Softball Added To Women’s Roster At Nic But Women’s Soccer Fans May Not Have Long To Wait
It wasn’t the goal that soccer fans were aiming for, but North Idaho College will have a new women’s varsity sport come fall.
Softball.
School trustees on Wednesday unanimously approved a proposal by Athletic Director Jim Headley to add women’s softball. Choosing it over soccer was a difficult decision, Headley told them.
“Their popularity is quite similar,” he said.
NIC has had one less sport for female students than for males. It’s been under pressure to achieve “gender equity” as required by federal law. But, it doesn’t have more money to spend.
The school can’t afford two new sports.
The board has heard many emotional comments on the subject over the past year. When Headley proposed dropping both men’s and women’s track teams to help pay for an additional women’s sport, runners successfully protested.
When he juggled the budget to add a sport without cutting any of the others, softball players and soccer enthusiasts spoke up. Each group said students would choose not to go to NIC if they couldn’t play their sport.
NIC plays in a league that already has softball. But soccer is the faster-growing sport, one reason the University of Idaho just added it to the varsity lineup.
Headley expects that soon the board of trustees will have to find a way to pay for soccer for both men and women. He’s recommended that soccer come to NIC as a club sport for women in the fall.
“I really feel that within three years there will be five schools that have soccer in our league,” he said.
Bill Eisenwinter, director of coaching for the Coeur d’Alene Soccer Club, said NIC would be welcomed into a Washington league that has 13 teams already.
Eisenwinter questioned the usefulness of two surveys of women students that influenced Headley’s recommendation. One survey was distributed at NIC, the other at Panhandle high schools.
In both cases, more students said they’d rather have NIC add soccer than softball. But the votes were very close - 30 percent vs. 33 percent at NIC, 26 percent vs. 31 percent at the high schools.
Sandpoint High, which has a lot of soccer players, didn’t respond to the survey. There were relatively few responses from Lake City High, the largest high school in the Panhandle. There’s also a high interest in soccer there, Eisenwinter said.
Among those who left Wednesday’s board meeting disappointed was Jim Facciano, varsity soccer coach at Lake City High. He took issue with Headley’s statement that soccer is the sport of the future.
“It’s not coming,” Facciano said. “It’s already here.”
, DataTimes