Women athletes fight for equality

"The story of women in sports is a personal story, because nothing is
more personal than a woman's bone, sweat, sinew, and desire, and a
political story, because nothing is more powerful than a women's
struggle to run free."
-Mariah Burton Nelson, introduction to "Nike is a Goddess: The History
of Women in Sports," 1988

By Jennifer Gayvert
The Forum

When 90,185 fans filled the Rose Bowl to watch the 1999 women's World Cup soccer championship, women's sports took a giant leap forward in their decades of effort to achieve parity with men's sports.

Since the passage of Title IX legislation in 1972, women's athletics have steadily grown in size and popularity. From the war-time softball games to the launching of professional women's basketball leagues in1996, women have proven their athletic skill and competitiveness timeand time again.

Those dynamics have played out vividly in North Dakota and Minnesota as well. The stories of women's athletics in the Red River Valley can betold largely through two women, pioneers in their respective states.

Collette Folstad, currently girls basketball coach at West Fargo High School, battled against stereotypes and discrimination in North Dakotawhile Paula Bauck, retired Moorhead High School coach, carried the flag in Minnesota.

Folstad's exposure to sports began early. Born in Ayr, N.D., Folstad had the best of both worlds: a father who encouraged her and a mother who was a basketball star. In 1933-34, Sylvia Benzmiller was captain of the all-county championship team and never refused her daughter the chance to be an athlete.

"I was always told stories of the Ayr girls basketball team. I could only dream of playing with them," Folstad said.

Furthermore, Ayr loved basketball, going so far as to engrave the names of people playing ball on the town seal. In 1947, there were too few girls to form a team and girls basketball died until Folstad entered high school. In 1952, the parents of 13 girls, including Folstad's parents, petitioned the school board to reinstate girls basketball. The successful vote allowed Folstad to play in an atmosphere of equality. Not until Folstad enrolled at North Dakota State University two years after graduation did she truly face discrimination. When she sought out the women's basketball team, she found nothing.

"It was like boom, my career was over," Folstad said. "I was missing what I needed. I needed to fulfill my desire to compete.

"I could still tell you exactly where I was standing in Benson Bunker Fieldhouse when I made up my mind to open doors for girls to compete. Even if it was just one girl."

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Paula Bruss Bauck was having similar experiences. While growing up in Roseau, Minn., Bauck tried her hand at many sports, beginning with track in fifth grade.

"Here I was this short little kid - and I mean short. Even so, I wanted to run. I got beat every time," Bauck said.

Even so, she kept playing. Eventually, track gave way to softball, something Paula was far more successful at.

"We didn't have anyone to coach us, so the team decided that I would coach," she said. "I suppose I knew one more thing than the rest, but not much more."

The team faced unusual challenges, including a pitcher who couldn't play on Sunday's because her father - the town minister - wouldn't allow it. During her senior year of high school, the physical education teacher had the girls play basketball against the boys who didn't make the A-squad. The boys got to practice and the girls learned how to play like the boys. The games started under girls rules (half-court only, no dribbling) but soon abandoned that idea.

"That ended very quickly. Then we played by the boys' rules. We could dribble, shoot, everything," Bauck said. Later, as a teacher and coach, Bauck always ensured that her teams knew the rules and techniques as well as their male counterparts.

Bauck went on to graduate from Bemidji State Teachers College and teach in Mentor, Minn., and Detroit Lakes, Minn. At both schools, Bauck attempted to start sports teams, but the war time atmosphere prevented it. Because of gas rationing, the school buses only ran once in the
afternoon, preventing the large number of farm kids from staying after school to participate in sports.

Bauck soon quit teaching to raise three boys, but in 1958 began teaching at Moorhead High, where she remained until retirement.

Here is a look at the challenges through the decades both women faced when trying to support women's athletics.

The '60s
After being refused a chance to play basketball at NDSU, Folstad focused her energy on developing women's sports. Graduating with a degree in physical education, Folstad went on to teach at Agassiz Middle School, during which time she started an AAU track team, a softball team and a AAU women's basketball team.

In 1965, she returned to teach at NDSU. Priority one: start a women's basketball team. A year later, she started a volleyball team. "I think there was an unrest among people at that time," Folstad said. "There were a lot of us who were tired of being denied the opportunity to play."

