In the new May/June issue of The Women’s Review of Books, I wrote about Susan Ware’s new book, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports (UNC, 2011). You can read the view here.

The book is timely, given mounting evidence that Title IX is poorly enforced (think “roster management”) and too weak (or perhaps complicated) a tool to enforce gender fairness in the face of the sports industrial complex.

Title IX was helpful. But it hasn’t solved the problems of either access or equity. In taking us back to the 1970s, the growth of women’s sports, and the example of Billie Jean King — an entrepreneurial force as well as a great tennis player — Ware may be offering a nudge. It may be time for new strategies.

A few things to note:

– WOMEN DEMANDED ACCESS EVEN BEFORE TITLE IX — NOT BECAUSE OF THE LAW. After decades of genuflecting before Title IX and citing the stunning growth in women’s sports participation since — girls’ participation in high school sports rose 979 percent, from 294,000 to 3.17 million, between 1971 and 2009 — Ware reminds us that most of that increase happened before Title IX had taken effect in 1978.  HS participation figures, Ware says, “show that the sharp upward climb peaked in the following sports in 1977-1978: basketball, field hockey, gymnastics, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, and volleyball.” Participation in basketball, field hockey, gymnastics and outdoor track and field that year were at “an absolute all-time high.” College follows a similar pattern.

–FEMINISTS AND FEMALE ATHLETES MUST BE ON THE SAME TEAM. In the 1970s, feminists and female athletes battled the same barriers of pay, access, and status—but generally looked past one another. While they gained from one another, they could also work at cross purposes, as athletes failed to understand their power as high-profile symbols, and well-organized feminists left athletes to figure out battle plans on their own. Sports issues ARE women’s issues.

– WOMEN’S SPORTS ARE BIGGER THAN TITLE IX.  Pinning growth of the women’s sports movement on one law is inaccurate — and politically risky. After all, critics of Title IX love to claim that women aren’t truly interested in sports, and that the law has artificially created and fueled an enterprise that wouldn’t otherwise exist.  How much better and truer to see, for example, the success of UConn Women’s basketball team not as lucky beneficiaries of a single law but as part of a forward momentum, a drive that gained power from Billie Jean King, from feminists, and from Title IX?

The countdown started long ago.

Most fans know that if the UConn Women’s Basketball team continues its unbeaten run that on Dec. 21 the team will surpass the 88-game winning streak set by John Wooden’s UCLA teams of the early 1970s.

As the date nears, the question becomes pointed: Who will acknowledge the record?

There is an annoying habit in male sports circles to belittle or render women’s athletic accomplishments invisible (or as one talk show host described it, watching women’s play is like supporting “your loser brother-in-law.”). The excuses began months ago – it’s girls playing girls! (Well in the 1970s it was 1970s-era guys playing 1970s-era guys).

Like the Billie Jean vs. Bobby Riggs tennis match in 1973, the UConn women’s quest to overtake Wooden’s record will resonate far beyond the court on which the deciding game is played.

If the UConn women earn this record, they will replace Wooden’s team in the top spot. Simple as that. That a women’s team may overtake a record held by a men’s team merely reflects the fact that athletic dominance doesn’t have a gender.

We expect whining from guys like ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, whose predictable rants bring an Archie Bunker sensibility to sports talk radio. Don’t expect him – or a host of like-minded men — to even notice UConn’s supreme athletic ability or their dominant and skilled play.

But a warning: Those who launch into a thousand excuses will reveal themselves as oldsters cemented in a past in which only men’s performances mattered.

The UConn women’s play – their tenacity and toughness – are symbolic of where female athletes in so many sports are today. Many know that. But we can now demonstrate progress with a number: 89.

On Monday, two girls from Teen Voices, a magazine (and website!) aimed at helping urban girls counteract negative media images, interviewed me for an article they are writing about Title IX (and, their passion, women’s basketball).

Hopefully, I helped them some. But, really, they are helping me — and others.

When I told them how excited I was that they were writing about sports, one of the girls, Chelsea, put it plainly: They were eager to write about sports, too. As inner city girls they were sick — absolutely sick! — and tired of reading, writing, and hearing warnings about teen pregnancy and drugs. Everything was teen pregnancy and drugs!

