News

News Page

Cumberland College takes No. 1 ranking in women’s college wrestling for the first time

12/16/2002
Gary Abbott/USA Wrestling

Cumberland College in Kentucky has received the No. 1 team ranking for the first time in TheMat.com U.S. College Women’s Wrestling Rankings by receiving the top spot in the December 2002 rankings.

Cumberland College, coached by Kip Flanik, boasts three wrestlers with No. 1 individual rankings this month: Sarah Hayes at 112 pounds, Alaina Berube at 138.5 pounds and Toccara Montgomery at 158.5 pounds. Cumberland recently won the team title at the UM-Morris Women’s Open, and has had solid showings at the Brock Invitational in Canada and the Sunkist Kids International Open.

Cumberland replaces Missouri Valley College in the top spot, which dropped to No. 2 in the United States for the first time. Mike Machholz’ veteran Viking team has yet to begin its competitive season, with its first competitions scheduled for January. Based upon past performance, three Missouri Valley wrestlers have retained top rankings in their weight divisions: Kiersten Hyatt at 130 pounds, Mollie Keith at 147.5 pounds and Hillary Leith at 169.5 pounds.

Rounding out the top six teams in women’s college wrestling are the women’s varsity programs at No. 3 UM-Morris, No. 4 Neosho County CC, No. 5 Menlo College and No. 6 Pacific University.

Other individuals with No. 1 rankings in their weight classes are Mary Kelly of Neosho County CC at 105.5 pounds and Marcie Van Dusen of UM-Morris at 121 pounds.

TheMat.com U.S. Women's College Team Rankings

1. Cumberland College
2. Missouri Valley College
3. UM-Morris
4. Neosho County
5. Menlo College
6. Pacific Univ.
7. Princeton
8. Cal-State Bakersfield
9. Hawaii

TheMat.com U.S. Women's College Individuals

48 kg (105.5 lbs.)
1. Mary Kelly, freshman (Neosho County)
2. Liz Short, sophomore (UM-Morris)
3. Tanya Miyasaki, freshman (Menlo College)
4. Kristen Fujioka, sophomore (Pacific)
5. Becky D’Ambrosio, sophomore (Cumberland College)
6. Rachel Bernardes, senior (Missouri Valley)
7. Amantha Hordagoda, freshman (Cal-Bakersfield)
8. Reona Kumagai, freshman (Princeton)

51 kg (112 lbs.)
1. Sarah Hayes, senior (Cumberland College)
2. Patrice Crenshaw, sophomore (UM-Morris)
3. Audrey Pang, sophomore (Princeton)
4. Keli Hinton, sophomore (UM-Morris)
5. Erin Soli, sophomore (Missouri Valley)
6. Colleen McKinney, freshman (Cumberland College)
7. Tabathia Ramsey, freshman (UM-Morris)
8. Yvette Madrid, freshman (Neosho County)

55 kg (121 lbs.)
1. Marcie Van Dusen, junior (UM-Morris)
2. Jessica Shirley, sophomore (Cumberland College)
3. Melina Hutchison, sophomore (Menlo College)
4. Lindsey Owens, freshman (Menlo College)
5. Jill Remiticado, senior (Pacific)
6. Linse Meadows, freshman (Neosho County)
7. Marianne Vollmer, junior (Missouri Valley)
8. Sarah Tolin, sophomore (Neosho County)

59 kg (130 lbs.)
1. Kiersten Hyatt, senior (Missouri Valley)
2. Brooke Bogren, freshman (Cumberland College)
3. Jamie Alvesteffer, junior (Cumberland College)
4. Desi Lockhart, sophomore (Pacific)
5. Sharon Jacobson, freshman (UM-Morris)
6. Raquel Magdaleno, freshman (Menlo College)
7. Jennifer Miyahara, freshman (Pacific)
8. Shelly Ruberg, freshman (Cumberland College)

