Oregon High School Softball Team Sues District Over Unequal Facilities

School officials in Lake Oswego, Oregon, allegedly told the high school girls' softball team that they would have to win a state championship before the school would upgrade their facilities to match the level of quality that the boys' baseball team receives.  In a lawsuit challenging this disparity in treatment under Title IX, the softball player-plaintiffs strike back, pointing out the unfairness of holding them to such a high standard while refusing to improve the level of support for the team.

In the lawsuit, the softball players allege that their facilities at a nearby junior high school consist of a dirt field with poor drainage that often requires them to cancel games due to poor conditions.  They also lack designated locker room and basic amenities like water fountains.  Meanwhile the boys' baseball team plays in a stadium at the high school that is decked out with artificial turf, locker rooms, pitching machines, an enclosed batting area, a press box, sound systems, water fountains, and well-maintained bathrooms.

The school district claims that improvements to the softball field are being made, though if this is their only defense, that would not be enough to dismiss a Title IX challenge. Title IX requires that schools provide equal treatment to their boys' and girls' athletics programs overall.  It is not necessary to treat all sports equally or provide similar treatment to the boys and girls teams in the same (or similar) sport. Theoretically, a school court argue that (for example) a world-class swimming facility for the girls, if it had one, swim team offsets the similar level of luxury that the boys' baseball team enjoys.  However, intra-sport or similar-sport comparisons usually end up being good indicators of overall disparity in support for the boys and girls programs in the aggregate. 

Female Baseball Player Challenges Exclusion from Junior High Team

In Mesa, Arizona, after an eighth-grade girl named Jasmine Miles was excluded from her public school's baseball team, her grandfather filed a complaint with the school district. But the school district is still refusing to let her play, arguing that reserving baseball for boys is "in compliance with Title IX, as an equivalent team [i.e., softball] is offered for girls." 

I contend that the "softball defense" is a misinterpretation of the Title IX regulations about cross-over participation:

"...[W]here a recipient operates or sponsors a team in a particular sport for members of one sex but operates or sponsors no such team for members of the other sex, and athletic opportunities for members of that sex have previously been limited, members of the excluded sex must be allowed to try-out for the team offered unless the sport involved is a contact sport."  34 C.F.R. 106.41(b).

According to this provision, a school can offer separate teams for girls and boys "in a particular sport" as long as there is a team for members of each sex.  (The exception to this rule for contact sports does not apply, since baseball is correctly omitted from enumerated list of contact sports that appear later in this regulation.)  The regulation says nothing about "equivalent" sports or "similar" sports.  The idea that baseball and softball are interchangeable for Title IX purposes, while convenient for athletic directors, does not derive from this regulation, but from tradition rooted in stereotypes that sought to preserve the sport of baseball as an exclusive male preserve.  I agree with Miles's grandfather, quoted in the article, that baseball and softball are different sports.  They use different facilities, they have different rules, and different equipment.  Just as a school can't hold up its girls' volleyball team as a reason to exclude girls from the boys' golf team, it should not be able to rely on softball as a justification to exclude girls from baseball.    


I hope that Miles and her grandfather continue to fight the school district on this.  Perhaps they can do for Arizona what another baseball-playing girl, Logan Young, did for Indiana.  She too challenged her school's policy of excluding girls from baseball on the grounds that softball was an equivalent sport.  The lawsuit she filed eventually pressured the high school athletic association in that state to change the rules.

Plans for New Athletic Complex Disputed in North Reading, Massachusetts

The Boston Globe reports today about a Title IX dispute brewing in North Reading, Massachusetts, over the construction of a new athletic complex for the high school and middle school.  The complex had initially been designed to provide a new field for both baseball and softball, but was recently modified by the committee supervising the project to provide two fields to baseball, one primary field and a second, smaller practice field.  Many in town are contesting this development, since the softball team currently plays at a field off campus, at a local elementary school, in conditions that are inferior to the existing baseball field already located at the high school. In particular, the softball field lacks a dugout, bathrooms, and locker rooms. That disparity could have been corrected with the construction of two new fields of comparable quality. For that reason, softball advocates are working to convince the school board to return to the initial proposal, and have threatened to file a complaint with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights if the plan for two baseball fields remains in place. 