It’s not that those messages aren’t important and valid. They are. But – geez – imagine the downer of always being told what NOT to do?! “Watch out! Don’t…”

And yet, these girls hear too little about sports — that is sports that they might play. Urban girls have among the lowest sports participation numbers of any group (study here). Yet, we know from research (here) that playing sports helps counteract early sexual activity.

Media focus on men’s sports is absolutely dominant (and yes, boys sports, too). This fall’s USC Gender in TV study shows that men’s sports receive 96.3% of airtime, while women’s receive 1.6% (gender neutral topics receive 2.1%). I know, I’ve said this before. BUT…Where are the stories of female athletes for girls to see, consider, and own?

How can we expect urban girls to choose athletic participation when they only hear and see guys play? When talk is all about male players? Even on their own school’s teams?

How to normalize athletic participation for girls? Tell our sports stories. Show our numbers.

That’s why I am a fan of the National Women’s Law Center’s campaign that both focuses on raising awareness about 1) Title IX violations at the hs level (including a tool kit to help spot and report violations) and 2) hosting a blog festival next Wed. Dec. 8 featuring girls and women talking about how sports helped them win. Read or write.

It’s time to speak up – and out. Some of us may take sports for granted, but many girls and women in this country and around the world still don’t truly have access.

Angela Hucles, who retired just over a year ago, was a two-time Olympic gold medalist and Boston Breakers powerhouse who played with the team during both the WUSA and WPS eras. Hucles, a Virginia Beach native, was named the 2009 Humanitarian of the Year by the U.S. Soccer Foundation. I caught up with her recently to discuss her successful soccer career, her new job in commercial real estate as Client Services Associate at CB Richard Ellis in Boston, and her position as President of the Board for the newly-formed non-profit Dream Big! Oh, and, of course, her take on the US National team’s road to qualify for World Cup play.

FGN: You are one of the most successful female soccer players to ever play the game, earning 109 caps for the USA and scoring 14 international goals. What does it feel like to be a world-renowned athlete?

AH: Well, I don’t feel anything close to being world-renowned, even in the soccer circles, but I do feel good about what I was able to accomplish during my time playing soccer.

Angela Hucles scores

FGN: What influenced your decision to retire? How has your life changed since you stepped off the soccer field?

AH: It was definitely a variety of reasons, not just one that [drove] my decision to retire.  Ultimately, it was the feeling that I had telling me it was time.  On the outside, it may appear that my life hasn’t changed drastically, but internally it has been a whirlwind.  I am now working for a new company, living in a new place in Boston, and engaged.

FGN: The US team is having a bit of a challenge making it to the World Cup. Although they recently beat Italy in a critical game, were you surprised to see them fall to Mexico?

AH: Yes, I was a little bit surprised to see Mexico beat the US in the qualifying match. However, the parity in women’s soccer is becoming more and more present on the international level. One of the biggest challenges opponents of the US team face, is the ability of our women’s team to bounce back as well as the belief in the themselves to succeed. That’s a powerful combination when you have talented players taking the field. I have confidence in the US women’s team to get the job done in this last domestic qualification game vs Italy and is why they were able to pull out a win in the last game.

FGN: Your success in college at the University of Virginia, on the National Team and on the Boston Breakers has made you a household name among soccer fans. How do you think about the fact that you are a role model to so many people?

AH: I appreciate that others actually consider looking at my journey and experiences as an opportunity to learn. I enjoy and value learning from other people so if someone can [benefit from my example] I am glad that I can be helpful.  I always want to live my life in a way that I can be proud of.

FGN: Last year, the U.S. Soccer Foundation selected you as the Humanitarian of the Year. What motivates your involvement?

AH: I know that my successes have come, in part, from the help of others.  It is crucial to do your part in helping and giving back no matter what job you have or what you are doing.  It’s such a great part of life that makes the world better and more balanced.

FGN: What skills did you learn from soccer that you have used in your professional career? Has being an athlete given you any advantages in the workplace?

AH: For the most part, sports, and especially team sports, provide the best learning grounds for corporate America.  Learning how to multi-task, work with different personalities, pay attention to detail, and building a work ethic, is all learned through sports and is crucial to your success in the workplace as well.

