<p>That will work, provided the teams are legally obligated not to discriminate on the basis of size, regardless of the need for a defensive end.</p>
<p>Our family has gone through a whole lot of turmoil recently due to my son being allowed to be on a girls’ team. He has dealt with bullying and public humiliation (in the media) by so-called adults. </p>
<p>It appears that Title IX, for most people, is in place to benefit girls only. It should work both ways. If a girl can play a sport with boys, regardless of how good she is, then a boy should be afforded the same opportunity. Period.</p>
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<p>Umm… go out and be the best player and you’ll play! It’s not that hard of a concept, is it? Teams shouldn’t be legally obligated to play any player, but should put the best player for that team out there.</p>
<p>Best player can’t be the biggest. That, by definition, is discrimination.</p>
<p>There’s a girl who plays soccer around here who is the kicker on her varsity football team.</p>
<p>She’s pretty good, actually.</p>
<p>They should let the boy play. It’s a boys sport, too, in England. I don’t think anyone who wants to play should be kept from playing.</p>
<p>It can be interesting.
while some might say “best players should make make the team” do they really mean it?
If a girl kicks better than a boy should she make the football squad?
If a boy is better at volleyball than a girl should he make the squad?
Gender bias would mean different answers for those questions.</p>
<p>Field hockey was one of the three major sports for boys when I was in HS overseas, and it was probably so in most of the Commonwealth countries and parts of Europe. My vote is for consistency - if a female has a right to participate in a wrestling competition, this kid certainly has a right to be in a hockey team. If there are rules against it because boys are too tall or too heavy, or too good, then have the same rules against girls too in the hockey team.</p>
<p>I was a D1 collegiate level athlete (although since the NCAA didn’t include women back then we weren’t really D1). I entered college with a national ranking in my individual sport equivalent to that of many of the men on our men’s team. They were all on full scholarship, had outstanding practice facilities, access to trainers, equipment and lots of fully funded travel. The women’s teams – not so much! We travelled a little, on our own dime. All the women’s teams shared one set of warm ups….We checked them out on “game” days and returned them when we were done. We practiced in subpar facilities far from the “varsity” (read male) fields, courts, gyms, and pools across campus. Then my senior year Title IX entered the picture. Though I didn’t see all the benefits things started to change and my younger teammates did inhabit a whole new world. By the time the girls who’d been first year students that year graduated, they had beautiful uniforms, travelled like the men and shared facilities and sometimes great coaches. And yes, they had scholarships too.
Title IX is FAR from a perfect law, but it allowed the landscape to change. My daughter is a collegiate athlete now. I see her with her peers, bright capable confident girls who are cool because they are athletes, not seen as somehow outside the norm as most of my athletic peers were. Would any father of an athletic daughter who now has an opportunity to play her sport want the change Title IX has brought to go away?<br>
All that said, I feel for this boy. I wish there was a good solution. I disagree with the “let him play” crowd because of the slippery slope problem. As Mini (I think) said what happens when the little guy grows up to be a big guy as a sophomore and then he gets all of his friends to come out for the team? Are the girls now the benchwarmers on what used to be their team when they are vying for playing time with the 6-2 linebacker who is playing field hockey as his spring sport. Let’s fix Title IX so it works for everyone….I think removing football from the equation would really help. It takes up a huge number of boys’ “spots” and consequently lower profile or new sports that are growing in popularity can’t be offered due to the required proportionality requirement.</p>
<p>I grew up in a neighborhood full of boys. There were literally boys… and me. I grew up playing all the sports with the boys in the park, because this was before “the play date,” and you did what the kids in your neighborhood did. Turns out I was pretty athletic and when the leagues started up, the Dads, who were the coaches back then, just brought me along. Nobody said anything about me being a girl. They were used to me. The parents on other teams used to make a big deal out of it, but in a good way, really. This was a year before title IX. When title IX came a long, a few other girls played.</p>
<p>After a while, we had girls teams.</p>
<p>When my daughter was a kid, she was really good at basketball, and the girls leagues don’t start for a few years after the boys leagues. (they announce them every year, but no interest). Again, without us asking, the Dads and Moms (moms are coaches now too), brought her along and she played on the boys teams until the girls leagues started. Nobody said anything about it except, “She’s fast with the ball.”</p>
<p>I see your point, anxiousmom, but I think by the time there is a class full of boys who want to play women’s field hockey, there will be a team offered. I have to say, I just think “let him play.” Maybe it’s good that we’ve gotten to the point where it’s even somethng a boy would want to do: play on the girls team. You gotta take the good progress with the complications. JMO</p>
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<p>What if the field hockey team was seriously good? What if they won a state championship or became nationally ranked with him as their star player (and him going through a growth spurt and building muscle mass as it was happening)? I can’t imagine that would stand.</p>
<p>What if a Division 1 college disbanded their men’s basketball team? Could some disgruntled men’s players join the women’s team and take them to the final four? That’s following the same argument further and it would never happen.</p>
<p>The issue is that men do generally have more bulk, more muscle mass, and more height than women. There are maybe five WNBA players that could make NBA teams, but they wouldn’t be starting or scoring most of the points. Most NBA players would be taking ove rhte game if they joined a WNBA team, and that’s not fair.</p>
<p>It’s also not the point of Title 9. Many colleges offer many different sports for men and women. Usually men’s rowing isn’t a varsity sport and men can’t get scholarships for it, while women can. Women aren’t going to get football scholarships. My understanding of Title 9 is that it’s more about equal funding and equal scholarships across the athletic department than sport-to-sport. I’m sure this kid can blame his friends on the very large football for the lack of interest and funding in guys’ field hockey. If it was just about making a sport available because one person wanted to play it, it would be impossible to comply with.</p>
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<p>However, at the Division I FBS level, football is a large money maker that subsidizes other sports; removing football from a Division I FBS school would likely mean that the rest of the athletic program also has to shrink, so the number of spots in men’s (and women’s) sports other than football will be smaller.</p>
<p>Men’s rowing has nothing to do with title IX - it was never a varsity sport in the NCAA sense and has chosen to stay that way under the IRA banner. It is too bad for male rowers (I have one) that the only scholarships are privately funded. However, that has no relationship to women’s crew being added.</p>
<p>This controversy played out in our county about 5-6 years ago. The high schools in the league voted to not allow boys on the girls’ hockey teams. Our athletic director (female) took the lead after our high school did have boys on the team.</p>
<p>Part of the argument was for safety. There were schools fielding boys who could slap the ball from near their own goal down the field. It’s is a very hard ball and to get hit with it at high velocity can cause serious injury. The boys were brought onto the field for their brute strength - not finesse with the stick.</p>
<p>One school claimed that they had difficulty fielding a team without boys. That answer of course, was to find more girls. This team was half boys and girls quit trying out.</p>
<p>I tend to agree - that in Jr high and high school, boys have no place on the girls team. They can’t get scholarships and they displace a female. If they allow him on the team - that is one fewer female who has the opportunity.
