Univ. of New Hampshire is getting rid of its women's rowing. The official line is that it has to get rid of some sports so that it can get into compliance with Title IX. Really is that it is doing a big budget cut. I wonder if this is the first women's team to be axed becasue of Title IX.
I don't understand how Title IX can possibly be used for what seems to me to be a really cheap blow to many girls. Rowing is a somewhat expensive sport, lots of coaches, lots of equipment.
The idea is gender equity. If there are more women participating in sports than men then they either need to get more men involved or cut women. It seems like many athletic programs have chosen the "cut" approach. Up till this point it has usually involved cutting men's teams, but maybe the tide is turning?
Craiglll:
Are you sure about this. I just went to the website at www.unhwildcats.com/.../ and didn't see anything about how they are going to drop the sport because of Title IX. However, I did see that the Women had 14 sports and the Men had 10 sports. The women had Rowing, Field Hockey, Gymnastics, and Lacrosse as the additional sports over the Men.
Here is an interesting article that explains what happens with Title IX. www.mens-network.org/titleix.html
I believe Title IX states something like the ratio of male to female athletes must be in line with that ratio in the student body overall. Too many female students at UNH maybe? I've read a few stories lately saying many more girls are enrolling in college than boys, so maybe this is the start of a trend. Remember Title IX is about "gender equity," so it could potentially affect women's sports just like it has affected men's.
Is there an article we can link to? This sounds completely counter-intuitive. If the goal is to get more female college athletes involved, I fail to see how canceling a women's varsity sport (without something else going on) progresses towards this end.
Sorry, I got cut off and wasn't able to get back to this until now. In printing, it is mentioned in April's Rowing news on page 25. the article states that it is becasue o fhte huge $1 million deficit that will grow to $5 millin 4 yrs. They are cutting 3 other sports. A person I know who works for a major rivalry said that the qwomen's crew is the reason for the deficit. Men's crew is a club and there will be a option of women going club also. But by cutting it as a team, the budget will come from another fund. Since so much of hte money is involved with crew and it involves quit a large number of women, the other sports had to be cut to balance. the article says that this willbe the first time tha UNH will be in compliance with title IX.
The trouble with Title IX and college athletics (even when you have ADs who are not using it as an excuse, like Matt S. mentioned) is football. It is big, expensive, and has no equivalent female sport to balance the numbers. To get gender equity requires a lot of balancing to make up for the hundred-ish (male) football players.
My former college swim coach thought that football should be explicitly excluded from number crunching (since there is no way that alumni would let football disappear).
