Sports in America Read online

  Furthermore, if we look carefully at the $3,900,000, we find that a healthy share is earned by the semi-professional football and basketball teams sponsored by the university, and many argue that this income has nothing to do with women. They recommend that in any budget consideration, game receipts should be put off to one side and women should have no say in their disbursement.

  Also, in the $3,900,000 is a great deal of money contributed by alumni for the specific purpose of encouraging the semi-professional teams which bear the university’s colors and bring it renown in the local press. That, too, must be put to one side.

  Finally, there is the historic fact that in American society the sports engaged in by men have always been considered more serious, more worthy and more to be encouraged than women’s sports. This factor, too, must be taken into account when allocating the budget.

  At this point I invite the reader to jot down his or her estimate of what a fair distribution of $3,900,000 would be, taking into account the brief arguments so far given. I have made my allocation, but will not report it until the end of this chapter.

  Any discussion of women in sports must start with that excellent three-part series by Bil Gilbert and Nancy Williamson which appeared in Sports Illustrated, starting with the issue of May 28, 1973. The first article gave details of the shocking imbalances in money, time and facilities accorded women. The second dealt with the various folk myths which claimed that women were biologically ill-equipped for sports. The third dealt with the publicity and legal moves being taken by women to achieve their fair share of the sports dollar; ominously for men, this article also indicated how the courts were probably going to deal with this contest.

  I will not summarize these articles further except to point out that they buttress what I am about to say. They are easily available and should be consulted by anyone who finds my recommendations on the following points unpalatable: 1) Are girls so biologically different from men that sports are injurious to them? 2) Should girls and boys play on the same teams? 3) What new legal developments affect this problem? 4) In state-supported institutions, what would be a reasonable allocation of public funds for women’s sports and for men’s?

  Are sports especially dangerous to girls? Drs. Carl Klafs and M. Joan Lyon have addressed themselves to this recurrent problem in their book The Female Athlete. In one chapter they deal with anatomical factors about which there can be no serious debate. Young boys and girls up to age nine mature about evenly. Then the girl makes a quantum jump, becoming taller, heavier, better coordinated and generally more competent. But the girl’s growth terminates at age fifteen or sixteen, while the boy continues to develop, not reaching his maximum growth till somewhere between twenty and twenty-one. The significant sentence is one we often forget: ‘A growing girl at any age has reached greater maturity than a boy of the same age.’

  Many of the specific findings are not surprising, but all are relevant. At Little League age girls may be two inches taller than boys their same age, but this advantage is lost at age fifteen. Girls at Little League age tend to be four or five pounds heavier, but this, too, is quickly lost. Most interesting is the fact that girls have a significantly lower center of gravity than boys, due to a combination of female weight in the thighs and bottom, and male weight in the upper torso and arms. This means that girls have a better sense of balance and can less easily be knocked off stride once they are moving forward.

  Girls of Little League age tend to be stronger than boys and to have superior body control, but these advantages are only temporary, and I was surprised to find that girl athletes are particularly prone to foot injuries. The summary can be used as a basis for making decisions in this field:

  The anatomical differences between the sexes favor the male. Although maturation of the female is accelerated, the longer, slower growing period experienced by the male results in a heavier, larger and more rugged structure that possesses mechanical and structural advantages, particularly where the upper body is concerned. The longer and heavier bones add to body weight and the longer levers provide a much greater excursion of the moving ends (e.g., hands and feet), resulting in greater speed and force, a decided advantage in throwing, striking and explosive types of events.

  Girls and boys past the age of eleven or twelve are significantly different and these differences establish limits to their athletic performances.

  Drs. Klafs and Lyon then turn their attention to the area which attracts most debate: Do the physiological differences between girls and boys bar the girls from athletic competition? In a chapter which should be read by anyone required to make decisions in school sports, the doctors discuss frankly, with many previous studies to buttress them, some ticklish questions. In their opening paragraph they tip their hand:

  Contrary to common opinion, the female is not as handicapped in physiological respects as most people assume. Social and sub-cultural mores have a great deal more to do with the relegation of the female to certain prescribed roles than any particular physiological limitations; this has been particularly true in Western society.

  The woman’s cardiovascular system does not limit her, nor her respiratory capacity, nor her metabolism. Her muscular system is noticeably weaker than the man’s and prevents her from equaling him in strength sports such as football or weight-lifting. I was surprised to find that women have a much greater endurance than I had been taught; the Olympic record for women in the 800-meter race is 1:58.6 (men 1:44.3) and in the 1,500 meters 4:01.4 (men 3:34.9); some women have finished the marathon in good time; and in swimming others have covered amazing distances.

  The doctors then summarize studies on the gynecological factors, and their conclusions are forceful. Female Olympic contestants have won world championships in every stage of the menstrual cycle, and whether a particular girl wishes to compete during her menstruation is up to her personal preference. A few girls are slowed down; the majority show no negative effect.

