Locker Room Lib

To Laurel Brassey, 20, one of the country's best women volleyball players, competition on the San Diego State University women's team was too easy. When the president of the university ruled that for the first time coeds could compete with men in noncontact sports, Brassey immediately won a place on the men's team. Two months ago her feat was matched by Yale Coed Charlise Brown, who shattered a 122-year-old Yale sports tradition by joining its previously all-male diving team.

Greater Gusto. To advocates of women's athletics, such victories are just a foot in the door of that last sanctum of male chauvinism, the locker room. Thanks to a growing interest in physical fitness and the well-publicized success of superstars like Billie Jean King, girls are taking up sports in increasing numbers and with greater gusto than ever before. Not that most of them want to compete with boys; the emphasis is still largely on single-sex athletic programs, with the opportunities for women expanded. In Dallas, almost 100 girls from six to 16 turned out last fall to spar with one another in a five-year-old program known as Missy Junior Gloves. At the University of Washington, 80 coeds --a record number--signed up for women's crew.

"We're free to work women athletes harder now," says Dale Shirley, the associate coach for women at Washington. "We can demand more in the way of turnouts and performance. Women's own attitudes toward sports are changing." This, he believes, is largely because of the women's movement. Judy Wenning agrees. Coordinator of the Task Force on Sports for the National Organization for Women (NOW), Wenning believes that "women are freer now to express their competitiveness. It is no longer a totally negative thing."

Often, the newly enthusiastic sportswomen still find a paucity of programs, facilities and funds available to them. Until last April, for example, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women forbade recipients of athletic scholarships to compete in its intercollegiate events. That rule has now been rescinded under pressure of a lawsuit, but financial aid for women is still hard to get. At sports-heavy University of Miami, where 300 men receive athletic scholarships, there are now 15 new one-year scholarships for women in tennis, golf and swimming. To date this spring there have been more than 400 applicants for the $2,500 stipends.

The recent merger of Harvard and Radcliffe athletic facilities resulted in a male sports director and female assistants. "Men do not understand our developing ideology of sports," maintains Roann Costin, captain of the Radcliffe swim team. "We want to develop a program where women do compete highly and do train vigorously, but we can't do that without more time in the pool, more boats to row and more adequate coaching." When the women's ice hockey team of Colby College in Maine was formed two years ago, players were allotted two practice periods per day--at 6:15 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. Unlike the men, women pay for their own uniforms, hockey sticks and gloves.

Women who are thus shortchanged in college are perhaps handicapped in later life as well. According to David Auxter, professor of physical education at Pennsylvania's Slippery Rock State College, "We value athletics because they are competitive. That is, they teach that achievement and success are desirable, that they are worth disciplining oneself for. By keeping girls out of sports, we have denied them this educational experience. Better athletic programs will develop more aggressive females, women with confidence, who value personal achievement and have a strong sense of identity. I think that would be a good thing for us all." Wenning agrees. " Women's competitiveness in the past has been limited to competing for men." Moreover, she says, business contacts made on the squash court or golf course are taken for granted by men and denied to women.

Open Dugouts. Yet scrappy young female athletes and their families are gradually forcing changes. When parents in Kalamazoo, Mich., found that high school boys were offered three interscholastic winter sports while the girls had none, a complaint was filed against school authorities under Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids sex discrimination in any institution using federal funds. In New Jersey, the Civil Rights Commission has ruled that Little League teams must open their dugouts to qualified girl players. Little League officials have carried the dispute into extra innings, however, and this week the State Supreme Court is expected to rule on the matter.

Of all the states in the U.S., Iowa offers the fairest distribution of athletic funds, sports programs and practice facilities. About the only time there may be a hint of athletic sexism is when the state basketball championships are played off in Des Moines. There the girls' games often outdraw the boys'. For next week's girls' basketball finals, virtually all the 15,000 seats in the Veterans Memorial Auditorium have already been sold out.

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