Title IX is about opportunity - it’s not about being the ‘best’.
About 10-15 years ago this was an issue in volleyball. The solution was that they formed a boys league. This has actually worked out really well.</p>
<p>There are places this boy can play - he can play for a club team. Just not his high school team.</p>
<p>Men’s rowing has to do with Title 9 in the sense that most schools choose not to make it a varsity sport at all while women’s rowing is so that scholarship counts balance out (since football uses so many). I know it’s not an NCAA varsity sport, but it is a varsity sport at some schools – Ivies, Northeastern, BU, etc. There are many other schools, though, where women’s rowing is varsity and men’s is barely-funded club.</p>
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<p>Then a girl shouldn’t be allowed to play on a boys team. It’s only fair, right?</p>
<p>UCBalumnus I am not suggesting we get rid of football, just that it’s calculated differently for Title IX due to the huge team size. I do question your statement that it’s a huge money maker and funds athletic programs. A 2010 NCAA report states that only 14 of 120 athletic departments in the Football Bowl Subdivision made money. It goes on to state that “football is one of only two sports (men’s basketball being the other) that ANY university reported as being profitable. At the same time, however, only 57% of football programs reported being profitable. Thus the other 43% of football programs are still part of the problem”. Athletic department funding is another complicated can of worms!</p>
<p>^ If football is in anyway treated as a special case or counted differently it will put women’s opportunities at a disadvantage. </p>
<p>It is obvious that football with 85 scholarships and huge rosters creates difficult scenarios for colleges. An obvious solution that the big-time football schools would never go for is to cut way back on the number of football scholarships. 85 scholarships to cover 22 field positions … really? I get having extra scholarships to cover the kids who are injured … but scholarships so SEC schools can wholesale redshirt players? Cut the football scholarship limit to about 50 and each school could bring back 2-3 men’s sports they cut (and which women’s sports are typically blamed for the cut) … it is really better for LSU’s 4th string running back to have a scholarship instead of their having another sport?</p>
<p>Football is the main reason there are more scholarship opportunities for women. Taking that out of the equation would actually have the opposite benefit many are suggesting. </p>
<p>I know of several girls playing on various ‘boys’ teams, mostly soccer in smaller schools but there are usually a couple girls playing on various football teams in our area, usually kickers but not always. There was a big story last year about a girl that was wrestling in the state tournament, Iowa I think, and how a boy forfeited his match against her because of religious reasons. I know several years ago there were some boys that tried out for the girls volleyball team at one school near us, none of them were good enough to make the team so they didn’t play. There was a boy that was playing travel basketball with a girls team in our area. His parents defined him as “gender neutral” though (whatever). He was good but not overly so. </p>
<p>What I have seen is that for sports where there is only one team, they are generally called “boys” teams that allow girls to play. I have to agree that physical size is a big concern when mixing genders, right or wrong, especially for contact sports. I don’t know that it makes that much difference for sports like Volleyball but in basketball, soccer and football, most girls just are not big enough for their bodies to stand up to the physical abuse of the sport if they are going up against boys. I certainly would not want my 6’ 122 lb SON playing football for the same reason. It’s a safety issue for me more than anything.</p>
<p>[Scholarships</a> By Sport](<a href=“http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/scholarships_by_sport.htm]Scholarships”>Scholarships By Sport)</p>
<p>I found this breakdown of how scholarships are distributed. Notice that in sports where both men and women play, women have more scholarship opportunities then men at the DI level. If you look at DII, which limits the number of football scholarships to less than 1/2 of what DI, the opportunities for women in other sports also decreases quite a bit.</p>
<p>Massachusetts had this scenario during the past year related to Girls Swimming. Boys were allowed to swim on girls teams in the Fall if their school did not have a winter team. A boy became the Girls Sectional Champion and set a girls meet record with a time that would have not even qualified him to participate in the Boys Division I State meet held in the winter during the boys season.
In the winter, The Boston Globe selected swimming All Stars. On one page were the Boys All Stars and on the opposite page were the Girls All Stars, with one boy among the girls. The boy pictured with the girls time in his event was about 12 seconds slower than the boy on the boys side. Thats a big difference in swimming.
None of this makes sense to me…So next year they will hold seperate champs in the Fall for boys…</p>