  Childbirth also has little effect on performance. In one Olympics, gold medals were won by girls barely into adolescence, by mothers with children and by grandmothers. One study of twenty-four holders of Olympic medals who had borne children showed that ‘the majority gave birth relatively quickly with little pain and had both shorter delivery and convalescent periods. Upon resumption of athletic competition following childbirth, many of the women showed a marked improvement in their physical performances.’

  The doctors close their chapter with a brief discussion of a pitiful situation. Because women’s athletics have up to now been shunted off to one side and never enlisted the support of the general community, they have been an easy prey for those who would debase them. For some time there have been rumors that many of the winners of Olympic gold medals for women’s sports were not women at all.

  Recently the inside stories of some impersonations have surfaced. In 1938 Adolf Hitler put before the world a flaxen-haired Nordic beauty who set a world high-jump record for women. She was a man who confessed later that he had been forced by the Nazis to pose as a woman to gain glory for the Third Reich. At Oslo a Frenchwoman won the bronze medal in the hundred-meter dash, then became a man and fathered a child. Another Frenchwoman won the bronze medal in the 200-meter dash and the silver medal in the 400-meter relay, then became a man and entered the French air force.

  Such scandals have forced officials to insist upon physical inspections, plus genetic tests—a buccal smear from inside the mouth can indicate male or female sex chromatin granules—so that now it is possible to state conclusively that this contestant is or is not a woman. At the Mexico City Olympics a group of Iron Curtain athletes withdrew from competition rather than take tests which would prove whether they were women or not. The authoritative summary of this curious problem is Merritt H. Stiles’ essay ‘Olympic Doctors Face Controversial Problems: Sex Testing and Drug Use by Athletes,’ Modern Medicine (September 9, 1968).

  Dr. H. Royer Collins, chief of sports medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, ha
s summarized present thinking on women in sports in a concise group of recommendations, much easier to digest than the more extensive Klafs and Lyon study. It can be found in Nation’s Schools (September 1973), but it has also been widely publicized elsewhere. School boards should study it.

  Dr. Collins handles eight recurring questions. Are sports harmful to girls? No. Do sports endanger girls’ reproductive organs? No. Boys are subjected to much greater danger. But breasts should be protected. Do sports impede menstruation? No, they help. Dare a girl participate in sports during her period? Of course, unless she normally experiences severe cramps. Are girls’ bones more fragile than boys’? No, they are smaller. Should girls in junior and senior classes in high schools be allowed to compete with boys in contact sports? No. The boys are too heavy. But girls should be allowed to compete against boys in tennis and golf. Do girls suffer a higher injury rate than boys? No, it is much lower. If girls had the same opportunities as boys, would their athletic performances improve? Definitely. ‘I’m wholeheartedly in favor of both men and women participating in sports because this is one of the best ways I know to achieve a healthy society.’

  In the face of such evidence, and more is accumulating every day, I cannot comprehend how anyone would deny schoolgirls and adult women an equal opportunity to participate in sports as one of the chief joys in life. All arguments to the contrary fail. The health of one-half our population is of paramount interest and I would vigorously support any women or groups of women who in the future insist upon their right to participate and to use public facilities. I would especially support those who demand of governing bodies a fair shake in budgets. Such claims are not the program of a far-out women’s revolutionary movement; they are plain common sense and men should be ashamed of themselves if they do not support them.

  Does this mean that girls and boys should play on the same team? This question can be answered intelligently only if three different age groups are considered, and I will discuss first the mature players. In the latter pages of this book I describe how for the past fourteen years I have played ferocious tennis in a mixed foursome, my partner being a woman somewhat younger than I who can beat me. We have usually played against a woman of remarkable energy who can slam the ball with unrestrained joy, and from these two I have learned that competition is often more fun when women participate. Many men cheat themselves by playing golf and tennis off by themselves; I prefer mixed groups. I make these remarks, however, as an adult, when my psychological patterns have been determined and secured. Losing to women, which I often do, creates no problems and probably does me substantial psychological good in that it combats any tendency toward machismo. I strongly recommend that adult women and men participate in sports together, for the experience is civilizing.

  The second age group to consider are the children beginning their active lives. At that age I romped around baseball fields with girls who were at least as good as I, and oftentimes better. I remember certain rough games when I was nine or ten in which girls of my age excelled because they were a little larger, a lot better coordinated and substantially more clever psychologically than boys. I therefore recommend that girls and boys aged six through eleven participate in sports together. To do so will teach boys that one-half their world will always be feminine, and sharing games with girls at an early age might encourage males to resume this practice in later life.

  There is one obvious drawback to allowing girls from six through eleven to play on boys’ teams: the girls are too big and tough. As we have seen, girls mature so much more rapidly than boys that they tend to dominate the games. I believe that such domination, if it existed for only brief periods of time, might not be all bad. It could inform the boys that in many fields girls are at least as expert as they; best of all, it could prepare them for a later life of cooperation out of respect rather than exclusion out of contempt.