63 kg (138.5 lbs.)
1. Alaina Berube, freshman (Cumberland College)
2. Tina Arnds, senior (Missouri Valley)
3. Leigh Jaynes, senior (Missouri Valley)
4. Ranae Faaborg, freshman (UM-Morris)
5. Sara Williams, sophomore (Missouri Valley)
6. Dina Tavera, freshman (Menlo College)
7. Issa Alvarez, junior (Cumberland College)
8. Emily Rinehart, freshman (Missouri Valley)

67 kg (147.5 lbs.)
1. Mollie Keith, junior (Missouri Valley)
2. Elena Mena, freshman (Neosho County)
3. Randi Miller, sophomore (Neosho County)
4. Lisa Bisers, sophomore (Johns Hopkins)
5. Aja Smith, freshman (Cumberland College)
6. Brandi Golt, sophomore (Missouri Valley)
7. Kelly Branham, freshman (Missouri Valley)
8. Hillary Broad, junior (Hawaii)

72 kg (158.5 lbs.)
1. Toccara Montgomery, sophomore (Cumberland College)
2. Alicia Mena, freshman (Neosho County)
3. Donnell Bradley, junior (Missouri Valley)
4. Megan Goldsmith, freshman (UM-Morris)
5. Beth Deroy, freshman (Cumberland College)
6. Jessi Clifton, freshman (Cumberland College)

77 kg (169.5 lbs.)
1. Hillary Leith, sophomore (Missouri Valley)
2. Jenna Pavlik, sophomore (Lock Haven)
3. Wendy Hunter, sophomore (Cumberland College)
4. Holly Kenneda, freshman (Neosho County)

Dates of publication: Nov. 20, Dec. 16, Jan. 20, Feb. 20, March 20, May 20

Eligibility: Teams who are considered for ranking include both college varsity programs and college-affiliated club programs.

Media outlets may reproduce these rankings only if they identify them as TheMat.com U.S. Women’s Wrestling College Rankings

-------------------------------------------------

We've come a long way ... but we might be going back

The Sun; Baltimore, Md.; Dec 10, 2002

A GOLF PRO named Suzy Whaley has decided to play in the Greater
Hartford Open, a PGA Tour event she qualified for last summer. She'll do it, she
said, "to have a little fun" and "inspire young women to play anywhere
they want to."

That sounds good, even if Whaley will have to play from the men's tees
this time, adding 700 yards and the likely possibility that she'll miss the
cut by a mile.

Doesn't matter. Bravo. Her initial reluctance to play and make a
spectacle of herself was the sign of a reasonable woman, but symbolism is
important.

Why? For starters, there are those green jackets at Augusta National
who are holding firm (mostly) against admitting women to their exclusive club
despite the benefits Augusta receives for hosting one of golf's premier
events. That's not good, not when Augusta members are some of America's
corporate leaders whose own company policies would prohibit such
exclusionary practices.

Augusta chairman Hootie Johnson argues for privacy rights, but how
private can a golf club be that beams out through CBS cameras to the universe
its harmless little all-male oasis? There's privacy, then there's medieval.

As a sports fan, as a woman, you can't help but cringe every April. The
sepulchral music and overblown references to azaleas aside, the
exclusionary policies of Augusta make you wonder what's so wrong with me that I
could never get the chance to be a member at the place where they play the
Masters. At least two (former) Augusta members felt the same way. They
are the only resignees - so far.

In this day and age, you would think we're beyond this kind of gender
politics. It's safe to say we are not, especially when the federal
government is itching like a dog to get its hands on 30- year-old
legislation that broke the barrier on sports participation for young
women.

If you have ever nodded in appreciation at the skill of the U.S. women
in winning a World Cup or Olympic gold medal in soccer, then you can not
like the atmosphere that we currently inhabit.

If you have ever watched Los Angeles Sparks center Lisa Leslie or
Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird take over a WNBA game with their skill and
basketball acumen, you have to worry about the climate swirling around us.

If you have ever talked to a 53-year-old female basketball coach who
laments her own lack of opportunity as a student-athlete but who now, 30 years
after the passage of Title IX, takes tremendous pride in the fact that
today's collegiate players are bigger, better and more, then you have to be
concerned about where we're heading.

