title 9 may have been the real impetus to the women's movement. the feds law said that you had to provide equal dollars for both male and female sports. the national organization for women [now] was founded about 1966/7. but many can argue that it was title 9 that began the impetus for 'equal rights' across all lines. sports has always been a gospel preached for goodwill. both here and abroad. male and female athletes in sports always treated one another with respect as far back as i can remember. we were the same. we trained similarly, we sweat the same, we ripped and bled the same, and we landed short and sprained our ankles the same. i personally believe that if it were not for sports and music that the world would be in conflict every day. sports=some modicum of world peace. and know this from someone that lived it. and i'm speaking for olympic sports only. i lived with, competed with, and witnessed athletes in most olympic sports that i came into contact with in my experience, embrace their own regardless of race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. and i witnessed the 'black pride' protest in mexico city 1968. and none of the 'white' athletes had a problem with what those protesting had to say. understand? athletes are what make a team, and that team stands or falls together. it has been that way since i can remember. it has been called "i got your back."
so, gymnastics encountered huge growth, both boys and girls, from 1972-1978. there would now be a place for competitive gymnastics other than a world stage, sokol, and ymca. and the club industry was now taking off. and the university programs would evolve from NAIA to NCAA. big business it was going to become.
now the short story on how college admin's exploited title 9. i explain this because you hear men's sports say it has caused their demise at the college level. this couldn't be farther than the truth. but closer to why it is causing the demise of all college sports. i will keep the following numbers small so that i don't get confused. when finished, extrapolate the numbers out by 50 or more mens programs, with an annual savings in the tens of millions range. here goes. the bean counter for the college was now compelled to comply with title 9. a dollar for men, a dollar for women. his college had 10 mens sports programs at a cost of $10 a year. he smiled, and with the wisk of his pen, he cut 9 programs for a budget windfall of $9. he had only 1 remaining program. but that was okay. you see, it was the government's fault...so to comply he added 1 womens sport program at a cost of $1 a year. the college now had complied with title 9. a dollar for men, a dollar for women. and an annual savings of $8. now, extrapolate out the math. and this was before those big television contracts came into play.
how has everyone been buffaloed? the above is easy to see. today, and especially in these current economic times, colleges are cutting sports programs all over the country. it is not just in certain pockets of the country. and those same bean counters are still employed there. they smile...and with the wisk of their pen.... and cut 5 programs from their school. makes no difference what sex. you see, they must comply both directions, and for tacit avoidance of a reverse discrimination lawsuit. title 9 has really given them the power and financial incentive to reduce the overall programs that the college admin's had been looking to reduce for the last 3 decades. and now they do it 'within' the law and without moral conscience.
it took approx 6 years, 1972-1978, for all organizations to comply with title 9. and i may be off a year or 2 either way, but i recall 1978 as the 1st year that a female gymnast received the 1st athletic scholarship. i recall it was either yale [tonry] gymnast lynn kohlmier, now dr. kohlmier practicing in washington state or utah [marsden] megan mccunnif, now megan marsden, greg's wife and head coach . before this time, only men received athletic scholarships. i also recall that the 1st womens program to go by the wayside because of title 9 was southwest missouri state university[chic johnson-may he rest in peace]. my recollection is 1978 as the last year they competed. for the old timers, cheryl diamond who own's a gym with her husband rick in pennsylvania was on this team. colleen casey from twigs [true winners in God] from ohio and coached by tom jones who now owns lake owen gymnastics camp.
during the period 1972-1978, and while everyone was complying with title 9, the feds were designing yet another law. the amateur sports act of 1978. this federal law was to protect the rights of the amateur athlete. if you type in amateur sports act of 1978 in any search engine you can read it in its entirety. it was designed to protect the exploitation of amateur athletes. and a good law at that. the law was enacted in the fall of 1978.
now the race was on for all college sports. and for the progress of olympic athletes to train in their sport and have their rights protected from exploitation. it would take to long explain the abuses going on at the time, and the ones that the feds deemed foreseeable, but suffice that athletes today have it pretty good.
now to one of the problems. as the perfect storm started to rain, and budgets soared, physical education departments began taking huge hits. the dumbing down began at all levels of education. all physical education programs were compelled to be inclusive to all regardless of sex or physical/mental disabilities. special education programs were being mainstreamed into 'regular' curriculum. therefore, the education that my generation received was changing to include activities that no longer required specialized coaches. and gymnastics IS a specialized sport with specialized coaches. i majored in liberal arts with a PE minor. and being a gymnast and future coach, i received a gymnastics education very similar to what our communist block counterparts were receiving. their's was called a 'master of sport' and ours a bachelor of science/art degrees. we received instruction in the college gym, doing hands on gymnastics with coaches/teachers that were either former gymnasts themselves or academics that had come up thru the system from the old immigrant system that i spoke of earlier. and if a gym club was off campus, we went there to not only learn but to work. we also received instruction in biomechanics, kiniesiology, excercise physiology, and the early rudiments of athletic training.
