New women’s team needed, not likely
Kris Jones and EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
November 4, 2009
Filed under Sports
There is an array of different teams that students can play on at Solano Community College: football, men and women’s basketball, volleyball, water polo, softball, baseball, and swimming. The good news is that there are many to choose from. The bad is that it may not be enough.
When it comes to college sporting teams, Title IX disallows colleges from offering an imbalance between men and women’s sports. The Athletics department is currently looking to add a women’s sports team, however, issues of compliance came to the attention of SCC quite some time ago.
”We’ve had it in our planning process since 95 and every year it doesn’t get funded because there’s not enough money,” said Bob Myers, dean of the Physical Education, Wellness and Athletics department.
“We really don’t think it’s going to get funded because the economic times currently,” said Myers. “But since we are under a federal mandate to make sure we follow Title Nine, we’ve got to go through the planning process so we show that we’re trying to be in compliance.”
According the Department of Justice, Title IX, an ordinance signed into law in 1972 by President Johnson, is a federal law that states, “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.”
But added to the difficulty of including another team for women on the SCC campus is the number of levels at which plans must now go through.
“In the past it didn’t go through shared governance and enrollment management. It would just go through the division and end up through FABPAC and the executive council,” Myers said.
FABPAC is the Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council at SCC.
Though the department is working on another women’s team, there may be a way to prove compliance while Myers and his department works to add a team
”We are already starting to accrue data showing that we’re trying to meet interest and ability of local female students. It’s going to be a year-long process and then we submit everything to the Commission of Athletics and then they determine that you’re doing everything within the letter of the law or that you need to do a little bit more.”
Terri Pearson-Bloom, softball coach at SCC, has worked with Myers to plan for another team. She understands that adding new program of any sort will take time, especially when the economy is not at its best.
”It takes years of planning and doing everything to put it in place to allow for it to happen,” said Pearson-Bloom.
Though it has taken some time Pearson-Bloom said SCC and Myers are doing an excellent job with the athletics currently being offered.
“There are many institution cutting sports so we are happy that Solano College has been able to continue to fund athletic activities and people on our sports teams,” Pearson-Bloom said. “The ones that we have are well supported and doing well.”
