My wife swam at Rice in 1970-71. The women had to form their own team and ask the coach for lane time and schedule their own meets. When they qualified a relay for DGWS(the agency evidently running womens collegiate sports at the time) Nationals the school did pay for them to go. Since there was a Nationals and they did find a (very) few other meets there must have been some women's programs. Any forumites have experience with Pre-Title IX womens college swimming.
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I swam 1973-1975 at Iowa State as a walk-on. They just started offering a few partial scholarships and the times got faster in my 2nd year. I no longer could contribute (scored no points all year) and was just taking up lanespace/budget in the small women's gym pool.
When the men's team got new warmups, our women's team got their old ones hand-me-down. We did have budget to ride in a 15-passenger van to meets, stayed 4/room in cheap motels, etc. We trained in a smaller older facility with no weight room.
In the past few years the ISU men's program got axed due to Title IX. I feel that if budget was truly the reason, they could have worked something out. Probably would have had to budget building a new pool, though. Most of the colleges with that kind of pool setup (6x25y) would want to have a stretch 50m pool to replace it.
I swam 1973-1975 at Iowa State as a walk-on. They just started offering a few partial scholarships and the times got faster in my 2nd year. I no longer could contribute (scored no points all year) and was just taking up lanespace/budget in the small women's gym pool.
When the men's team got new warmups, our women's team got their old ones hand-me-down. We did have budget to ride in a 15-passenger van to meets, stayed 4/room in cheap motels, etc. We trained in a smaller older facility with no weight room.
In the past few years the ISU men's program got axed due to Title IX. I feel that if budget was truly the reason, they could have worked something out. Probably would have had to budget building a new pool, though. Most of the colleges with that kind of pool setup (6x25y) would want to have a stretch 50m pool to replace it.