as title 9 steeped itself into college sports, and college admin's began cutting sport programs including olympic sports, the need for specialized training/education began to diminish. when i was in college there were 95 division 1 mens gymnastics programs. today there are 13. conversely there were no programs for women that were not intramural. and at the inception of title 9 there were approx 110 programs for women. i haven't checked this out just yet, but at level 10 nationals several colleges coaches concerned about the current financial health of all college sports programs remarked that they now had 85 womens gymnastics programs. it has been a slow but discerning descent from what everyone thought would take place in regards to growth. remember the university of iowa's mens wrestling program? how about ucla's mens gymnastics program? and now cal state fullerton's and mit's womens team. there are now more women's teams being cut than mens. but when you have 13 mens gymnastics teams and 85 womens gymnastics teams, whose noticing or cares...?
so, as the college curriculum changed for PE majors so did the need for specialized programs that were needed to train future coaches. this erosion began in the early 80's. gymnastics clubs were taking a foothold and figuring out ways to pay specialized gymnastics coaches a living wage. and we were just coming off that boycott of the 1980 olympic games. gymnastics took a hit and was in a lull until 1984. but now, former gymnasts had their academic choices diminished as colleges were cutting the specialized fields. and because of cutting, they no longer could go to the school they thought they would go to as the college dropped the gymnastics team. the future of PE was now changing. and to date, and unless someone comes in with info i'm not aware of, illinois is the only state left where PE is required to receive a high school diploma.
now to ronald reagan, the tech/bus boom, and gymnastics. he told east berlin to take those walls down. so they did. then poland with perestroika. then the soviet union and the end of the cold war. how did this affect gymnastics? ready??
the tech boom looked a viable option for new high school grads. the computer generation. and of course this included former gymnasts that formerly would go into PE or related curriculum. athletes were leaving the sport. this meant no male coaches after college. yet later, the number of females coaching increased. but those same edu. programs i received were no longer there for the females either. and were approaching 1988 and the inception of the usag level system and gymnastics difficulty increasing at the speed of sound. usag saw the chasm being created from the training that coaches formerly received to what they were now receiving. and i will expound later on the implementation of the level system usag designed later and what it has to do with all of this in some way, shape or form.
gymnastics programs in the other countries were funded fully by their governments. the eastern block athletes/coaches were also paid thru a caste system that afforded them a nicer place for their families to live, more bread, more meat, even cars. they were essentially government employees. and 'army' and 'dinamo' and 'round lake' were famous gymnastics training facilities in the former soviet system. east germany had their swimmers and weightlifters. romania their gymnasts., etc; and now, thanks [or not?] to reagan, and what would become the 'global economy' [in a few short years] also moving at the speed of sound, the former eastern bloc countries began to fall apart. and they all had an allegiance and dependency to the soviet union. and now the cold war ended. this created unemployment for sports coaches in those countries [sport coaches were the prestige of their societies above doctors and nuclear physicists] because the soviet government, and all the other countries that were dependent on their financial support, could no longer support their athletic programs. perestoika and the end of the cold war literally demolished eastern block sports. china also had/has a nationalized system, but at the time those coaches could not easily leave their country. it would be a couple of years later that china would open its gates and those coaches could find employment elswhere.
so, what country was their 1st choice to coach. america. after the karolyi and pozar defection, and before perestrioka, the foreign coaches were looking to see how they would fare in our country. after america it was australia, canada, then south america. england gymnastics was so far behind at this time that they weren't considered. but the global economy now sees their national gymnastics program being run by a romanian. and ironically, an american running australia's women's program. her name is peggy liddick and was shannon miller's other coach alongside steve nunno.
so, the foreign coaches began taking coaching positions here in our states. the industry grew and coaching employment deficits were being satisfied by this influx of foreign coaches. and we lost our own training grounds for gymnastics coaches in the US. so the clubs had to do it. now the owner who was a former gymnast had to train not only the deficiencies of the american coaches, but now had to americanize quickly the foreign coaches and address their deficiencies also. not all of them were knowledgable, and in some cases had less knowledge than their american counterparts. remember, when perestroika hit, the foreign coaches lives were disrupted as was their educational training. and training that would not be easy for them to attain at a college in america as they didn't know the language. ask around...it wasn't nor will it ever be easy or seamless. and then, that same owner also had to run the business. and maybe he was married. and maybe he wanted to start a family. get the idea? the perfect storm would now play out. gymnastics kept growing, foreign coaches temporarily filled our coaching shortage, and more clubs were on the horizon. even a layperson could see that if programs were not in place to train coaches...well then...you're going to eventually run out of coaches. and as the 1st generation of coaches aged, then this might even reach an expedited speed of light.
okay folks. that's it for now. more later.
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