Nic Trustees Explore Options For Gender Equity In Sports

It wouldn’t be fair - and may not even be legal - to cut track from the North Idaho College athletic program.

That’s what NIC’s trustees decided Wednesday during a workshop in which they explored ways to provide more opportunities to women athletes.

“I feel a lot better,” runner Brook McLachlan said afterward. She was among those who gave impassioned testimony on behalf of their sport.

This fall, NIC administrators recommended eliminating men’s and women’s track and cross country programs, and adding women’s softball. That would result in equal numbers of men’s and women’s teams without increasing the athletic budget at the community college.

Now, men compete in five sports and women in four. So NIC is breaking the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX.

On Wednesday, Athletic Director Jim Headley and President Robert Bennett scaled back their proposal. They suggested eliminating track, but leaving cross country.

Using elaborate spreadsheets, they showed how the limited athletic dollars would be spent.

“It’s not in the spirit of Title IX to cut opportunity just so the numbers line up well on a spreadsheet,” argued board member-elect Steve Widmeyer, a longtime sports booster.

He suggested that the school come up with a three-year plan to establish gender equity.

Bennett said he could do that, but hadn’t known it was an option. He thought the trustees wanted quick action to make the athletic program legal. He cautioned them that adding sports without dropping others was going to be difficult, given tight budgets.

“There are only so many dollars to do so many things,” Bennett said.

But board members were focusing on opportunities for students, not dollars.

“Let’s sharpen the pencil and tweak something else,” said trustee Sue Thilo.

Trustee Bob Ely asked for quick action as well as a longterm plan for improvement. He suggested adding softball as a club sport as quickly as this spring. Use volunteer coaches and borrowed equipment if necessary, he argued, “then move toward a full-blown program.”

That kind of talk pleased Pete and Paige Woods. Two of their three young daughters play softball, and they’d like to see the girls attend college close to home while continuing to compete.

“We’ve got the state championship team out of the Coeur d’Alene area,” Pete Woods said.

But most of the 40 people who attended the workshop were there to plead for track. Among them were students, parents, coaches and sports fans.

“The track and cross-country teams are two of the most gender-equal programs on campus,” sophomore McLachlan told the board. “They’re not even close to the most expensive.”

Donna Messenger, track coach at Lake City High School, said many local high school graduates run at NIC.

“To me, that’s part of the concept of a community college … They don’t have to recruit from all over the nation to be successful.”

Janet Gossett is an NIC math teacher whose son competes in cross country and track. She said runners are among the best students. “To me, this is what college athletics is all about: a strong body and a strong mind.”

, DataTimes