Title IX turns XXXVIII

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 is not a particularly eventful day on the national running scene. The Active.com calendar lists eleven running events nationwide, typical of a midweek date in late June. As runners in Gardiner, NY's Solstice Run 15k and Austin's Sunstroke Summer Stampede toe the starting line, few will have any sense of the significance of the day - much less the way in which it connects a twelve-term congresswoman from Hawaii, an Olympic hopeful and a retired track coach from suburban New Jersey.

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Patsy Mink never set out to change the face of sport. She simply wanted to get into medical school. A high school valedictorian in Maui, Mink had earned undergraduate degrees from both the University of Nebraska and University of Hawaii, when she was turned away from all twenty medical schools to which she applied. None of the twenty admitted women in 1948.

Undaunted, Mink instead obtained her law degree from the University of Chicago, paving the way for her eventual election to the US House of Representatives in 1965, making her both the first woman of color to serve in the body and the first woman to represent the state of Hawaii in Washington.

Seven years later, Mink authored Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, better-known as 'Title IX'. It states, simply:

"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 activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

This landmark piece of federal legislation, signed into law on June 23, 1972, ensured that a new generation of American women would have access to, among other things, higher education. It also had another unforseen, and certainly unintended, consequence:

From 1972 to 2006, the number of girls participating in high school sports increased 900%¹.

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One of those many, many girls came from Santa Cruz county, just over an hour south of San Francisco. By the time Maggie Vessey was in middle school, she was among the hundreds of thousands of girls participating in school-sponsored track.

"My mother motivated me to go out for cross country and track in middle school because it was obvious from the speed I displayed on the soccer field that running was/is my talent", says Vessey, now a member of Team New Balance and the holder of the seventh-fastest 800m time in US women's track and field history (1:57.84).

"In 6th grade my PE teacher/track coach, Craig Broadhurst, watched me run and said simply, yet emphatically, "You know, if you keep up with this, you could be in the Olympics one day". I've never forgotten those words or the feeling I got or the thoughts I thought when I heard them."

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Title IX makes no promise of talent, but rather opportunity. Most girls will not grow up to be Olympic hopefuls, as Maggie has.

The opportunity provided by Title IX is the chance to be competitive; to represent one's school; to be coached.

No one better understands this opportunity than the women whose lives have been touched by Jacob Brown. For thirty nine years, Brown was best-known as coach of the Ridgewood (New Jersey) HS Girls Track and Cross Country teams - a run of almost-unparalleled success which concluded in 2010 with a streak of thirty-four consecutive team trips to the state sectionals - sectionals have only been run in New Jersey for thirty-four years, and only three teams can make such a claim. His teams have won or shared divisional titles in twenty eight of the twenty nine years in which scoring has been kept, and won an astounding four state titles over that span.

Last Saturday, at the opening ceremonies of the New Balance Nationals (and one of the most touching moments in a weekend of many), Coach Brown was awarded The Mike Burns Lifetime Achievement Award for both his accomplishments and his dedication to the advancement of girls' track and field.

In a 2009 interview with DyeStat Metro, Brown reflected on the beginning of his coaching career, in the years immediately following the passage of Title IX:

"The newspapers wouldn’t cover us. At other schools, the boys coaches would not help us with meets. One coach continued his 200 workout during one of our races and yelled at us for using his track!" recalled Brown. "No one paid attention to us except to wish that we weren’t there!"

Patsy Mink and Jacob Brown would have had a lot to talk about. Mink passed away in 2002.

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A 2008 intercollegiate study of women's athletics found nine sports offered at the varsity level at more than half of the colleges and universities in the United States. Among them: Cross Country (offered at nearly 91% of schools) and Track & Field (offered at nearly 71%). The women who comprise these teams will come from places like Ridgewood, having been coached by the likes of Jacob Brown. Some will be champions, like Maggie Vessey - who won the Big West Conference 800m championship twice. Most, though, will enjoy other benefits that arise from the opportunities created by Title IX. Some will even go on to medical school: in 2004, female applicants outnumbered their male counterparts for the first time.

And so it is that June 23, 2010 is not just another Wednesday, but something quite worth celebrating: the 38th anniversary of an opportunity so significant that we can scarcely fathom its absence. Please join New Balance in celebrating what is now known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, and the opportunities it has provided for two generations of high school and collegiate women athletes.