The sight of little girls running up and down a basketball courtor soccer field is so common these days that it is hard to imagine atime when they were not playing sports.
Scouting services focusing on the promotion of female high schoolathletes to college coaches are almost as common as ones touting thenext Heisman Trophy candidate.
Teenage girls now have college coaches attending their games,sitting in their living rooms offering scholarships and trying tosell their colleges just like the boys.
In reality though it was not very long ago at all that thingswere very different for girls.
June 23 marked the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixonsigning the Education Act of 1972 into law.
Title IX of that Act reads, 'No person in the United Statesshall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, bedenied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under anyeducation program or activity receiving federal financialassistance.'
Neither sports nor athletics are mentioned among those 37-words.Yet Title IX has become the bedrock upon which female sports hasgrown exponentially in the United States.
That simple statement led to monumental changes affecting helives of millions of young girls.
'It gave me the opportunity to go to college,' former Dunbar Highand University of Charleston star basketball player Cathy (Burke)Widdecombe said. 'My parents probably could not have afforded tosend me without that scholarship.'
She played on one of the first high school state championshipteams in the fall of 1976.
Just how many lives did Title IX effect?
During the 1971-72 school year 294,015 girls took part in highschool sports in the United States.
'In those days girls just wanted the opportunity to play,' formerCharleston Catholic girls basketball Coach Frank Scagnelli, Jr.,said. 'Then parents realized there was the opportunity to getscholarships and that was a big plus.'
Title IX gained some teeth in 1992, when courts determinedmonetary damages could be awarded as a result of suits based on thelaw.
In the college ranks women saw a 70 percent increase inscholarship money, a 45 percent increase in head coaches' salaries,and a 75 percent increase in assistant coaches' salaries by 1997.
With high schools forced to offer more girls sports programs andcolleges forced to offer more females scholarships the number ofgirls playing prep sports took off.
By 2011 the number of girls participating in prep sports hadrisen to 3,173,549 according to the National Federation of StateHigh School Associations.
That is to say that in 1972 one out of 27 high school girlsparticipated in sports compared to one in three today.
Some sports also played by boys really took off.
There were 132,299 girls playing high school basketball in 1972.That had increased to 438,933 by 2011.
A total of 26,010 were playing tennis, 17, 952 volleyball and9,813 softball. Those numbers increased to 182,074 for tennis,409,332 for volleyball, and 389,455 for softball.
'It's amazing how girls sports have grown,' Widdecombe said. 'Tosee how many girls get to play and can even go on and playprofessional ball.'
The impact of Title IX was felt most in West Virginia when thestate Supreme Court ruled in July of 1994 that the then fall girlshigh school basketball season discriminated against girls andrequired the season to be moved to the winter.
'Perhaps, more compelling than any unfairness to actual femalebasketball players is the message this scenario conveys to girls ingeneral, that girls' sports are second class, that boys takepriority as to use of sports facilities and resources, and girlstake the leavings,' Justice Margaret Workman wrote, speaking for the4-1 majority.
This past school year 12,689 girls participated in high schoolsports in West Virginia compared to approximately 2,000 in 1972.
Once sports for girls began being added in state high schoolsthere were not too many problems, at least not locally.
'I never had any problems,' former George Washington and CapitalHigh girls basketball Coach Terry Ferrell said. 'I was blessed towork with good guys coaches at both schools and we always alternatedpractice times.'
That does not mean girls were accepted into the sports world aseasily everywhere in the state.
'It didn't really affect me,' former George Washington girlsbasketball Coach Bob Neely said. 'But I think some of the othercoaches had to really scrounge around to even get basketballs.'
He did recall one prominent booster complaining about his girlsteam asking for $300 to go to the state tournament in Buckhannon inthe late 1970s.
'That changed when his granddaughter played years later,' Neelysaid. 'He was for the girls having everything they wanted then.'
As recently as 1998 the Mercer County School Board and PrincetonHigh were sued due to inequalities between the school's baseball andsoftball programs.
Since then a new softball field has been built.
While the number of girls playing high school sports continues tolag behind the number of boys the difference has been cut to about1.2 million with 1.1 million of those boys playing football, a sportthat has no similar female equivalent.
The impact of Title IX goes far beyond the courts and playingfields.
It is also credited with lowering the dropout rate of girls fromhigh school and increasing the number of women who pursue highereducation and obtain college degrees.
According to a recent Sports Illustrated story before Title IX, 7percent of new lawyers and 9 percent of new doctors were women;today the figures are 47 percent and 48 percent.
All because of 37 seemingly simple words.
Contact sportswriter J.T. Simms at jtsimms@dailymail.com or 304-348-1735.
