I don’t even know them but they’ll expect me to talk about gymnastics all the time, which I really don’t like to do,” Carr says.
Jen Bednarkek (left) has had a taste of the seedy side of the situation.
“When I went home after my freshman season, I was a little discouraged with the way some things had gone,” she recalls. “I had thought about transferring. I went to see my old high school team play and when I walked in the gym a girl from another college team, whom I had played against several times, followed me up in the stands and sat right down beside me. She told me her coach wanted to talk to me at halftime.
“At first I was amazed, but Mrs. Meiser had told me this was going to happen. It’s really easy to disregard the AIAW rules. If a school sees another player it wants and who seems unhappy, it just says, ‘Hey, come to our school’; I have a friend who has transferred three times, but what kind of education is that? She’s a senior this year but she doesn’t have enough credits to get a degree.
“I just liked Penn State too much to leave. If I just wanted to play basketball I could have gone. If you’re unhappy, you can go somewhere where you’ll play more, but it’s usually at a smaller school and you’d end up missing the big-time situation. I considered that when I was thinking about leaving. Then I thought, ‘Where am I going to find it any better than I already have it at Penn State?’”