  I have looked at adults and children first to prove that in both philosophy and practice I am a devotee of women’s liberation. I was never anti-woman, and before I had given close attention to the problem I had unthinkingly accepted many of society’s clichés, especially where wages and sports were concerned. But at heart I was always for equality for women and have campaigned to win them social justice. Of the numerous characters I have created in my books, certain women stand out as preeminent: Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, Nyuk Tsin in Hawaii, Elly Zahm in Centennial. Such figures could not be created by a writer who holds women in contempt. And so, to be consistent, I must defend women’s right to equal participation in sports in childhood and in adult life, and in those two age groups I would prefer to see them playing on the same teams as men. However, there is a third period in the growing-up of both girls and boys—say from eleven through twenty-two—when many experts feel that they should not compete head-on.

  I am therefore attentive to those coaches who have warned me that they would not wish their thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys to compete against girls in public situations in which a defeat might be interpreted as a failure in manliness. And I have listened with respect when coaches of older boys have told me that they would have grave doubts about sending a nineteen-year-old college boy against a girl of the same age in a public tennis match involving another college. Before you ridicule such judgments, listen to a coach:

  I took our track team to a college with which we’ve always had friendly relations. I had this sophomore half-miler who was coming along rather well. Not good, not bad. If he stuck with it, he might make something of himself. So we start the race, three of our boys, three of theirs, except their third boy was a co-ed. My three boys were sort of shook, but the race started, and in the last fifty yards their girl started to beat our third-running boy. The crowd started cheering and jeering and members of our team ran alongside the track, shouting, ‘For Christ’s sake, Harry, don’t let a girl beat you!’ But she did. And his ego was humiliated, both by himself and by the crowd. And when I got to him to patch things over, he said, ‘To hell with this,’ and I never saw him again.

  When I got back to our campus I started raising hell about a system that would pit adolescent boys against girls before a public audience, and some of the philosophical leaders on our faculty ridiculed me. Their point was that within the next dozen years such values will be altered, it won’t matter if a girl beats a boy. I listened carefully and I had to agree that in the long run they could be right. But as a coach I’m faced with the boys of this generation, who haven’t been indoctrinated to accept a new scale of values.

  They are humiliated by being beat in public by girls, and I’m powerless to alter either their judgments or the behavior of society. Suppose that twelve years from now there is a new scale of values. And a better one. Then it won’t matter who beats who. But what am I to do with the boys who have to live between now and twelve years from now? Allow them all to be castrated?

  I have been hit with this same argument about the future whenever I have discussed this problem with mixed groups. Those whose job it is to estimate the future assure me that within ten or twenty years we will have a new interpretation of society in which there won’t be this difference between women and men. When I ask what is to happen to the boys who have to live in this generation, the answer has been the one Stalin gave the agriculturists trapped in land reform: ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’

  A classic illustration of what the new rules will mean came in Hopkins, Minnesota, where a beautiful young girl named Tony St. Pierre brought suit in the local courts to obtain the right to participate on the boys’ cross-country and skiing teams. She won, and her performances were respectable but not at the top of the list, which caused Tony to remark, ‘I don’t think boys resented me at all. But that’s probably because I wasn’t the top skier. If I’d been the best, I think their reaction would have been a lot different.’

  It is her coach’s comment that interests me: ‘The boys on our team genuinely respected Tony, although they joked a lot about hav
ing a female around. But some of the boys she beat on other school teams acted as if their egos were really shattered. It bothered them terribly to lose to a girl.’

  If Tony had been suing for some basic human right, it wouldn’t matter how the boys on the other teams felt; but if she was concerned merely with a convenience which upset established principles, and at a heavy psychological cost to others, then the aggrieved boys had a just complaint.

  I believe the experience of Israel may be pertinent here. When that state was young and of meager population, a program was initiated whereby women would be conscripted as soldiers, and the Israeli military quickly discovered that young women of draft age made just as good soldiers as young men, save for the one quality of being able to heft burdens. They were patriotic, courageous, alert, able to withstand pressure and capable of becoming deadly shots. In front-line conditions they were reliable and resilient, and the Israeli army was justly proud of its new battalions.

  The women soldiers had only one weakness, and the fault was not theirs but their enemy’s. When they faced Arab troops, and word circulated among the Arab soldiers that they were fighting women, the Arabs fought to the death rather than surrender. An Arab captain, whose company had been performing badly, had merely to shout, ‘Men! Will you allow women to take you captive?’ and his troops revived and fought like demons to avoid this disgrace.

  Now, the aim of warfare is not to kill 100 percent of the enemy, but to encourage him by one means or another to stop fighting. But if the structure of your army is such that the enemy cannot possibly surrender to it, then your army had better be revamped. Israeli women no longer fight in the front lines.