For Bauck, her first major victory at Moorhead High was to begin adding elective physical education courses to the curriculum in 1963. Throughout the decade, Bauck taught girls bowling, football, riflery and officiating.

Prior to that, Bauck began coaching the gymnastics team in 1962, followed by track in 1964. Bauck remembers practicing gymnastics in the hallway because no one would give her gym space.

"Women were used to making use of what we had and what we got," she said.

Bauck also fought to gain respect for her track team. In 1967, she took 10 girls to the University of Minnesota high school invitational. Seven of the girls won events and the other three placed. When she returned triumphantly, a colleague said they must not have had much competition.

"It was tough in school because people would be against you because you were for the girls - there was no other reason," Bauck said.

In 1964, the American Medical Association released a report that profoundly impacted women's athletics. For decades, opponents of women's athletics claimed that sports were harmful to a woman, destroying her femininity and possibly harming her reproductive organs. However, the
AMA found that "the health benefits of wholesome exercise are now well substantiated and are just as pertinent to the female as the male."

In 1965, Bauck was appointed to a committee to research why Minnesota should have girls athletics - the same committee which eventually wrote the first policies for interscholastic girls sports in Minnesota. She remembers finding the AMA report and cheering.

The '70s and '80s
Title IX, passed in 1972, revolutionized the sports world, despite lack of enforcement in many places. The legislation, requiring schools to provide equal opportunities to male and female athletes, would not be fully enforced until the 1980s.

Billie Jean King captured the world's attention in 1973, when she defeated Bobby Riggs in a internationally televised tennis match. In 1974, Ann Meyers received a full scholarship to play basketball at the University of Las Vegas, the first such scholarship in the nation. In 1979, Meyers became the first woman to receive a paycheck - $50,000 - from the NBA. Drafted by the Indiana Pacers, Meyers never played for the team.

Back home, Bauck and Folstad began fighting hundreds of small battles necessary to develop equality.

Uniforms: Folstad finally convinced the administration at NDSU to allow her to order uniforms. When they arrived, the girls found them to be bulky and oversized. Folstad realized that all uniform sizes were measured for men, resulting in wider arms and longer jerseys. Folstad found a company willing to measure her team, thus developing small, medium and large in women's terms.

Technique: Without decades of experience, many female athletes lacked the skill base to be competitive. Bauck taught the details of each sport she coached, down to making her relay squads in track count the number of steps in the baton handoff.

"If we wanted to win, we had to do the little things," Bauck said. "Those were the things that counted. My girls believed in me. We could go and we could win."

Gym space: Although Folstad was able to convince her alma mater to institute women's basketball and volleyball, gym time was by no means equal. The basketball team was allowed gym time on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. However, they could only have the gym on Sunday if they
were willing to sweep up the popcorn and litter from the previous night's men's game.

Her volleyball team didn't fare much better. "We had to practice on a stage. If one of the girls hit the ball to high, she would break one of the lights. I had to tell the girls to cover their eyes to avoid the glass," Folstad said.

Bauck also struggled to find room for her teams, often ending up in hallways or corners of gyms.

"I can't blame the men for wanting to keep their stuff," she said. "But they had to learn."

Media coverage: At the first annual Women in Sports Conference held in 1998, Bauck made her media struggles famous. She told of an article covering a track meet in which the boys' team lost badly and the girls team won. The article detailed the many problems the boys had and at the
end tacked on "And the girls also ran."

Folstad was so determined to get her teams coverage that she often wrote articles herself and submitted them to newspaper. She remembers 1978, when The Forum's Ed Kolpack began to cover women's sports along with the men's games.

"If not for Title IX, none of this would have happened," Folstad said.

Today
Nationwide, women's teams are commonplace. Increasingly, high school and college teams don't have to wonder if they will have uniforms or a place to play. Slowly, opportunities for competition beyond college are developing. For many, sports is a way of life.

"There has been such a change in everything," Bauck said. "Kids participating now don't even know there was a disparity. For as long as they have been in school, there has always been girls sports. They don't know what it's like to not have uniforms."

Women have uniforms today because of the efforts of Folstad, Bauck, and many others throughout the years. While neither woman believes women have completely obtained equal opportunities, both are glad to see the monumental progress.

"I knew if sports were good for half of the population, they must be good for the other half," Folstad said. "I never wanted the men to have less. I just didn't understand why so many doors were closed to us."