Are you listening in Washington, where George Bush's buddies finally
have a word they can use to undo so much of what has been gained under Title
IX legislation?

The word is "quota," and critics of Title IX are doing a pretty good
job of making it appear as if the cuts colleges are making in minor sports for
men are being done to fulfill a so-called quota system, since Title IX
mandates proportionate opportunities for males and females based on enrollment.

It seems as if gender equity is going to take a hit this January, when
all signs point to the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics
recommending changes that will pull teeth out of a standard that directs colleges to
supply athletic opportunities in direct proportion to the number of men
and women it has enrolled. It's not a quota. It's an equitable distribution
of opportunities, but the debate will rage.

The commission has just completed a whirlwind tour of the United
States. There were town meetings from coast to coast, collecting stories about
how men's wrestlers have been wronged; how athletic directors can't drag
enough women out of class to fill out lacrosse rosters while the 100th man
can't beg his way onto the football practice squad.

The commissioners have now gathered information that will likely lead
them to do what they were predisposed to do anyway: water down legislation
that gave women the right to a level playing field. The commission will meet
on Jan. 8 and issue its report on the 31st.

With all due respect to commission members like University of Maryland
athletic director Debbie Yow, who is living with Title IX enforcement
issues every day and who laments turning away men who want to walk on to the
football team but can't because the roster is capped, the commission's
recommendations are all over the road. The unwieldy nature of the
recommendations alone should make people nervous - and clamor for
further study, more time, before handing over recommendations to the feds.

In the meantime, is it me, or does anyone else's current scorecard on
women's athletics look more messy than a kid's coloring book?

It's true. Some of us are keeping score - and not at the expense of the
fellas. Women don't want to take sports away from men, no matter what
Hootie Johnson or George Bush or any of the downtrodden wrestlers think. No
one wants to deny anyone anything they are passionate about.

It's just that the very numbers that Title IX has reversed over the
past 30 years prove that without federal legislation, without guidelines by
which colleges must comply, women might still be playing a hybrid game of
six-person basketball: You can't run, you can't dribble, you can't
sweat.It wasn't that long ago, really.

----------------------------------------------

Title IX is working - for both sexes
My View: reader commentary

By GREGORY T. WRIGHT 12/13/02

I have read with interest several letters to the editor regarding boys playing high school field hockey on Cape Cod. The topic deserves some perspective.

While field hockey is predominantly a female sport in the United States, internationally it is also very much a male sport.

In college I knew a Kenyan male student who donned his kilt and took to the field with our female classmates. We didn't think much was unusual about that in 1982, other than to have our eyes opened a little to international sport.

That high school boys on Cape Cod wish to play field hockey 20 years later isn't really unusual, either, especially when one considers the American trend toward integration, anti-discrimination and civil rights in the past 30 years. In any case, a 30-year-old federal law assures these boys' right to play.

In 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 passed, stating that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance." And today, more than 2.4 million girls play in interscholastic sports.

But there are still glaring problems with Title IX. There are nearly twice as many boys as girls playing high school sports, and more than twice as many college men as women. Colleges award twice as much money in athletic scholarships to men and spend more than five times as much to recruit male athletes. Nearly every measure of parity, from equipment quality to promotion budgets, favors male athletes. When the NCAA recently polled 646 member colleges, it found that 645 of them weren't even close to meeting equity standards.

As the father of two girls, I am appalled at that, and concerned for the future.

Of course, Title IX is also under scrutiny by men's advocates. U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican and a former wrestling coach, once requested that a House subcommittee hearing be held to reassess the way Title IX is enforced. "Young men," he complained, "are losing the opportunity to compete." The point was made that financially pinched schools have begun to eliminate men's teams in sports like swimming and wrestling, to reduce costs or (instead of adding women's teams) to achieve gender equity. There are even opponents of Title IX who worry that the expansion of women's sports will cause the elimination of men's teams. I personally do not believe that is a serious issue.