I think the softball advocates are right to see this as a Title IX issue.  As I told the reporter for this story, “It’s not equitable for the girls to have to pay for their own transportation off campus or to not have fields of comparable quality,” she said. “And it’s even more egregious that at a moment when the school is adding new facilities, it’s not seeking to correct that inequity but is perhaps going to exacerbate it.”  Hopefully, the school district will decide on its own to return to the gender equitable plan. If not, I think the softball advocates will easily prevail by leveraging Title IX.  

Maryland Legislature Appropriates $2.3 M for Softball Stadium at Towson

In the wake of the Maryland governor's decision to appropriate $300,000 to save the Towson University  baseball team from elimination, it's reported that the state's legislature will provide $2.3 million in state funds for the purpose of constructing a new facility for the university's softball team.  This capital improvement addresses the university president's concern that keeping baseball would put the university at risk of liability under Title IX, though she notes that the university still need to address the disparity in the number of athletic opportunities available to Towson's female students. 

Maryland Governor Restores Towson Baseball

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has allocated $300,000 to Towson University for the next two years, in order to reinstate the baseball team cut that had been eliminated last month by the university president and athletic director.  Towson claimed that cutting baseball, along with men's soccer, was necessary to rein in athletic department finances and achieve Title IX compliance, although the universities Board of Visitors had earlier questioned the accuracy of the Title IX rationale. Towson will reportedly use the additional state money to support baseball as well as explore adding an additional women's team.  Based on public reports about equity in athletic opportunity, Towson provides 52% of athletic opportunities to women, though women constitute 61% of the undergraduate student body.

It is unclear to me whether the Governor's gift has truly saved the team or simply provided a two-year reprieve for its varsity status. The university president noted that even with the additional money, the university will have to raise student fees by $8 and fundraise an additional $100,000 per year in order to keep baseball.  What happens after that?  This report states that the team must become "self-sufficient" by 2015, but if self-sufficient means that the team pays for itself with little university support, I think there's another label for that -- a club team.

Towson goes through with athletic team cuts

Last fall Towson University announced plans to cut men's soccer and baseball. This past week they followed through with these plans after a process that--from all reports--was mired in confusion and perhaps deception.
Athletic Director Mike Waddell drew criticism in the fall when he said the cuts were due to Title IX: the university needed to achieve parity in the athletic opportunities it provides students. At that time, Erin (among others) questioned this rationale when it came out that Waddell didn't do the numbers right. That, in fact, Towson had already achieved proportionality.
But this week the university president made a formal announcement to the student-athletes involved--a process that also has drawn intense criticism from players, coaches, parents, and community members. And though the reality of the athletic department's financial situation has been brought to light alongside the lack of a Title IX problem (at least in providing opportunities), the president's statement include an immediate mention of Title IX:
For the past several months our campus has been dealing with a proposed recommendation from our athletics leadership to reconfigure the intercollegiate athletics program to address three issues facing the university: long-term financial stability and affordability; compliance with Federal Title IX requirements; and the ability to be competitive in NCAA Division I athletics.

It is possible the her statement about Title IX--sandwiched in the middle of the other less nebulous reasons--is true. She could be speaking of providing equitable treatment to its women's teams, which also is connected to financial issues. But the number-shifting the cuts have caused are not Title IX related. The university is actually reinstating its men's tennis team.
And many of those involved in this situation know that Title IX was not the motivator behind this decision. Several parents of Towson baseball players, including one who works for the Department of Education, noted that all the information about the department's financials and Title IX data is available to the public and does not support the Title IX claim but rather reflects some fiscal mismanagement or shifting of priorities.
We shall see what the next big project out of Towson athletics is; it should be an indicator of how it intends to remain "competitive in NCAA Division I athletics."

"Title IX" Cuts at Towson Reconsidered

Often we read about colleges and universities cutting men's teams, ostensibly to comply with Title IX.  I usually object to this framing, which makes it sounds like the law requires universities to equalize athletic opportunities in this manner and doesn't take into account compliance by other means than statistical proportionality.  But of course, this is a convenient narrative for colleges and universities to employ, as it positions them as innocent victims of the law, rather than free agents making economic and political decisions about how many and which sports to offer.  It's easier to say to disappointed baseball players and wrestlers, "sorry, blame the women," than it is to admit, "sorry, we just value football players' opportunities more than we value opportunities in your sport."  

