PAST >>> TITLE IX >>> FUTURE >>> ?

For one hour this morning I looked into the past and the future and marveled at both.

In 1972 I was a young adult, teaching school and pretty sure the world needed changing. A single Mom with a daughter, I was a firm feminist - a title I am still proud to claim today. Much of that world is now so out of date as to seem weird and unbelievable to women today. I never wore pants to school. In fact, the big issue for female teachers in 1972 was whether we might be allowed to wear nice, matching pantsuits instead of dresses in which to teach. (The results were mixed for many more years.) And we were still paid on a different and lesser pay scale.

Then there was sports. The oldest of three girls, competitive sports weren't discouraged; they just didn't exist in our universe. Because we were encouraged to be active, be outdoors, be educated and think for ourselves, I quite sure had any of us wanted to participate in sports we would have been supported. But it is a measure of the prevailing social beliefs and norms that the seed was never even planted.

I was well into adulthood before the movie "A League of Their Own" taught me that my hometown had female sports heroes. But like other outliers - Babe Didrikson Zaharius, Iowa six-on-six half court basketball, the many, many valiant women PE teachers etc. - they are admired in retrospect.

By 1972 I may still not have seen myself in sports, but I most assuredly saw the discrimination. Like many teachers, I was dragooned into coaching a girl's JV volleyball team; a position for which I was eminently unqualified but earnest. My friend, the female varsity coach, had plenty to share about the state of women's sports.

Then Title IX passed Congress.

Like all such legislation, the next years were spent working out the actual rules under which the legislation would proceed. Already a passionate leader in women's issues, I became part of the State of Illinois Task Force which drafted and submitted recommendations for the final rules.

I don't remember the myriad issues involved in the minutia of rule making that lasted for several years. Someday I'll pull out the files again and wonder at the details.

But I remember the fire, the feelings and the hope.

We wanted the next generation of girls to play sports. We wanted them to get equal chances at equipment, facility time, quality coaching, fair scheduling and crowds of eager spectators; watching not because they were girls, but because they were good.

The rules took effect. Life moved on. I moved across the country to a new job; organizing and advocating for other causes. My daughter played some sports, grew up, became her own style of feminist, woman and mother. All my grandchildren play sports.

Then today, courtesy of Dr. Heather Van Mullem and Lewis Clark State College, I had the opportunity to both review the past and visit the future of Title IX. In a burst of "I wonder what ever happened..." I attended a public presentation on Title IX, the current status of women in sports administration and coaching.

In a room where the others were (way) post-Title IX babies, I listened with pleasure at the huge strides made and listened philosophically to the the road not yet traversed. Millions of girls now play sports and have opportunities of which my generation only dreamed. A truly WOW moment.

Yes, there still is a glass ceiling into administration and coaching. Yes, the sports/business model (in my opinion an anti-education model for all student athletes) seems to have absorbed women's sports. Yes, the vast majority of colleges still don't really meet all the Title IX requirements. Yes, the impact on minor sports - men's and women's - was an unanticipated downside of the big three major sports unrestrained consumption of resources.

Yet...

I can see a future in which women who have played sports want their daughters to have the same opportunities; in which women who work in sports continue to press for equality and the shattering of the glass ceiling; in which women like Heather care enough about both sport and women in sport to focus on what good has come and what good needs yet to happen.

And I am confident that while perfection is always out of reach, progress in never-ending.