FGN: How will you continue to support women’s soccer now that you aren’t on the field?

AH: There are numerous ways that anyone can give support to women’s soccer.  I’ve chosen to be a season ticket holder, whether or not I can make all of the games. I go to the ones I can.  I also continue to do public speaking and a little bit of individual soccer training.  I would like to start an annual clinic that also provides young girls and women an educational element as well.  After retirement, I knew I would stay involved in the sport in some capacity, but I am constantly redefining what that means to me.  One of the ways I am choosing to spend my time now is volunteer work in my community.  This is why I decided to team up with Dream Big!

FGN: You’ve just become president of the Dream Big! board. Why did you choose to be involved with this organization?

AH: Dream Big! provides some of the basic needs to be an athlete.  It makes it very hard to be taken seriously and to build up self-esteem when you don’t have the necessary equipment.  I like the philosophy and goals of Dream Big! [The organization helps low-income and homeless girls by providing the basic items necessary to enable them to participate in sports and physical activities]. Combining the philosophy with the enthusiasm of Linda Driscoll, it was a no-brainer for me.  I always have high standards and goals for the activities that I get involved in, so I hope to see this first year of Dream Big! off to a good start with lots of involvement both from the donor side as well as the groups that we will be helping.  It would be incredible to make Dream Big a national or even international organization!

Angela Hucles and Megan Wood

By Sarah Odell

How appropriate that I happened to be at my parent’s when Sunday’s New York Times Magazine asked on its cover “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Oh great, I thought to myself, yet another article about why my generation hasn’t lived up to expectations. I picked up the magazine from the ottoman in the living room and found a story that both surprised me and made me think. The theme of “emerging adulthood” struck a chord. Yet while the article aptly described me and many of my friends, one part nagged at me: What was all this stuff about aimless wandering?

Granted, the article didn’t put down the fruits of such wandering, but I couldn’t relate. Sure, my friends and I still involved our parents in our lives, and – yep — they were helping us get on our feet as we landed our first jobs. But aimless? Not at all.

So what makes us so different? My belief: We are athletes.

Since I graduated college in May and moved to New York, I have noticed something about the other 20-something women I meet. The most successful ones, the ones that have nailed down those hard-to-get jobs or are a commanding presence in the office, either are athletes or were athletes in college.

What’s the connection? I believe that what we were taught on the field, court, or pool was how to wander — but with purpose. The 20-somethings in the Times piece bounce from one career to another and are cast as negligent recipients of privilege. They have fancy college degrees, and they’re not doing anything with them. As a young woman just out of college wandering can feel especially difficult because if you can’t find a lucrative career society tells us that the next best thing is to find a lucrative man. We have to affix ourselves to something.

I believe my sports experience has trained me how to play through these times, these years of “emerging adulthood” when – yes — you do feel unsettled.

I can clearly remember the first time I was on a squash court and I realized how to change a loosing game to a winning one. I was playing my college rival, we were at one game a piece, and I was down 9-7 in the third. I knew that if she won that third game, she’d win the match.

I can remember walking up to the glass back of the court, rubbing my hand on it, and coming up with a strategy. I was going to hit long, tight balls into the backhand corner, and when I had trapped her there after a few strokes, I would hit a drop or an attacking boast. With this plan, I won the third game, and eventually, the match.

But what about those first two games, when I didn’t know what to do? I would call that wandering. I was feeling my opponent out, and by the third game, the wandering had suggested a direction.

Because in athletics, there is always a goal (to win), you wander with purpose. These are lessons not necessarily taught in classrooms or workplace internships. Sports allows – and even encourages – you to creatively work through options to get to the desired outcome. Especially for women, who still make less money on the dollar to men, who are underrepresented as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, learning how to wander with purpose is a powerful tool. The athletes-turned-young-professionals I’ve met in New York prove that those who have played sports…win.

Um, earth to FairGameNews.com readers! Did no one read Laura’s post on Monday? (Actually our tracker shows they did). Then, why no comments to tell her she was talking crazy? C’mom — you’ve got to keep us on our toes!