Because I am sensitive to the "Title IX made me do it" defense to cutting teams, I was interested in this article about the Towson University Athletic Director's proposal to cut baseball and men's soccer.  But when AD Mike Waddell claimed that these cuts were needed for Title IX compliance, that rationale raised questions.  Specifically, the university's Board of Visitors looked into the numbers, the determined that athletic opportunities were actually proportionate to the percentage of students of each sex, so Title IX compliance has already been achieved.  Apparently, Waddell based his proportionality calculation on an unduplicated headcount, which counts the number of student athletes, without taking into account separate athletic opportunities that are enjoyed by multi-sport athletes.  However, as long as athletic opportunities are truly separate, meaningful athletic opportunities in their own right, universities may count them that way for Title IX purposes.  The so-called "duplicated" head count measures opportunities, not participants.  In Towson's case, many female athletes participate in both indoor and outdoor track, so proportionality does not appear satisfied when you use the unduplicated head count, but it does when you use the duplicated one.

In my mind, there are three possible interpretations of this discrepancy.
1. Waddell, despite being an AD at a Division I institution, does not know that it is acceptable to use the duplicated head count.  This is possible, as we frequency encounter gaps in Title IX literacy, even at the AD level.  On the other hand, athletic directors *love* the duplicated headcount because it works in their favor.  In fact, we usually complain about its over-use, such as at Quinnipiac, where certain female runners were triple-counted notwithstanding the apparent fact that winter and spring sports were really not functioning as separate sports but a glorified off-season for the cross-country team.  But it's possible that Waddell didn't get the memo.

2. Waddell knows that's acceptable to use duplicated head count, but has doubts about whether winter track is a genuine, meaningful athletic opportunity in its own right.  Maybe he is using the unduplicated count on principle because he feels that using the duplicated one would amount to taking advantage of a loophole.   This too is possible, though it is certainly at odds with the decision to create a winter track team.  If you object to the integrity of double-counting, why do you have those opportunities in the first place?

3. Waddell wants to cut men's soccer and baseball for reasons that have nothing to do with Title IX, but proffered the unduplicated headcount to provide a convenient excuse.  If this is correct, I think we will soon find out, based on what happens at Towson now that the duplicate calculation is in the spotlight.  If the athletic department goes ahead with the cuts anyway, we'll know they were not in fact motivated by Title IX compliance.  And we'll have one more reason to be skeptical of such a claim in future cases involving cuts to men's teams. 

Evergreen answering second complaint

Erin is quoted in a recent article about Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Washington, which is going through a second review process in just over 5 years with OCR. At issue--again--is both equal treatment (namely facilities) and the distribution of opportunities.
Equal treatment claims are nothing new to us--as Erin notes. Especially prominent at the high school level has been the complaints regarding softball and baseball facilities--which often present a visible and obvious manifestation of unequal treatment. So the issues over what the baseball teams receive in the district versus what the softball teams receive are common.
Two things that struck me about this story:
One, as Erin notes in the article, is the pervasive ignorance around Title IX and its equal treatment is troubling. The lack of proactivity on the part of schools and simply waiting to be investigated before making any changes is not progress, in my mind. It does not demonstrate a commitment to equality. And it is a violation of the law for which there is little punishment beyond making the changes that bring a school into compliance--which isn't punishment at all.
Second, I was struck by the allegation that one school in the district removed the scoreboard at the baseball field rather than put one in at the softball field. While it could be because of financial reasons, a potential precedent of taking away from the boys to comply with the law is startling and reminiscent of the rhetoric around opportunities used by anti-IXers: that the law harms boys. It takes away their opportunities. And now it looks like the district is taking away from their overall experience by removing an amenity. Again, what actually occurred and what will come to bear after the negotiations between OCR and the district are complete remains unknown. But it demonstrates a lack of forethought and knowledge about the law on the part of administrators that girls and girls' sports have to answer for.

Private School Forfeits Championship to Avoid Playing Against a Girl

This week in Arizona, a fundamentalist Catholic high school called "Our Lady of Sorrows" (indeed!) forfeited the high school championship game rather than face Mesa Preparatory Academy and its female second-baseman, Paige Sultzbach.  According to its press release, this decision was an extension of their religious beliefs:

Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.