Clearly, the spirit of Title IX was, and is, to increase female participation in high school and collegiate athletics. That still remains the larger issue. A few boys who wish to play field hockey on Cape Cod aren't going to change that. In fact, they may help draw attention to the glaring inequalities that still exist for women and girls.

These high school boys should certainly be allowed to play without any harassment or ridicule, just as high school girls should. The fact is that field hockey is considered medically to be a limited contact sport (not full contact, as some letters to the editor have suggested).

Field hockey appeals to boys; after all, the game is fun. It offers the opportunity for boys and girls to eventually compete at the Olympic level. Anyone who lives in Harwich knows that!

Boys' involvement in field hockey is not what's wrong with high school sports - it's what's right! Their involvement shows Title IX does work, just not in the usual direction. And, as stated by one astute female former field hockey goalie writing in the Cape Cod Times last year, we should redirect our energy toward some larger issues. We certainly have enough of those.

Gregory T. Wright lives in West Harwich.

-----------------------------------------------------

Title IX challenge
Some supporters of women's sports are worried the landmark law is about to make a retreat.

BY RAY RICHARDSON
Pioneer Press 12/15/02

There was no such thing as Title IX during Ruth Ann Borton's childhood in Fayette, Ohio — and no one in the small farming community was raising a fuss about the lack of girls sports in local high schools.

It was accepted in those days that athletics was for boys. The best way for girls to participate in sports was cheerleading, and Borton, mother of University of Minnesota women's basketball coach Pam Borton, had no interest in that. The elder Borton excelled at softball as a first baseman, but the only outlets were playgrounds and church leagues. Colleges didn't have softball or other women's sports programs during the 1950s, so Borton and other girls her age had few options.

"Girls went to college to either find a husband or get a job,'' she said.

Title IX, a federal law passed in 1972, changed that.

The legislation made it illegal to exclude anyone on the basis of that person's sex from participating in educational programs receiving federal aid, including athletics. But, 30 years after the landmark provision, the federal government is re-examining the merits of Title IX and considering changes that supporters fear could threaten the progress of women's sports.

"If we follow what they're talking about, we'll be making big strides backwards,'' Pam Borton said. "I have personal feelings about that.''

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige assembled a group of 15 sports dignitaries and administrators to form the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics — three months after 30,000 people filled the AlamoDome in San Antonio to watch Connecticut and Oklahoma play for the NCAA Division I women's basketball national championship. The commission, which has President Bush's backing, has been asked to make Title IX more effective without doing further harm to men's sports.

The commission, headed by Stanford athletics director Ted Leland and former WNBA star Cynthia Cooper, has held town-hall meetings in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs and San Diego.

A final meeting is scheduled for Jan. 8 in Washington, D.C., before the panel submits recommendations to Paige on Jan. 31. Paige will then submit the report to Bush.

Skeptics already are lining up.

"The commission will not come up with an intelligent solution,'' said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, based in New York. "If this government sends the message that they're not going to enforce Title IX and make it weaker, then all progress will stop. It'll be up to mothers and fathers to take schools to court.''

In the 30 years Title IX has been in force, no school has been penalized by the NCAA for lack of compliance.

Legal action prompted the government to look into Title IX. The National Wrestling Coaches Foundation, alarmed by the cutting of approximately 171 collegiate wrestling programs in the past 20 years, filed a federal lawsuit in January challenging Title IX and the way the law is interpreted. College presidents and athletics directors have dropped wrestling and other low-revenue men's sports to help comply with Title IX regulations.

Title IX gives colleges three options to meet those standards:

• Provide athletic opportunities in proportion to male/female student enrollments.

• Demonstrate a history of expanding programs to benefit the underrepresented sex.

• Accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Most schools have chosen the first option. Women's athletics and resources must equal the percentage of the female undergraduate student enrollment at an institution. The average female undergraduate rate at the nation's colleges is 55 percent. At the University of Minnesota, 52 percent of the undergraduate enrollment is female.

Unlike many universities, Minnesota has not had to cut any men's sports to comply. The school added women's teams for rowing, hockey and soccer over the past 10 years. Athletics director Joel Marturi said whatever changes made to Title IX would not have a major affect on the university.

