Title IX Compliance by your school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I should have added that there are only about 44 kids playing football. That obviously helps close the gap.

Wow, in a school of close to 1800, only 44 on the football team?

We are about the same size and I think we have over 100 (JV & varsity). There's talk of them having to make cuts again in the next few years

Yeah. Low. School is in an area where parents are not big on youth football or middle school football so numbers are low. The school combined two smaller high schools about 10 years ago. One of my kids graduated the final year of one of those schools (about 900 enrollment) and they had to abandon the season after injuries took the team down to about 20 kids.

Interestingly, they switched over to soccer for cheer, band and homecoming. It worked fine though half times were a few minutes longer. I recall hearing the other schools agreed to the longer half times and that people thought it was different and fun.

Wow! That's really great that the band and cheerleaders were still able to participate like that through another sport. My kids' school has always had football, but I know at least one school in our area has had to cut football due to lack of interest. I didn't even think about how that effects other student groups like band and cheer leaders too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are dance, Poms and cheerleading considered sports?

It depends. And it differs between States. The question really is whether the activity has a season, competitions and a championship. All of them could be sports, and all of them might not be a sport. There are some sports, in some States, where they have all those things but the competitions and championships are outside of the official high school sports governing association for the State. Common ones are Crew, Water Polo and Weightlifting.

Sideline cheer - not a sport because no competitions. Competitive cheer - a sport. Dance, Pom and others (Flag corps for example) are similar. Do they go and compete at a series of competitions or are they only performing at games.

Nope Competitive cheer is NOT considered a sport under title IX. So at the college level football and basketball is subsidizing men and women's country club sports like tennis (which is primarily now international players- in 2022 61% of div. 1 men players were international; 66% of women are international players). With numbers like that there shouldn't even be men's tennis in college.

In high school far more boys try out for more sports than girls but high schools won't often add a boys frosh/soph team because they don't want too many boys playing or limit how many roster spaces. Cheerleading really should be counted as a sport.

[Anonymous]

Of course competitive cheer is a sport for Title IX purposes. It was specifically created to help close the Title IX numbers difference. Competitive cheer, in the 22-23 school year had almost 150,000 participants from more than 7,800 high schools. That makes it the 8th largest girls sport.

In the 22-23 school year Tennis had 158,000 boys and 191,000 girls participating.

[Anonymous]

'Technically co-ed but girls don't try out" doesn't come close to meeting the requirement. In fact, that's been the excuse for offering fewer opportunities to girls for a century.

The thing is that sports are hugely beneficial for teaching life skills-- leadership, perseverance, teamwork-- the skills that make people successful as adults.

And if opportunities are available, girls will join. I know several girls who keep bandying about trying out for different sports but don't think they will make the team. If a freshman team were available, they'd definitely try out.

Think about your parents' generation. There were almost no sports for girls "because girls weren't interested." But lo and behold, once sports opportunities became available, girls became very interested.

People are correct that the real problem in terms of balance is football. I say, DROP FOOTBALL, and spread those resources into every other sport (expanding the types of sports, adding freshman teams, etc, atc)