Sadly, OLS's "respect" and "deference" for Sultzbach means denying her and her team exactly that -- the opportunity to play for the championship.  This instance of discrimination, however, may be outside the scope of the laws that usually govern high school sports.  OLS is a private school, not subject to the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, under which public entities must give girls an equal right to tryout and play sports.

Nor does Sultzbach likely have a claim against her own school, Mesa Prep.  It was reported that during the regular season, Sultzbach benched herself in games against OLS, to avoid a forfeit for her team. Thus it would appear that she's being discriminated against by Mesa Prep's decision to play against OLS -- except that her school is private also, and likely outside the reach of Title IX, which only applies to schools that receive federal funds.  (While Title IX would not require a school to let a girl onto a boys baseball team in the first place, due to its status as a "contact sport," the law clearly requires schools that do accept a girl onto boys' teams to treat her equally, which would, I argue, include not subjecting her to the unique pressure of having to opt out in order for her teammates to have competition).  Similarly beyond the scope of nondiscrimination law is the conference both schools play in, the Arizona Charter Athletic Conference, which "provides competitive athletic competition for charter schools, home school organizations & parochial schools in Arizona."  

Sultzbach and her parents are all reportedly upset by this decision, but unfortunately they would not appear to have legal recourse.  Instead their situation must serve as a cautionary tale for others about the consequences of opting out of civil rights protection by one's choice of where to attend school.  

Evergreen School District Resolves Title IX Complaint

Evergreen School District in Washington State has reportedly entered into a voluntary resolution agreement with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Under the agreement, OCR agrees to suspend its investigation that was triggered this summer by a complaint that the school district favored boys baseball with better facilities, uniforms, and equipment as compared to softball. In particular, at two of the district's high schools, the complaint alleged that the district had neglected to repair damage on the softball fields, that the fields lacked drainage and irrigation, as well as fences, batting and pitching machines and cages, and proximity to bathrooms and drinking water.

For its part, the school district agrees to assess its baseball and softball programs along these lines and to devise and implement an action plan to address any discrepancies that the assessment reveals -- in other words, the school district agrees to do what Title IX already requires. The agreement provides deadlines by which the district shall accomplish these tasks, and affords OCR the opportunity to monitor and review the district's efforts.

Women's Baseball League Reenacted in Wisconsin

Not a Title IX story per se, but someone just sent me an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about historical reenactments of the All-American Girls' Baseball League that is too cool not to post. Yesterday, a group called the World War II Girls Baseball Living History League staged a game between the Kenosha Comets and Rockford Peaches in authentic uniforms and using the rules and equipment of the day. What a cool project -- makes me wish I lived in Illinois or Wisconsin!

Strike IX profiles the 1999 Providence College Baseball Team

When author Paul Lonardo contacted me about his new book Strike IX, I worried I might be in for another misplaced Title-IX-is-the-enemy screed from an advocate for men's sports. But after reading a copy of the book, which Paul kindly sent me, I learned that Strike IX is the story of the athletes on the 1999 Providence College men's baseball team who went on to have the season of their lives after the college announced its decision to cut the program. Strike IX is a compelling underdog story about athletes playing for pride, playing for the love of the game when there's no tomorrow, when the "only thing left to do is to go out and win the whole $*!@ thing!" Under these circumstances, the 1999 Providence College baseball team produced the best season record in the program's history and a Big East conference championship. It was, in sum, a good sports story.

The only problem I had was the title. Calling the book Strike IX creates the impression that Title IX was to blame for the college's decision to eliminate the team. And the chapter in the book that discusses the relationship between Title IX and PC's program reduction could have done more to clarify the statute's role. I have two specific critiques. First, while the author appropriately notes that PC made its decision to terminate baseball in the wake of the Title IX litigation involving Brown University, he leaves the impression that the decision created PC's obligation to comply with Title IX. Rather, the regulatory standard that Brown so gloriously unsuccessfully challenged in the early 1990s had been on the books since 1979. Unexamined in Strike IX was what Providence College's compliance approach had been since then. With twenty years to play with, did the institution seek to equalize men's and women's athletic opportunities gradually, so as to avoid a drastic approach like cutting teams? Or did PC behave cavalierly, like many colleges did, and exacerbate inequities by continuing to grow men's sports without first bringing women's sports up to level? It's true that Title IX limits school's choices about which teams to cut when that school fails to provide proportionate opportunities to begin with. But PC's decisionmaking prior to 1999 is what created that disproportionality, and some of that should have been in the book.

