It’s spring in the Queen City—and, sorry skiers, skaters, broom-ballers, and American football fans– for many people, Spring means Sports.
Reds opening day is this week, and FC Cincinnati has already graced TQL Stadium.
For the college basketball lovers among us—the NCAA tournament is in full swing.
Part of the fun of sports is the unknowingness, the drama of what will happen on the field, and how hard that can be to predict, even for the most seasoned analysts.
Sports and drama truly seem to go together, don’t they?
One such cross-over is Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. In the show, Coach Ted Lasso is an American high school football coach hired to coach a professional football (soccer) team in London despite knowing nothing about it.
It was recently announced that Ted Lasso is gearing up for a 4th season. Rumor has it that this time around, Coach Lasso will be leading the newly formed women’s football team for AFC Richmond.
The Ted Lasso announcement reminded me of the March discussion of the Semi-Colon Club at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Professor and author Kelcey Ervick discussed her graphic novel memoir, The Keeper: Soccer, Me and the Law That Changed Women’s Lives.
Professor Ervick discussed her high school career and beyond. A career she credited to 20 USC §§1681 et. seq. , which says, in part:
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 activing receiving Federal financial assistance….
20 USC §§1681 et. seq. is more commonly known as “Title IX,” or, more specifically, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX is the primary federal law barring sex discrimination in all facets of education, including sports programs. Title IX requires that all students have equal opportunities to participate in sports and receive the benefits of athletics.
Professor Ervick talked about how her team, The Cardinals, was created in Cincinnati in 1971. As a young player, she had no idea that her opportunities on the soccer field sprouted from Title IX. Under Title IX, The Cardinals had opportunities to travel all over the country for soccer tournaments that they would not have otherwise had.
According to Breaking Down Barriers: A Legal Guide to Title IX and Athletic Opportunities, a book in our HCLL collection, prior to 1972, fewer than 32,000 women participated in college sports. Before Title IX, fewer than 300,000 high school girls played competitive sports. But, by 2006, 2.95 million high school girls played competitive sports.
In their post about post-pandemic sports participation, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), reports that in the 2022-2023 school year, 7,857,969, high school students played sports nationally. This total includes more than 4.5 million boys and more than 3.3 million girls.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, there were a total of 323,117 student athletes in Ohio.
Thus, whenever we lace up our soccer cleats, grab a tennis racket or a pickleball racket, lift weights, warm up for a 4×4 relay, adjust our swim goggles, spike a volleyball, face a vault, or attempt a triple axel, we do so with the strength and progress made possible by the athletes who came before us—and under the protections of Title IX, which paved the way for all of us to pursue the sports we love.
Resources:
USC § 1681, et. seq.
Ervick, Kelcey, The Keeper: Soccer, Me and the Law That Changed Women’s Lives.
National Women’s Law Center, and DLA Piper, Breaking Down Barriers: A Legal Guide to Title IX and Athletic Opportunities
High School Sports Participation Continues Rebound Toward Pre-Pandemic Levels, NFHS.org