TEXASTUMBLE
Title IX Compliance
Right now that’s a big “if”—especially for
men’s sports—when you factor in a slumping
economy and the continuing effects of Title IX,
the 1972 federal law that requires equal opportunities for male and female students. Universities across the U.S. are still scrambling to balance their numbers and avoid losing federal funding. Gymnastics is rarely the sport that gets
added because “it’s usually easier on campuses
to find another outdoor field than it is to find a
dedicated indoor facility to house a gymnastics
program,” says Utah women’s coach Greg
Marsden.
The only college in Texas to sponsor a gymnastics team is Texas Woman’s University in
Denton, which, of course, is immune to Title IX.
And its team is Division II.
With such a huge talent pool in the state,
numerous club teams have formed at Texas universities. All would like to become varsity sports.
University of Texas Women’s Athletics Director
Chris Plonsky told IG that adding gymnastics is
“not in our wheelhouse right now. It’s not new.
We’re very aware of the club situation and the
interest.” Plonsky says Texas dropped women’s
gymnastics in 1981.
Donna Lopiano was the UT Women’s
Athletics Director then, and says that other programs in the region had already dropped
women’s gymnastics. “We would really have to
travel to do a top- 10 schedule,” says Lopiano,
who later became CEO of the Women’s Sports
Foundation and is now president of Sports
Management Resources. “We had to make a
Prong 1) Proportionality: The number of
male and female students is proportionate
to the number of male and female athletes.
For example, if 55% of the students at your
school are female, then 55% of the athletes
must be female.
Prong 2) History and Continued Practice
of Program Expansion: The school must
demonstrate a history and continued practice of expanding participation opportunities for women.
Prong 3) Interests and Abilities: The
school must full and effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of its female
students.
decision: [be a] jack of
all trades, master of
none, or cut a sport.”
Plonsky also says
women’s collegiate
gymnastics does not
coincide with the mission of UT athletics,
which strives to develop
teams whose athletes
“have a chance to be
the U.S. national team
and Olympic team
members … and gymnastics is just not that
way. It is for an athlete
who probably is either
younger or [who] trains year round….”
That may have been true in 1981, but the
gymnastics landscape in Texas has changed dramatically, particularly after Bela Karolyi opened
his gym in Houston in the early 1980s. Half of
the 2008 U.S. Olympic team were college-age
gymnasts—Liukin, Alicia Sacramone (who had
already competed for Brown) and Chellsie
Memmel. A fourth member, Samantha Peszek,
17, plans to compete in the NCAA.
The 2004 U.S. Olympic team featured four
gymnasts who either had compted NCAA or
were about to: Mohini Bhardwaj was a star at
UCLA before Athens; Terin Humphrey competed for Alabama after ’04; and Courtney McCool
and Courtney Kupets currently compete for
Georgia. The list goes on.
While Texas can use
budgetary restraints as
an excuse to keep gymnastics out of Austin, it is
surprising that it turned
down a pretty solid offer
from Retton. “I’ve told
them that we’ll come up
with the money. I’ll help
you find a head coach,”
Retton told the Houston
Chronicle. “I’ll lend my
name. You’d have a
national champion within five years.
“It’s just mind-bog-gling to me. …Shannon
(Retton’s husband, a former quarterback at
Texas) even went to (Texas) A&M to see if they
were interested. But nobody wants us.”
Horton, an Oklahoma Sooner, says he would
have loved to compete for the Longhorns. “I
would have stayed [in Texas] if I had the chance,”
he told the Houston Chronicle. “If the University of Texas had a gymnastics program, there’s
no doubt in my mind that it would be the most
dominant program in the country.”
Texas Colleges in the Big 12
University of Texas-Austin
Reporting Year: 9/1/2007 - 8/31/2008
Texas A&M University
Reporting Year: 9/1/2007 - 8/31/2008
Full-time Undergraduates
36,835
Ratio (percent)
Varsity Teams
Total Participants
Men’s & Women’s Teams
Unduplicated Count of
Participants
Men
17,681
48
Men
Women
19,154
52
Women
Full-time Undergraduates
34,440
Ratio (percent)
Varsity Teams
Total Participants
Men’s & Women’s Teams
Unduplicated Count of
Participants
Men
17,813
52
Men
Women
16,627
48
Women
328
295
414
337
267
258
325
260
Baylor University
Reporting Year: 6/1/2007 - 5/31/2008
Texas Tech University
Reporting Year: 9/1/2007 - 8/31/2008
Full-time Undergraduates
11,641
Ratio (percent)
Varsity Teams
Total Participants
Men’s & Women’s Teams
Unduplicated Count of
Participants
Men
4,834
42
Men
Women
6,807
58
Women
Full-time Undergraduates
23,012
Ratio (percent)
Varsity Teams
Total Participants
Men’s & Women’s Teams
Unduplicated Count of
Participants
Men
12,826
56
Men
Women
10,186
44
Women
275
235
363
195
231
185
280
140
U.S. Deptartment of Education - Equity in Athletics Disclosure website: http// ope.ed.gov/athletics
CONSIDERING the equal opportunity
requirements of Title IX, no women’s
team at Texas certainly means no
men’s team, either. “We say at Texas, ‘We’re
never going to add one sport,’” Plonsky says.
“We have to keep our numbers cohesive on both
the men’s and women’s side.”
Texas was way out of whack in 1993, when a
Title IX-related lawsuit forced it to add women’s
sports. The suit sought the addition of soccer,
gymnastics, rowing and softball, and from ’93-
97, all but gymnastics were eventually added.
David Barron helped cover that story for the
Houston Chronicle, which reported that one
attorney described the addition of the sports as a
“dramatic, major” development. “I would say, 16
years later, that the impact of women’s rowing
on the Texas sports scene has fallen considerably
short of that description,” says Barron, who’s
covered three Olympics and nine U.S. gymnastics championships.
Make no mistake, rowing is one of the quick-est and cheapest sports to raise your female athlete numbers. The 2009 UT rowing team lists 64
members on its roster, 31 of whom are labeled
“novice,” meaning walk-ons. Last year Texas
claimed to have 102 rowers.
By these numbers, rowing is the most popular
women’s sport at Texas, yet a conservative ratio
of gymnastics clubs to rowing clubs in the state is
about 18-to-1. For the record, the UT rowing
team, now in its 12th season, ranked 12th in the
NCAA Central/South Regional in 2008.
While perfectly legal, UT’s recruiting of walk-ons from the student body does not seem to
reflect the true spirit of Title IX, especially prong
3. Consider this entry on the Texas athletics
website, titled “Join UT Rowing”:
Do I need experience to join the team?
No! We have a Novice team designed for