My second critique is that the author accepted too quickly PC's rhetoric about why it thought it had to satisfy the proportionality standard (and thus, to do so by cutting a men's team) rather than to claim compliance with prong three. Prong three recognizes that even disproportionate athletic offerings (like PC's at the time) can still comply with Title IX, as long as there is no demonstrable unmet interest among members of the underrepresented sex (i.e., women). Generally, an institution does not have a problem with prong three unless they (1) decide to cut a viable women's team (which PC did not do) or (2) reject a proposal from a women's club team to elevate to varsity status. Thus, if PC had been receiving and rejecting requests to elevate women's teams to varsity status, its claims that it "had to" comply with proportionality might ring true. But if not, it's more likely that the university was using Title IX to scapegoat its decision to engage in program reduction that it had made for others. Title IX prohibits schools like PC from making existing disproportionality worse through program reduction, which is why PC couldn't cut a women's team once it decided to cut teams, but it does not require a school to engage in program reduction to begin with. In PC's case, then, the decision to cut baseball was likely less related to Title IX than the college would have us think. That's the reality I would have liked to read about in Strike IX. Unfortunately, that doesn't lend itself to a clever book title.

UC Berkeley Cuts Five Teams

As Kris noted recently, the University of California, Berkeley athletic department has been considering eliminating sports as a cost-reduction measure. So it is sadly no surprise that the Chancellor has announced that baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse, and men's rugby will be no longer be varsity sports. Men's rugby will occupy a new "varsity club" status.

I have a couple of questions about whether this decision complies with Title IX. First, what is varsity club status? It seems like the rugby team will continue to receive some university support -- more than the club teams receive but not as much as varsity teams receive. Title IX does not preclude Cal from making up new status labels for its sports, but those labels must be equitably applied. If a women's sport asks for "varsity club" status, I cannot see the grounds on which Cal would deny them.

Second, I have concerns that the resulting distribution of athletic opportunities complies with Title IX. Before the cuts, Cal could have claimed compliance with prong two or prong three, but eliminating women's teams forecloses that option. This leaves prong one: substantial proportionality. As Kris noted in her earlier post, Cal's women received about 41% of the total athletic opportunities (385/948), despite constituting about 53% of the student body. After the cuts, they still receive about 41% (385-45/948-102*). There is no way a 12 percentage points qualifies as substantial proportionality, so my question is, on what basis is Cal making that claim?

* This denominator figure is adjusted by the loss of both gymnastics teams, baseball, and lacrosse. I did not subtract the 60 terminated opportunities in rugby from the denominator because Cal's EADA report did not include men's rugby when calculating the total number of athletic opportunities.

Softball facility improvement forthcoming in NC

It does not appear that we blogged about the complaint filed with OCR in 2009 out of Richmond County in North Carolina. But the allegations of disparities in the treatment of women's athletics, specifically softball, are currently being investigated. And Richmond Senior High School has promised to improve the facilities--to make them comparable to baseball's facilities.
This is not especially ground-breaking (well except when they actually break new ground on the new facility!). We have been blogging about softball facilities pretty much since we started this blog. And there has been great success in proving disparity by comparing the treatment of softball teams to baseball teams even though Title IX does not mandate such a one-to-one comparison. [Part of the complaint though alleges that the football team gets priority on the practice field.]
But I liked this particular article for a few reasons.
First, we got the list of facility issues: lights (which every other school has apparently), dugouts, locker room facilities, and concession stands.
Also we are reminded of another Title IX compliance issue that does not get a lot of attention: publicity. It appears that boys' games are advertised on a local radio station.
And finally, the Richmond County Daily Journal has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking copies of the complaints from the school district and the Department of Education. Nice to see a newspaper making a concerted effort to get all the facts.

