Title Ix: 25th Anniversary, June 23, 1972 Wrestling With Title Ix’s Impact Coaches Debate Whether Ruling Harms Men’s Sports

John Owen, a 47-year-old man who has built his persona around the rough and tough sport of wrestling, is showing his sensitive side.

His sport, his lifetime labor of love, is losing its luster as it continues to be eliminated from colleges’ athletic curriculum.

“We’re really sensitive right now. … us in male sports,” said Owen, former wrestling coach at North Idaho College.

Sensitive, and feeling jilted.

“I’m bitter. But I’m not bitter against the women themselves,” Owen said.

According to the 1996 NCAA Participation Statistics Report released in April 1997, 363 NCAA institutions sponsored wrestling teams 15 years ago. In 1996, the total was 247, a decline of 116, or 31.9 percent.

Fifteen years ago, 80 NCAA schools sponsored women’s soccer teams. In 1996, the total was 581, a 626 percent increase.

Owen, who took early retirement this year, guided NIC to eight National Junior College Athletic Association titles over eight years. NIC’s program is safe, but Owen said something needs to be done to save college wrestling and other sports that are being snubbed in an effort to satisfy Title IX compliancy.

Earlier this month, Cal State Northridge cut four men’s varsity sports programs - baseball, volleyball, soccer and swimming/ diving - due to budget and gender-equity concerns.

“It’s too easy to drop the sport and to say ‘We’re having funding problems,”’ Owen said. “I think what we have to do is to find creative ways to maintain the existing programs that we have.”

Only 98 Division I schools competed in wrestling in 1995-96, down 35.5 percent from the 152 programs 20 years earlier. Washington State, the University of Washington and Eastern Washington have been among the casualties.

“Their justifications for termination was budget cutbacks,” said Stan Opp, Eastern’s wrestling coach and assistant physical education professor from 1978-82. “At that time I didn’t think about (Title IX).

“But now, I think it had an effect. Obviously, you see it now. There was a combination of that, and the push to get into the Big Sky.”

Eastern was admitted into the Big Sky Conference in 1987. Wrestling and baseball were not core sports in the Division I-AA conference and EWU has dropped both programs.

Today, Portland State and Sacramento State are the only Big Sky schools with baseball programs. Portland State is the only school that competes in wrestling.

Opp, 45, was hired at Wenatchee High School in 1983 and has coached the Panthers’ wrestling program since. This past season, they placed third at the State AAA wrestling tournament.

“I don’t take anything away from Title IX. I think the gals have a right,” he said.

But Opp, like Owen, said he sees a way to save the minor sports.

“It’s not an ideal solution, but individual people might fund the programs. I’m happy to hear that Syracuse has been able to continue with theirs.”

Syracuse University’s wrestling program also was headed toward extinction. But after weeks of negotiations, the university agreed to maintain the program for three more years at a reduced budget. The school’s 77-year-old tradition was saved, but the future will depend solely on the alumni to endow the sport with a $2 million fund.

“We have to develop creative ways to save programs,” Owen said. “Fund-raising must be done. You’ve got to hire coaches with high energy levels to keep their programs alive.”

At the College of Southern Idaho, Ben Stroud has that kind of pep. The 40-year-old women’s volleyball coach organizes annual fund-raisers that generate $25,000 a year, half his budget.

“I fund-raise because I want to win,” said Stroud, whose team has won four consecutive NJCAA championships.

Wrestling is not the only men’s sport that has declined since 1982. The NCAA report showed gymnastics dropped from 79 teams to 27.

Washington State, Washington and Eastern Washington have long since dropped their men’s gymnastics programs. WSU and Idaho also axed their women’s gymnastics teams, leaving the logical reasoning that some cuts were made strictly because of budgetary constraints.

“If people have dropped it (sports) for Title IX reasons, they’re never going to tell you,” said Washington sports information director Jim Daves.

Jack Benson coached the Eagles men’s gymnastics team from 1965 until its demise. The team was highly competitive, finishing as high as third in the NAIA tournament one year. The plug was pulled in 1981.

“It could have partially been a result of Title IX, but I think it also was a result of growing costs in traveling and maintaining a team,” said Benson.

Benson, 59, who still teaches health education and physical education at Eastern, speaks the sentiment that seems to be the norm - despite losing his coaching job.

“I was sorry to see the sport go. But at the same time, I’m happy to see women’s athletics get to where they are today.” Benson said.

Fourteen years ago, 180,235 men played college sports. In 1996, the total was 188,399, a gain of 8,164, or 4.5 percent.

Although baseball has declined in the Northwest, the NCAA reported 277 Division I schools supported teams in 1996, an increase of 23 teams from 1982.

Eastern cut the program in 1990.

At the time, Jim Wasem was the baseball coach at Eastern. He doesn’t blame the demise of EWU baseball on Title IX.

“They dropped baseball because of priority and money. We only had $69,000 total in the program and they had $100,000 in the program when I first came,” said Wasem, who started at Eastern in 1981 and currently teaches physical education there.

Before Wasem was hired at Eastern, he was in the state of Missouri where he wrote a master’s thesis on the affects of Title IX in Missouri collegiate athletics.

“In the back of my mind, I thought that Title IX would or had affected and hurt men’s programs. I found, after my thesis was done, all Title IX did was help women a great deal. It escalated men’s programs and it escalated women’s programs.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Graphic: Women athletics participation