"Our commitment to women's athletics will not change,'' said Maturi, hired in July to run the school's merged athletics department. "Title IX has forced institutions to treat women the same, and I certainly don't argue with that. But you don't want anyone to go backwards for someone to go forward."

Wrestling coaches, particularly Gophers coach J Robinson, have been outspoken about the way proportionality has hurt wrestling and other low-revenue men's sports. Robinson has been such a defiant leader on the issue that he was reprimanded last year by former Minnesota President Mark Yudof for using school resources to distribute a newsletter and other information opposing Title IX's proportionality option.

The NWCA lawsuit appears to have finally gotten somebody's attention.

"My sport is being eliminated, and that was never the intent of Title IX,'' Robinson said. "The law says no group should be discriminated against. Right now it's discriminating against men. We have to pass legislation that disallows schools to drop men's sports to comply.''

The commission studying Title IX is examining proportionality and is considering a larger percentage window, or more "wiggle room,'' for schools to maintain compliance, perhaps as much as 10 percentage points. Currently, schools have a window of 1 percentage point. The chief concern of Title IX supporters is that the commission will recommend using the third option as the primary barometer.

Commission members have discussed using surveys to evaluate the athletic interests of female students. But with a large majority of females not participating in athletics at most schools, Title IX supporters fear unfavorable results.

"The problem with surveys is what do you mean by 'interest,' '' said University of Minnesota professor Mary Jo Kane, head of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport. "Who gets to set the threshold for what 'interest' means? How do you define that? Men have never had to establish their interest in sports by filling out a survey."

Kane believes she has a better idea to solve the problem. She hopes the commission gives serious thought to recommending a reduction of football scholarships as a way for athletics directors to avoid dropping men's sports. The extra money, Kane says, would help institutions meet Title IX financial guidelines without cutting men's teams.

NCAA Division I schools are permitted 85 football scholarships to spread among more than 100 players in most cases. Dipping into football budgets has been discussed by commission members, and it led to mixed reaction. How do you tell a football coach he must work with 25 fewer scholarships, a figure proposed to the commission?

University of Maryland a.d. Debbie Yow, a commission member, said she would vote against such a move because it would reduce scholarship opportunities for minority male student-athletes.

"We have only three collegiate sports — football, basketball and track — where minority males have a better chance to earn scholarships,'' she said. "For that reason alone, I could never support a decrease in opportunities like that.''

Yow, however, supports the idea of raising the percentage window for schools to meet proportionality. As one of the few women overseeing an entire athletics department at an NCAA institution, Yow has a special interest in the commission's impact on Title IX.

"This is the only time we'll likely have to make adjustments for who knows how long,'' Yow said. "We've got a heavy responsibility.''

--------------------------------------

TITLE IX CLOUDS
RED STORM CUTS

By BRIAN LEWIS
December 14, 2002 --

The last line of St. John's athletic mission statement states the school is committed "to provide equitable opportunities for men and women to participate and to operate within the rules of Title IX, the NCAA and Big East Conference."
And even though both school president Rev. Donald Harrington and AD David Wegrzyn deny it, football coach Bob Ricca - whose program was disbanded Thursday along with men's and women's swimming and men's track - thinks Title IX is the bottom line.

"It was a complete shock. I'm devastated," Ricca said. "I've been with the school 33 years. I was a part-time coach when [football] was a club team, an associate AD for 10 years. I never thought something like this could happen. I'm confused. My world has come to an end."

When asked if his players understood the school's reasons for dropping the program, Ricca said: "No. We have administrators that don't understand why. We have a coach that doesn't understand why."

Harrington and Wegrzyn finally met the media yesterday, and while they admitted men's track was a Title IX casualty, they pointed to facility problems in swimming and competitive and safety issues in football.

"People say this is a Title IX decision. [It's not]," Harrington said. "When I meet female students who say, ‘Where are our tuition dollars going?' and 65 percent of the athletes are male, I have trouble defending that. [But] if the Title IX requirements changed tomorrow, we wouldn't have you here the day after announcing a change."