Cuts at Duquesne

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh announced the other day that it will cut men's swimming and diving, men's wrestling, men's golf, and baseball. The combined cuts will result in a $1 million savings. One report claims that the athletic director has said this money will be spread out among the 16 remaining sports. Inside Higher Ed writes that the savings are going to "offset previous budget deficiencies." University officials say that the decision was based on finances, facilities, conference affiliations and support, gender equity, potential success, and overall student-athlete experience.
The people at Collegeswimming.com seem a little miffed that although only men's sports were dropped Title IX was not mentioned in an university press release. Well, one, they did mention gender equity. And two, Title IX is not a reason for dropping sports, it is a factor in which sports are eligible to be dropped--legally. And Duquesne is a small DI-AA school with just over 5,000 undergraduates. Women outnumber men and there is a 93-person football roster. These are some of the realities that schools have to consider. For such a small school to carry 20 varsity teams was, as we see, not sustainable in these economic times.
Duquesne also maintains that the decision will strengthen the overall athletics program.

Complaint against Lebanon temporarily suspended

A complaint brought anonymously against Lebanon High School in Oregon has been suspended for now while the school collects data on gender equity in its athletics department.
At issue in the original complaint filed in November 2009 was the facilities and benefits received by the baseball team versus the softball team. Part of the disparity is allegedly due to fundraising that occurs on behalf of the baseball team which, as many of us know, does not absolve a school from providing an equitable experience.
A self-assessment, though, will look at more than just baseball versus softball. It will be--hopefully--a comprehensive examination of the school's athletic department and the experiences and opportunities it provides to its student athletes.

1/11 Update: Here is a link to an article that gives the timeline and steps OCR is requiring of Lebanon in order to drop the complaint.

Title IX dads

In what is being called a love letter to Title IX, writer, editor and father Mark Schmitt penned his tribute to Title IX, his daughter, Little League and social change last week in a very nice column about the legislation in his magazine The American Prospect.
The people at Bitch magazine found Schmitt's piece compelling and blogged about it and Title IX more generally. Anna Clark included excerpts from the American Prospect piece in which we see Schmitt, an admitted sport outsider, appreciate the effects of the social change that occured in the 1970s: his daughter is now a catcher on her Little League team. This point of view--the outsider--is particularly interesting, and somewhat unique, in the discourse on girls' sports and the role of fathers. Clark cites some of this research as well: that fathers with sport-playing daughters can be vehicles for support of girls' sports. (A view I have certain issues with--but we'll save that for another time.)
What is interesting is that Schmitt identifies not as a Little League Dad but as a Title IX Dad. Title IX dads seem to understand the social change aspect of the legislation and see the broader issues. Sport dads who support Title IX are probably a little more narrow in their vision of the legislation. They see what it does for their individual daughters. We should not forget the father in Nevada who made Title IX claims when the high school athletic association attempted to move girls' soccer to its traditional season (fall) which would have put his own daughter in the awkward position of having to choose between soccer and volleyball. He was not a Title IX dad. [Not all sport dads are like this, of course.]
Clark gives us a shout-out to us and for that we are thankful. [She thinks we're fascinating--well the blog at least!] But we wouldn't be the responsible bloggers we strive to be if we didn't make one little correction to Clark's connection between Title IX and Little League. The Little League lawsuit was not a direct result of the passage of Title IX because Little League, Inc is not subject to Title IX. Certainly the passage and the lawsuit were part of the overall climate that engendered more support of girls' and women's access to sport in the 1970s.
And the women of NOW--who were integral in the lawsuit--were actually not the first to make the connection between Title IX and sports. Women's sports advocates saw the possibilities the legislation offered for increasing funding of and opportunities in women's sports in educational institutions almost immediately.

Fields of discontent in Ohio

A parent has notified the ACLU which has sent a letter to the Chillicoth school district saying that they may be in violation of Title IX due to the discrepancies between the high school's softball and baseball fields. Which are the facilities in question remains a confusion because the baseball team's usual field has been out of commission for several years during building facilities renovations. In that time they have had access to two different off-campus sites. The softball team, however, does not have an on-campus field and their off-campus facility is sub par according to the letter and the complaining parent. They apparently don't even have bases when they practice which seems odd but the lack of proper dugouts and fencing are also problems and the team does not have the authority to maintain the field themselves.
No complaint has been filed with OCR yet and the school district has not formally responded.

