Henrietta Hay's Column

Basketball didn't just grow like Topsy. It was invented. In the winter of 1891 William Naismith, an instructor in what is now Springfield College in Massachusetts, wanted to keep his football players in shape until baseball season began. He put peach baskets on the walls on either end of the gym and organized teams to play a new game. They were to toss soccer balls into the peach baskets, and try to keep their opponents from doing the same. Since Naismith had 18 players available, the early teams consisted of nine players.

My source doesn't say whether Mr. Naismith was married, but I like to imagine that if he was, his wife sneaked into the gym at night and tried her hand at tossing the soccer ball into the basket.

By the time I hit college in the early thirties women, delicate creatures that we were, were playing a modified version of the game. The gym floor was divided into thirds and so were the teams. Two of us played each section and, we were not allowed to move out of our area. That did limit the amount of exercise we got, but we loved the game and we played strictly for fun. Women's basketball remained a minor sport, looked down on by the athletic departments.

Then last weekend on two successive afternoons I sat glued to my TV set watching professional women's basketball games. Those games did not take place without years of pain and anguish!

In my day such games were beyond fantasy. Women athletes were strictly second-class citizens. To the surprise of no one and the disgust of most athletic departments, it took government intervention to give us a break. In 1972 Congress passed Title IX which said in part, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

Title IX turned twenty-five last week. A generation ago 1 in 27 young women participated in sports. Today the figure is nearly 1 in 2. Girls are learning their athletic skills early, as boys have always done, and are finding college athletic scholarships, although not nearly as many as the men have.

We have two professional women's basketball leagues, a women's pro baseball team, countless gold medals won by women in Olympics. Collegiate women's basketball has finally "arrived." It is drawing crowds, making money for the schools and the entire women's Final Four is now being televised.

But the continuing battle for sports equity goes on. Out of 103 Division 1-A schools, only nine are in total compliance with Title IX. Thirty schools have been sued for violations between 1992 and 1995 and all were found guilty of non-compliance. But so far not a single federal dollar has been denied to those not in compliance.

The big hassle, of course, is that when the money is limited, some men's programs are being dropped in order to add women's programs. Did you ever see a heavyweight wrestler cry on television? But it's the law!

In spite of it all, some institutions, like Stanford and Michigan, have complied with the law without damaging the men's' programs, so we know it can be done. Across the country, from kindergarten to college, women's sports are growing in strength and popularity. Over 2 million girls are in high school sports programs.

And now on the birthday of Title IX we have the opening of the Women's National Basketball League with eight teams, and games being broadcast by NBC, Lifetime and ESPN. A second women's pro basketball league, the ABA has finished its first season. Most of the players have had their training in American colleges and some have come from abroad. A few have just graduated, and Nancy Lieberman-Cline is 38 years old. Many of them have played in European professional leagues.

The games are fun to watch. The women depend on skill and speed rather than brute force. They "play" the game and seem to enjoy it a lot more than the men do. Mr. Naismith would be impressed. We would not have this without Title IX.

I'm not stupid or vain enough to think that I would have been the Rebecca Lobo of the thirties. But I can dream, can't I?