Cheering for Equal Opportunity
February 14, 2017
Guided by the spirit of Title IX, the Michigan High School Athletic Association created girls competitive cheer in 1993 for the express purpose of providing an additional winter sport for girls to equalize athletic opportunities between the sexes. Before that, girls in Michigan had fewer athletic opportunities in the winter than in fall or spring and fewer athletic opportunities than boys overall.
Like all girls sports under MHSAA regulations, participation in MHSAA Girls Competitive Cheer Tournaments has been limited to girls. Since the 1977-78 school year (after a team of four boys won an Illinois High School Association girls state bowling championship), the MHSAA Handbook has included the following rule: “Boys may not participate on a girls team in MHSAA sponsored postseason meets and tournaments.” The MHSAA also encourages member schools not to permit boys to participate on girls teams during regular season play.
Without a policy prohibiting boys from displacing girls from teams and from the playing surface, athletic opportunities for girls would be in serious jeopardy, as many courts examining this issue have concluded. In short, permitting boys to displace girls would be antithetical to the fundamental purpose of Title IX.
The overwhelming majority of federal and state courts have concluded that “no-boys-on-girls-teams” rules are lawful and necessary. These cases conclude that maintaining and promoting athletic opportunities for girls and redressing past discrimination against women in athletics are important objectives. And, second, they conclude that excluding boys from girls’ sports – even if girls may participate on boys’ teams – is substantially related to that important interest.
Case law provides two separate, simple explanations; each of which, standing alone, establishes the legitimacy of the rule. First, having all-girl teams creates or maintains opportunities for females that would not otherwise exist, thereby providing females opportunity to develop programs equal to boys.
Second, because there are recognized, innate physiological differences between the sexes that give boys inherent advantages in most athletic events, to permit boys to participate on girls’ teams – irrespective of the sport – would displace girls from competition to a substantial extent, thereby diminishing female opportunity in athletics.
- A federal court in a Tennessee case wrote in 1977: “[it] takes little imagination to realize that were play and competition not separated by sex, the great bulk of females would quickly be eliminated from participation and denied any meaningful opportunity for athletic involvement.”
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A federal court in Arizona wrote in 1989: “If males are permitted to displace females ... even to the extent of one player ..., the goal of equal participation by females in interscholastic athletics is set back, not advanced.”
The MHSAA created girls competitive cheer expressly to provide overall equal athletic opportunity for girls that did not exist before it was added as an MHSAA sport. That a boy now wishes to participate on a girls competitive cheer team, despite the abundance of athletic opportunities for boys in other sports, does not establish a violation of Title IX. And Title IX has never been so construed. The MHSAA’s rule creates for girls the opportunity to enjoy highly competitive athletic opportunity in the same number of sports as boys – precisely satisfying Title IX.
The MHSAA made its move toward girls competitive cheer two decades before entrepreneurs invented coed “stunt” for schools’ and colleges’ consideration. By that time, participation in girls competitive cheer had tripled in Michigan high schools. Girls competitive cheer is now the eighth-most popularly sponsored high school sport in Michigan, above sports like tennis, golf and swimming & diving which had a 20-year head start.
Carry On
April 27, 2018
For many years my vocation has been that of executive director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. My vocation -- not my occupation, which has the connotation of a pastime that merely consumed my days and years, or a space that only my physical presence has been taking up.
No, this has been my vocation, in the sense of the root word “vocari,” which means "to be called.” The MHSAA has not been my job; it’s been my purpose.
Anyone who knows my background would understand.
I grew up at the home of the executive director of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association who was my role model as spouse, father and man. I was a twenty-something staff member of the National Federation of State High School Associations under the mentoring of Clifford Fagan, one of the deepest thinkers in the history of educational athletics. It was he who encouraged me to write about our work.
Anyone who has worked with me, listened to me or read what I've written would understand.
Everything has pivoted on protecting and promoting the core values of school-sponsored, student-centered athletics: policies, procedures and programs that put academics before athletics and attempt to develop the whole child.
For example, I see sportsmanship not as some corny promotion, but as a critical issue of educational athletics. I view good sportsmanship as a precursor to good citizenship. This is not the mindset of a man on the job, but of a man with a mission.
Going forward, those who love and lead school sports in Michigan must avoid doing those easy things that increase the scope and stakes of competition. Instead they must address every day those difficult policies, procedures and programs that enhance the physical, mental and emotional values of interscholastic athletics to students and the value of educational athletics to schools and society.
It's not more competition that is needed in high school sports, but more character. Not more sport specialization that's needed in junior high/middle school sports, but more sport sampling. Less attention to celebrating hype in sports events for youth, but more attention to cultivating life long-habits and good health for adults.
In leaving the MHSAA after 32 years this summer, I will have some regrets ... sad to be leaving the company of great staff and some extraordinary colleagues in our member schools ... sorry that even though we worked so hard and accomplished so much, there is still so much to do to keep school sports safe, sane and sportsmanlike.
There’s lots to do. Carry on.