Also apparently, according to the story linked above, a softball/baseball facilities complaint has just been filed with OCR regarding a Toledo school district.

Another baseball/softball comparison

Add C.D. Hylton High School in Virginia to the list of schools being investigated for facility disparities. Like numerous (over 40 according to WaPo) high schools in the United States, C.D. Hylton has a great baseball facility and a sub par softball facility.
The baseball field has: press box, concessions, and locker room. (Some of these amenities were funded by donations and booster club dollars.) Softball? No access to concessions; a port-o-potty; no dedicated press box; no locker room.
A complaint was filed in March by a parents of a softball player.

Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball

The topic of women and baseball is one frequently mentioned on this blog; just recently we posted about the Indiana teenager whose lawsuit integrated high school baseball in her state. There's also been much buzz lately about the International Baseball Federation's campaign to make women's baseball an Olympic sport (see, e.g., here, here, and here). It seems like the perfect time to plug Jennifer Ring's Stolen Baseball: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball (University of Illinois Press, 2009).

From Stolen Bases, I learned that contrary to popular mythology, baseball was not invented in Cooperstown by Civil War hero Abner Doubleday. Rather, it evolved from the British sport of rounders, which was played by males and females alike. But in the early 1900s, the efforts of Albert Spalding -- of sporting goods fame -- to promote baseball as the "national passtime" positioned the sport as a means of masculinization and colonialism. ("He articulated a mission for American baseball men: use the sport to teach men from nonwhite races and non-European cultures to become civilized and rational on a while American middle-class model.") In fact, Spalding himself promoted the Doubleday myth to make the sport more uniquely American and exclusively masculine.

Meanwhile, men invented softball as a way to play baseball indoors during the winter. But the indoor version was so obviously a "pale imitation" of the real thing that it could be inclusive of women without tainting the association of baseball and manhood. Early physical educators endorsed also softball as a sport for appropriate for girls, which, Ring explains, "solved the problem of how to get exercise to the average, nonathletic girl without running the risk of supporting 'games of strife' that make America's girls too competitive, brave, strong, and passionate about something not in the service of men and family. And it was played indoors, discretely out of the view of spectators." Moreover, promoting softball for girls had the effect of redirecting women's documented interest and enthusiasm for baseball into a different sport, insidiously marginalizing them from the "national" passtime. Softball has come a long way since its early days as a safe, indoor game; women can now play the sport for college glory and on the Olympic stage (until 2012, anyway). But as a sport it clearly doesn't rival baseball in terms of its cultural significance. Baseball is the sport that receives media attention, that provides the backdrop for family bonding and business meetings, that serves its players as role models for boys and girls, and that offers salaried employment to thousands of athletes.

The paradigm of baseball/boys: softball/girls is so ingrained as to be rarely questioned or challenged. There are no legal restrictions to women's participation in baseball, as Ring explains. Lawsuits invoking the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause lead to the integration of Little League in the 1970s, and Title IX's regulations do not allow schools to exclude girls from trying out for baseball as they do for some contact sports. It is simply a matter of "preference" that keeps girls and women interested in softball instead of baseball. Of course, after reading the history of both sports as presented by Ring, it is clear that this "preference" has been, and continues to be, constructed by social forces that operate with the interests of men, not women, in mind. The few girls who defy the gendered convention and play baseball in Little League and even into high school likely "choose" to switch to softball in order to play at the college level. Women could, collectively, assert their right to participate visibly in baseball, and for college and Olympic opportunities to do so. But because there is no critical mass of women in the sport, individual women have little incentive to sacrifice the opportunity to participate in the established sport of sotball in order to do so.

Ring's final point is that, despite channelling effect of softball, women do play baseball -- "you just have to look hard to find them." There are regional leagues playing in obscurity (Ring calls it an "underground") and a women's national team that plays under the aegis of USA Baseball, the sport's national governing body, in a biennial women's world cup (a literal "world series"). It won't be easy to create -- or even envision -- a world where girls and boys can make a free and legitimate choice between two different sports, but after reading Ring's Stolen Bases, I believe that support and exposure to the girls who already do or want to play the game is a necessary first step.