By Sarah L. Ostler
Title IX, enacted in 1972, continues to be a problem even today.
Varsity sports, club teams and sports teams not yet affiliated with a university are affected by the law which was supposed to prohibit gender-based discrimination.
Universities across the country have had to re-evaluate, even restructure their athletic programs.
'We have more men athletes,' said Rondo Fehlberg, director of the men's athletics administration. 'But we are looking to add more women's sports.'
BYU has 12 men's varsity teams and 10 women's varsity teams, as well as 5 extramural, or club, teams.
The team's with club status are men's soccer, men's lacrosse, men's rugby, women's softball, and men's and women's racquetball, which is one club. Teams with club status receive a small budget from the university, but they also fund themselves, said Lee Gibbons, extramural administrator.
Besides the money they get from the university, players on the lacrosse team pay about $300 each in yearly dues, said Matthew Davis, co-captain of the team and a junior majoring in accounting from Potomac, Md.
Last semester, the team would help clean the stadium to raise money for the team.
Davis said the men play because of their love of the sport, but they would like to get varsity status someday.
'We really put in a commitment and represent the school,' Davis said. 'We feel like we should be recognized for that.'
Last year, the team was the club national champion. Davis has noticed a substantial improvement in the program since his freshman year, and he attributes its success to better organization and coaching.
He played lacrosse through high school and had several scholarship offers to play at schools in the east, but Davis decided to come to BYU despite the team's club status.
'Because football is a fairly large sport with no female counterpart, including it in regulations only reduces male athletes' opportunities in other sports as colleges are forced to cut other programs to adhere to the law,' according to a Web site at www.yale.edu/ydn/9.19/9.19.95storyno.IA.html.
BYU does not have a team for women's lacrosse, even at the club level. Instead, women at BYU turn to clubs outside the university.
Soni Taylor, a lacrosse player for the Wasatch South lacrosse team and a junior from Boston, majoring in anthropology, is encouraged by BYU's efforts to comply with Title IX.
The Wasatch South team has 30 women on the roster, each of which attend BYU. Taylor said they would like to be part of a club team, but money is the big problem.
'My understanding is that there needs to be funding. I've been told there isn't the money in the budget to add another club team,' she said.
Funding is a problem, Fehlberg said. Some club sports have been dropped due to budget pressure.
It would be very difficult, financially, to add teams all at once to balance men's and women's sports, Taylor said. But the progress illustrated by adding women's soccer is encouraging.
So the team continues without support from the university. They have to raise over $2,000 by the end of the month so they can play in their club league. The team has fund raisers and looks for sponsorship from local businesses.
'We make do with the bare necessities,' Taylor said. Each woman pays for her own equipment, uniforms and referee fees. When they travel, they carpool and stay with people they know.
Taylor said she sees lacrosse as her job.
'It takes up a lot of time -- a big commitment,' she said. 'We are all committed, we all love it. It is a good team sport for BYU to look at.'
According to a Title IX presentation prepared by Christine H. B. Grant at the University of Iowa, 'The (Office for Civil Rights) says that it will not find an institution in compliance if it increases the participation percentage for the underrepresented sex by simply reducing opportunities of the overrepresented sex or reducing opportunities for the overrepresented sex to a greater degree.' The presentation can be found at www3.arcade.uiowa.edu/proj/ge/present.html.
Without dropping certain men's sports, there would be no money for women's sports.
'We have had to cut men's sports to have funding for women's, to provide opportunities for women's sports,' Fehlberg said.
To make room in the budget, there are two options for existing sports: to drop them all together or to downgrade them from NCAA status to extramural, he said.
'For us to take a varsity sport and move it to club status is a (joint) decision,' Fehlberg said. Those who make the decision are the athletic departments, the College of Health and Human Performance -- which sponsors club sports -- the president and the president's council.
At BYU 51.7 percent of students enrolled are women, yet they make up only 37.8 percent of all athletes, according to the Money Games Web site at www.kansascity.com, but that number continues to rise.
High school participation in 1972 was 8 percent female, but by 1995 it had increased to nearly 40 percent, according to the presentation.