It was
worse in Donna Kauchak's day. Now the Strength and Conditioning
Professional for NYU's women's basketball team, Kauchak
remembers how difficult it was to be a female athlete when
she was in school. "Unfortunately, I am one of those pre-Title
IX babies and it was just really difficult to do anything
at that time," says Kauchak. Today, she participates in
triathlons, soccer coaching, personal fitness training,
and scuba diving. Her sister, Ann Salgado, says there is
not a sport you can name that her sister hasn't played.
"All
sports pre-Title IX were club, or during school time," says
Kauchak. She says the level of talent and competitiveness
we see today just wasn't there. "There were very few people
that could bring it to a level that you needed to be at,"
she adds. "You didn't know how you could fair with other
people."
Christine
Anthony, of the Yale Women's Field Hockey team, recalls
a banquet Yale held last year to celebrate the 25th anniversary
for women in the Ivy League. She listened to women tell
stories of what it was like to not have a playing field;
women who had to pick the trash off the field after the
tailgates on Sunday morning before they could start to play.
"They were the pioneers," says Anthony. "And we're the first
generation of women who because of Title IX and other things,
have it easier, so we need to not take that for granted."
While
Ann Salgado, 35, was a cheerleader in high school, she envisions
a different future for her daughters. At an NYU women's
basketball game, she tried to divert the attention of four-year-old
Jacqueline from the purple bobcat mascot parading around
the sidelines. Salgado wanted her daughter to focus on the
game. "Don't worry about the mascot," Salgado told her.
"They don't make much money." Holding Jacqueline tight as
they watched a free-throw shot, she said, "You see, if you
get really good at this, you can make your own money. You
don't have to rely on a man-ever." It's hard to imagine
the same advice being parlayed when Salgado and Kauchak
were growing up.
Women's
involvement in sports is affecting parental relationships
in ways once unimaginable. In 1998, WNBA Comets guard Sheryl
Swoopes took maternity leave to have her first child. When
she first returned to the game five weeks after her son's
birth, the child's father stayed at home with the infant.
"If
we start to see men being house-husbands and doing for women
what women have always done for men, I think that just opens
up space for what's considered an appropriate relationship
between women and men," says Kane. She says this accelerated
movement of women as sports icons is beneficial not only
for female athletes, but for all of society. It expands
opportunities women might not normally have.
Swoopes'
story illuminates the false dichotomy of forcing women to
choose between athletic - or any professional - success
and loving relationships, including motherhood. "What Sheryl
Swoopes role models," says Schwyzer, "is the notion that
with male participation, women have the right to both motherhood
and individual career satisfaction."
Schwyzer
says that sport teaches women ownership of their own body.
That's why he likes women's sports so much. He adds, "Most
of the time, our culture teaches young women that their
body belongs to other people, it's something for other people
to look at, lust after, but it doesn't belong to them
