She thought long and hard about not playing any sports in high school. Why? Because for Donna Lopiano, there simply wasn't any competition.
Softball and basketball were the predominant girls' sports at schools like Stamford High in the early 1960s. There was field hockey, if your school offered it. If it didn't, most likely, you ran track.
That was it.
"There was no soccer. No lacrosse. No volleyball. Nothing like the selection of sports you have now," Lopiano said in a recent phone interview. "It wasn't much. With track, we might have had three meets. If you did field hockey, you might have five or six games. It was a different world. I played in high school just because I loved to play."
But when Lopiano wanted competition, real competition, she ventured outside the high school sports world. She played softball with the ASA champion Raybestos Brakettes. She played on a United States Volleyball Association team, and she played with a United States Field Hockey Association squad on Long Island -- places where she could get a true sense of her athletic abilities.
"I chose to play outside of high school because school was so non-competitive. That doesn't happen today," she said.
Today, over 3 million girls participate in high school sports. In college, close to 200,000 women are involved in athletics. There are professional leagues for basketball, golf, tennis and softball.
According to a 2008 report of Trends and Participation in Organized Youth Sports by the National Council of Youth Sports, back in 1970, just 1 in 27 girls played high school sports. Today, that figure stands at 1 in 2.5.
All because of Title IX.
The law was signed by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972, and went into effect on July 1. It read:
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
Ironically, the law was originally intended to create more equal opportunities for women educationally, according to Lopiano.
OPPORTUNITY TO SHINE
"It was intended to open up the graduate professional schools for women so they could become lawyers and doctors and have access to the higher paying professions," Lopiano said, "because women were almost ghettoized into the personal care industry, from nurses to teachers to librarians -- the lowest playing jobs."
Instead, the law ended up changing the face of women's athletics.
"There weren't a lot of opportunities (in either high school or college)," said Lopiano, the founder and president of Sports Management Resources, a consulting firm that focuses on bringing the knowledge of experienced, expert former athletics directors to assist scholastic and collegiate athletics departments in solving growth and development challenges.
"There weren't any conferences. There weren't any national championships for women until the mid-'70s. None of the things that we take for granted today existed then. Girls were doing bake sales to buy their uniforms or they were making their own uniforms.
"They were playing sports and getting a varsity letter, but their schedule might have been five or six games all season. The athletic picture looks nothing like it looks today."
For 17 years, from 1975-92, Lopiano was the women's athletic director at the University of Texas and was the past president for the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), the forerunner to the NCAA. From 1992-2007, she was the CEO for the Women's Sports Foundation, which was established in 1974 to advance the lives of women and girls through sports.
"There has been a tremendous increase in women's participation but it's still not closing the gap between men and women," Lopiano said. "There are significantly more opportunities for men, 1.3 million more at the high school level. Women's participation at the high school level hasn't reached what men's participation was in 1992.
"There's still a long way to go. Great progress. From nothing to something, great progress, but still, a long way to go."
ROLE MODELS TO FOLLOW
According to figures provided by Lopiano, in 1972-73, 294,015 girls participated in high school sports. In 2010-11, that figure had jumped to 3,173,549, a 979 percent increase.
In 1972-73, just 29,977 women played collegiate athletics. In 2010-11, there were 186,460 women playing, an increase of 522 percent.
One of those girls was Kara Lawson, currently a guard for the WNBA's Connecticut Sun and formerly a member of the University of Tennessee women's basketball team, graduating in 2003 with a degree in finance.
"I think I was fortunate ... when I was a kid, there were sports teams that I could play on and I could watch college basketball on television and dream of playing basketball," Lawson, also a women's college basketball analyst, said at the NCAA Women's Final Four in Denver in April. "When I was in high school, the WNBA had started and that gave me an opportunity to play professionally, so I just feel ... fortunate, is probably the best word, to grow up in an era where so much of the trailblazing happened before me and to have strong female role models."
Like Lopiano, who played for the Brakettes from 1963-72, posting a pitching record of 183-18 with 1,633 strikeouts in 817 innings. She was named an All-American nine times, and won six ASA titles.
Or Bippie Luckie. Luckie came to Sacred Heart University as a shortstop under coach Pete D'Orio in 1982. Over the next four years, she posted a career .357 average (179 hits, nine HRs, 88 RBIs) in leading the Pioneers to three consecutive NCAA Division II Final Four appearances (1983-85).
"As far as Title IX, for me personally, I don't think I was affected by it because I was always treated fairly, for the most part," Luckie said. "I never really had an issue in high school because we had a dome and everyone had access to the dome to practice. We played basketball on the same court as the guys. I never had an issue in high school."
Luckie has seen the benefits of Title IX firsthand, however, as the longtime SHU softball coach, recently completing her 24th season. This season, a brand-new $2 million softball stadium was built on campus.
"It's like practicing at Yankee Stadium," she said. "When kids come in ... they can't believe it. This is going to help us immeasurably. No one has a stadium like that around here at all in New England."
Luckie said that when she was playing, the softball budget was around $20,000. Today, it's close to $80,000.
"(Associate head coach) Pam (London) and I want to treat this program like it's a first-class program," Luckie said. "And we want to offer that to the kids when we recruit them."
THE RIGHT STUFF
Thanks to tournament championships in volleyball, basketball and bowling and solid seasons in field hockey, golf, soccer, track (indoor & outdoor), tennis and lacrosse, Sacred Heart won the Northeast Conference women's Commissioner's Cup for the sixth straight year.
"If you have the sport, you have to fund the sport and I think that's what we're doing now. We have more operating dollars," Luckie said. "We still don't have enough yet, but we have enough to be competitive in most of those sports. I'm not sure how we do it, but we get it done. We put a lot of funding into those sports, but you have to."
At the Division I level in Connecticut, Sacred Heart offers 17 varsity sports for women. So does Yale, while Quinnipiac offers 14, UConn 12, Fairfield University 11, Central Connecticut nine and Hartford eight. And according to Lopiano, that's not enough.
"There aren't enough female sports being offered," she said. "There are plenty of girls participating in the sports that are being offered, but schools are not ... for instance, you might see two or three levels of football teams (including freshman and junior varsity) in high school sports, but you won't see three levels of girls' soccer. There's no requirement that you offer the same sports for men and women, but if women have interest in multiple teams in a particular sport and if you offer that same opportunity for men, you should do it for women."
In 2010, the LPGA had a total tournament purse of $42 million, up from $4 million in 1977. In 2009, the WTA had a total prize pool of $85 million, up from $10 million in 1983. In the WNBA, salaries range from $34,500 to $105,500, depending on length of service. However, playing overseas, a player can make as much as $600,000 to $1 million.
"I would say that Title IX has had a direct effect toward what I do today," said ESPN women's basketball analyst Caroline Peck at the Final Four. "Because of Title IX, I had the opportunity to coach (in college) and to go from that to coaching in the WNBA. You look at what the opportunities are for young women now, I think that a lot of that success has grown with the attention of Title IX."
celsberry@ctpost.com; http://Twitter@elsctpost
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