Perfect 10 The University of Georgia Gymdogs and the Rise of Women's College Gymnastics in America

GENDER EQUALITY In 2001, Brian Schrader came from the University of Iowa swimming program to become an assistant coach with Georgia's three-time-national-championship women's swimming team. He said publicly that Georgia was the perfect place for him: "It is one of the few schools in the country where all the sports get an incredible amount of support." "All the sports," of course, includes women's sports. And the University of Georgia, indeed, has a remarkable record in women's athletics. Georgia won the sec women's all-sports trophy six times between the year of its inception, 1984, and 1994, when the conference decided to combine men's and women's sports for the trophy, as is done for the Sears Cup. It is awarded to the school whose overall athletic program ranks highest in the nation, based largely on the national rankings of its teams. Since 1987, uga has won thirteen national championships in four women's sports. Without question, Liz Murphey, who was Georgia's first coordinator for women's athletics, deserves a major share of the credit. But Liz will insist that Athletic Director Vince Dooley and the coaches she hired deserve the credit. As significant as the contributions of Murphey, Dooley, and the coaches are, the strongest force behind the emergence of women's intercollegiate sports at the University of Georgia was the enactment of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act. Title IX bans sex discrimination within schools in academics and athletics. In short, it calls for equality of financial assistance (athletic scholarships), awarding of scholarships in proportion to the numbers of males and females in the total student enrollment, and providing equivalent benefits in other areas of college athletics-coaching, equipment, travel, medical, and training support. Georgia hasn't always been a leader in women's sports. In the 1970s uga was slow-and that's being generous-to react to Title IX. It took six years after the enactment of Title IX for the university to award the first athletic scholarship to a female in 1978. At the time there was a ratio of about 150 male scholarships to the lone female scholarship. In 2000, the numbers were 141.2 for males to 108 for females. These numbers demonstrate that women have made substantial progress in the number of scholarships and in other areas, but it was not without prodding from the courts. And it was in an environment that was, and still is to some extent, one of the most chauvinistic of any profession-a college athletic department. Liz provides background on the women's sports situation before Title IX and during the early years after enactment:Yoculan, Suzanne is the author of 'Perfect 10 The University of Georgia Gymdogs and the Rise of Women's College Gymnastics in America', published 2006 under ISBN 9781588181114 and ISBN 1588181111.