Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 19, 2011)
Sports sportsed(S),clackamas.edu Wednesday, Octi 19, 2011 Gender equality no easy task By John William Howard. Sports Editor I ’ve always wondered why Clackamas Community College doesn’t have a mens soccer team. It would seem, what with theim m ediateand recent success of the wom en’s program and the overall dominance of. the athletic department, that such a team wouldn’t even be in question. . However, during the fall sports season, options for men are cross country ... and that’s it.TJnless I’ve been doing my math wrong, that means there are six sportsfor women and only five for the men. Isn’t there something off about that? As it so happens, there isn’t. Title IX was legisla tion passed in the early ‘70s intended to force equal opportunities for both men ana women. And not just in collegiate athletics, ’ but in all institutions that receive public funds. That; includes access to things -like higher education and employment. The basic idea is that the number of , athletes should mirror’ the ratio .of students at the school. If 59 percent of the students are women, then 59 percent of the ath letic program should be made up orjjgmale athletes. H eres where things get a little messy: that’s about as clear as Title IX gets. It’s interpreted in a myriad of ways and because of that, there are several different solutions to complying with Title IX legislation, accord ing to self-proclaimed Title IX advocate Paul Fiskum, the assistant coach of the mens basketball team. " One path is to provide an: equal number of sports for each gender. For '.instance, volleyball will be offered to offset football arid, baseball will be offered to offset soft- ball. The numbers are clear, simple and easy to keep that way. Another path, one that CCG takes, is to offer the same or close-to the same am ount o.f scholarships for both male and female athletes. This too is messy because the sizes of teams vary greatly from sport to sport. The basketball teams are always going to be the same size, sure, but you don’t ever see, the softball team with 15 players on their pitching staff like you do on a Baseball team. T hat creates another prob lem. If you try to have an equal number of men’s and women’s sports, you won’t end up with the same amount of scholarship athletes for both genders. T he way around that is to offer an imbal- a n c e d a m o u n t o f s p o rts . F o r instance, the wrestling team is currently carrying 3 4 wres tlers, making it larger than the soccer (15 players) and volleyball (12 players)-teams combined. T hat makes offer ing men’s soccer impossible, unless another men’s sport were cut. But think about it. Which stellar program o f ours would you cut to make way for a fledgling meri’s soc cer team? You can’t cut any. That means that we have to keep things the way they are in order to be sure that men and women are on an equal playing-field. The thing is, just having equal scholarships dtfesnr cut it. The point is that both inen and women would have an' equal and fighting change- to play sports ana th at incl udes uni for ms, trav el, facilities and any other amenities. Fiskum coached softball for 20 years at CCG and said that there were plenty of times where he saw a huge disparity between the nice, new baseball stadium and the softball ‘stadium’, which would be nothing more than a backstop with a few bench- es/ 3 “The softball team will get thrown out in the north pasture on a hunk of weeds,”] said Fiskum. “T h at’s not right.” And it’s not. T hat’s why we’ve seen such a rise ■ in female participation in ath letics. People have begun to understand that you have to treat everyone equally, no matter who or what they are, The Clackamas Print 5 Upcoming Events Time/date Clackamas @ SW Oregon 6 p.m* Oct. 21 Clackamas @ Umpqua 1 p.m. Oct. 22 Women^ Soccer.........____________ Clackamas vs. Chemeketa I p.m. uct. 19 Clackamas @ Clark 1 p.m. Oct. 22 o r w h e re th e y c o m e fro m . If that mean's (that* w’e don’t have a men’s soccer team, then that’s alright. I’m fine with that. CROSS COUNTRY: Men take first, women second among NWAACC competition Continued from Page 1 ’The men meandered around once they finished, bufthe talk wasn’t about the gopher holejust past mile three, or even about how each runner did. Everybody was talking about when they passed the confused biker face down On the ground and finished the ta.ee without him. Despite the slight - detour and the face plant, both the men and the women felt good about their races, with the CCfc men’s tearib finishing second behind Willamette University and the women’s team finishing fifth, but only trailing the NWAACC defending champion Clark College by. Four points. Highlighting- the women’s face was the. tenth place' finish of ffeshman. Teresa Lawson. ' Before j Clackamas, Lawson had neyer been-a crosscountry runner, but has quickly vaulted to the near top of the league, already winning the NWAACC Gross Country Female Athlete of the Week the week of Sept. 24, prompting Mantalas to say that she. was “setting herself up to be a con tender for the conference title.” Lawson was just two seconds off her personal record, in- Friday’s race, which was only her fourth cross country meet of her life. Clackamas men. The meet was the second at home fo r the Cougars. “I started out kinda [in the] front of the pack, whichwas my goal: to stick with me Oregon State girls, which I did for most of the race and I beat a couple o f them,” said Lawson. “It’s really intimidating at first? because you see .{the universities) roll- up and they just look awesome,” said] Lawson] who Finished Stecond out of -all NWAACC affiliated athletes: “Because they’re, four-yeàr schôols, ..a lot of them are older than us. We come in at 19, so it’fc,intimidating, but \ye, just show ‘em up out on the course.” On the men’s 'side, Clackamas had three runners finish in the top .ten, with Brad Prettyman takingseebnd, Mark Medgin taking sixth and jofge Gil-Juarez-taking eigth, leading the pack for the Cougars. Thé biggest, story, though, was the last 300 meters- Tor freshman Austin Collins. “I was thinking about' it the last three miles. I seen the people in'front of me and I finally caught the one guy that I was trying to stick with ana I knew there was a huge pack in front of me with a mile to go,’ said Côllins, who was running in jtist his second race on the home course. O n.the last Stretch, Collins kicked it in to high gear, passing runner after runner en route to finishing fourteenth. - “It’s pretty painful. You just think /don’t die, don’t die’ and then when it’s over you feel good.” Over all, Mantalas was pleased with the performance of both teams, but said that their main goal was to do better than the year before. “We’re ready to achieve a little bit more and the dedication^ is there a little bit more,” said Mantalas, who All photos by John William Howard Theresa Lawson covers the last few hun dred meters injustherfourth cross coun try meet o f het life. Lawson finished ‘■tenth, and first for Clackamas. ■ is in his second year as associate head coach. “If we just continue to get a little bit better, then that’s all we can ask for. We show up and have a good race on NWAAGCs, and where the chips fall, they fall.” , Cross Country Next Up: Home- Southern Region Championships 3 p.m. Saturday Oct. 29
