Penn State Sports Magazine
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5 2 M A Y 2 0 2 2 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB matt@bluewhiteonline.com W hile researching the history fea- ture that appears elsewhere in this issue of BWI, I stumbled across a surprising admission in Joe Paterno's au- tobiography, "Paterno by the Book." The longtime Nittany Lion football coach didn't get women's sports. Not at first, anyway. For a brief time in the early 1980s, Pa- terno was in charge of Penn State's en- tire athletics department, which meant that he was in charge of the women's varsity programs. But as he admitted in the book, he didn't regard them as much more than glorified extracurricular ac- tivities. "When I first became athletic direc- tor at Penn State, I was condescending about women's new interest in competi- tive sports," he wrote. "I said, 'This is a fad. Throw them a crumb. They'll go away and not ask for too much.' "I wasn't against women, or didn't think I was. But I didn't believe women really understood what competition meant." It was Gillian Rattray who changed his mind. Rattray was a British expat who had come to Penn State in the early 1970s to coach field hockey and lacrosse. She was demanding and competitive, which Paterno found out when he attended one of her team's matches. "I watched her coach a lacrosse game one day, watched her drive those women as they banged into each other with sticks," he wrote, "and I mumbled to my- self, 'Gad, I don't know whether I'd want my daughters playing that.'" It's been four decades since Pa- terno was AD, and in that time, a lot of people's daughters have come to Penn State to play lacrosse, field hockey, bas- ketball, volleyball, soccer and more. The university has 13 women's varsity sports teams, and it has won national champi- onships in volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and fencing. Rattray won five national titles, including two in a seven-month stretch in 1980, with the PSU laxers claiming theirs in May of that year and the field hockey team winning it all in November. There's been a lot of attention paid lately to one of the biggest milestones in women's sports. This coming June will mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a momentous piece of federal leg- islation that played a pivotal role in the transformation of those sports from recreational activities to the kind of en- terprise that can fill arenas and attract millions of TV viewers. Penn State athletics director Sandy Barbour has been a part of that trans- formation. She started her career as an assistant field hockey coach at Mas- sachusetts before moving into admin- istration during a subsequent stop at Northwestern. There weren't a lot of women in administrative roles when she made that move, and while it's still a predominantly male field, the push for more inclusion at the highest levels of college sports has made a difference. "Much has changed today, as women in just about every role imaginable are prevalent and almost commonplace," Barbour said. "We still have work to do in many areas, including more women in leadership positions, and certainly in the athletic director's chair. But there's no doubt that any of our female stu- dent-athletes, female coaches and staff can look to any aspect of college athlet- ics and find women who are holding those jobs as a role model and proof that if you're willing to put in that work, that you too can achieve the opportunity to serve in that role." Paterno's initial dismissal of women's sports probably says something about how easy it is to fall prey to stereotypes. Penn State played its first women's var- sity sporting event two years before he even was named head football coach, with the field hockey team defeating Susquehanna, 2-0, in Beaver Stadium on Oct. 3, 1964. Later, the basketball, fenc- ing, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, softball, tennis and rifle programs were upgraded from intramurals or clubs to varsity sta- tus. So, there was plenty of evidence on Paterno's own campus that women were eager to compete at a level comparable to the men's teams. The coach came around, of course. In his book, he cited Suzie McConnell, an All-America guard and future Olympic gold medalist, calling her and her Lady Lion basketball teammates the "pride of a sports-minded university." "Women's sports have arrived," he concluded. Some might take issue with build- ing a column about Title IX around the observations of a prominent male coach. But convincing skeptics that women's sports deserve attention and admiration is one of the biggest successes that the movement has achieved over the past five decades. It's one of the reasons why ESPN's broadcast of the recent NCAA women's basketball championship be- tween South Carolina and Connecticut averaged 4.85 million total viewers. That audience wasn't made up entirely of women's sports advocates. It was full of people who just wanted to watch a vastly entertaining basketball game. As Barbour noted, there's more to be done. But that fact shouldn't overshadow the progress that's already been made, at Penn State and everywhere else. ■ Gillian Rattray won five national championships dur- ing her tenure as coach of both the field hockey and women's lacrosse teams in the 1970s and '80s. PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS Title IX Anniversary Offers Opportunity To Reflect On Progress VARSITY VIEWS