St. John's student body was once 60 percent male, but it's now 58 percent female. The athletic department is still 65 percent male, but after making the cuts and adding men's lacrosse, it should be 58 percent female by 2004.

The coaches that don't stay with the department may get severance pay. The athletes will keep their scholarships, and those devastated by the news can apply in advance for make-up exams.

Harrington said the decision was made last Wednesday and the plan was to wait until exams ended next Wednesday to tell the players. But news leaked out and forced their hand.

He said the football team's 2-8 record wasn't a factor, but in a way it was a symptom of the problem. Ricca says the Red Storm got eight need-based scholarships from the school in 2000 and moved from the MAAC to the NEC under the promise from then-AD Ed Manetta of eventually getting to 30.

But after the first year, Ricca said Manetta told him Title IX prevented him from granting those 30 scholarships, or any scholarships at all for the next season. Four of the eight scholarship players promptly transferred.

"At the time we were told it was Title IX. We'd been told for every $5,000 that goes to football we have to match that somewhere else," said Ricca, who informed Harrington last December that his non-scholarship players were at physical risk.

"There was some question about safety. [Ricca] confirmed that was an issue," Harrington said. "There were really only two ways to go. That's not a decision you can put off."

-------------------------------------------------------

Two sides of gender equity in sports

Changes in Title IX may be proposed in January

12/16/02

Have you ever heard of the idea that once you own a red car, all you see on the road and in parking lots is red cars?

That’s what happened to me when I decided to write a series of stories on Title IX, the federal law that has required gender equity in sports for the past 30 years.

While on vacation at my parent’s home in Wheaton, Ill., I was instructed to go through the many boxes of “memories” taking up space in the basement and my bedroom closet. I was under an ultimatum from my parents to decide what could be tossed and what I wanted bad enough to bring back to Manitowoc.

As I sifted through some pretty obscure artwork from grade school, and an obscene amount of book reviews from middle school, I found several past issues of the Chicago Tribune, on the women’s accomplishments at the ’96 Atlanta Games and the 25th anniversary of the federal law.

Title IX also was featured as a segment of “60 Minutes” while I was on vacation. When I got back to Manitowoc, I happened to catch an episode of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on HBO. One of their stories was about a young man named Barry Schwank.

Schwank, a senior at Dennis-Yarmouth High School, plays ice hockey for his Cape Cod, Mass. high school. Because there is no girl’s ice hockey team or a comparable girls sport, under the law, a girl is allowed to play on the team with the boys.

Since the passage of Title IX, more and more girls have appeared on hockey, football and wrestling teams because they can. What is turning heads and raising eyebrows now is when boys like Schwank appear on the girl’s field hockey team.

Field hockey is primarily a men’s sport internationally, but in America, it’s played almost exclusively by women. Schwank tried out for the team because he wanted to maintain his stick handling skills in the off-season. He isn’t the only boy on the team, but he sees the most playing time.

Massachusetts is one of the states that permit boys on the girl’s team. Wisconsin does not. The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association contends that by opening such an opportunity to boys, it would limit opportunities for girls, and thus defeat the purpose of Title IX.

Parents of Schwank’s teammates say his 6’ 2”, 180-pound frame make him too physical against girls who are a foot shorter and considerably lighter. His teammates aren’t exactly glad he’s on the field either. He had to beat out a girl to make the team.

Local students I talked to for my stories didn’t see anything wrong with Schwank being on the girl’s team. However, they could see where the parents were coming from. A boy that size could pose a danger to a much smaller girl.

But is that a reason to keep him off the team? Girls on the football team aren’t exactly the size as a linebacker, but they get the opportunity to be there. Shouldn’t the same apply for boys? How can a law that defends gender equity favor one sex over the other? It seems hypocritical to me.

Hopefully, the Secretary’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics will clear up the confusion in January when they propose changes to Title IX.

In the meantime, best of luck to Schwank and our area female wrestlers for not letting gender barriers stop you.

-------------------------------------------------