I read it and nearly came through my computer screen. This is one of the issues on which Laura and I (respectfully, of course) disagree.

Personally, I couldn’t believe that this White House basketball thing made front page news. I saw it, read half of it, and became so disgusted by how PC we’ve all become that I didn’t even make it to the end.

I mean – really? At what point did it become the President of the United States’ (or, as Laura and other have so eloquently put it, the POTUS’) job to ensure gender equality on a pick-up basketball court?

Healthcare, social security, our ongoing wars in the Middle East… these are all things that demand his time and attention. Rallying the women of the White House to the b-ball court? Not his job.

I have a difficult time believing that any female White House staffer who showed up dressed to play ball would be turned away by the President.  He’s a husband who continues to date, adore, and showcase his ‘buff’ wife and a father to two burgeoning female athletes. Oh, and by the way, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bridging divided groups. There is simply no reason to suspect he’s being prohibitive when it comes to women in any kind sports – informal or otherwise.

So if we don’t get to blame the President for the lack of women in b-ball, who can we blame? Hate to say it ladies, but it’s no one but ourselves. As long as we women wait for a special invitation, we’ll be missing the action. If the reality is that deals and decisions get made out there, then we better start working on our finger rolls and jump shots.

Let Danica Patrick, Michelle Wie, and Brittany Ryan serve as a lesson to us all: sports are no longer exclusive – unless we, as women, continue to play the part of the excluded.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, a former three-time college All-American selection, and and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

By Laura Pappano

Of course being hot helps. Good-looking athletes get our attention, whether we’re talking Danica Patrick or Tom Brady. It doesn’t make them any better on the racetrack or the football field, but it does attract fans and sponsors.

I get that.

But there’s trouble when we consider the broader implications of who gets a hearing and some respect in our society – whether it’s on the field – or on a campaign trail or in a boardroom.

Do we need sex to sell women’s sports? Do women have to be attractive to be listened to? Unfortunately, women are forced to occupy a very narrow cultural space in our society (bitch, bunny, or mom?) that’s tightly tied to our bodies.

Michele Obama may be smart and accomplished, but we are most comfortable talking about her outfits and messages about organic gardening and family nutrition. That’s not as scary as hearing what she thinks.

Isn’t it obvious that we need to expand the depth and breadth of female public images? We need women pioneers (more females on Supreme Court, in Congress, in executive suites, on Little League teams, represented as artists in museums, as directors in Hollywood, etc…). In other words: Normalize female leadership so it’s not FIRST about how you look.

Artist Lillian Hsu has just launched an art action and held a mass event last weekend in which supporters placed 8.5 X 11 posters reading “Beautiful Just the Way You Are” in front of magazine covers featuring all-too-familiar representations of glam-only objectified female bodies. Her point:  Intervene and interrupt the auto-absorption process that makes smart women feel inadequate if they aren’t skinny with perfect teeth and skin.

As Hsu puts it: “Before we are ten, and then without pause throughout our lives, we internalize the lesson that our bodies are how we will be first judged as individuals, and that there is a body type that we must attain to be judged worthy of attention.” And the judging of bodies she is talking about isn’t about what athletic feats those bodies can perform, but how hot they are doing it.

I’m not burning my bra  (‘specially my sports bra!) or throwing out the lipstick. It’s all right with me if Danica Patrick takes a Madonna-like command of her sexuality. But just as everyone knows that because Tom-Brady-the-model is pretty, doesn’t mean Tom-Brady-the-football-player isn’t tough, we need to extend that flexibility to women.

While we’re at it, let’s lose those tramp-victim-slut ads for jeans and perfume and popularize the scent of real female power.

By Lauren Taylor

Let’s get it out up front: No other team has put out a strong enough showing during the NCAA DI Tournament (or season) to make me doubt that the “purple haze” we’ve fallen into won’t continue.

I’d like to see another team besides Northwestern come out on top, (better for the game), but that’s personal wish – not professional opinion.

Here’s what they’ve got: Every player in a Northwestern jersey can run and gun, throw and catch and understand the game thanks to Kelly Amonte Hiller. She’s crafted a team whose balance is its greatest asset, and, ultimately, that’s what makes them unbeatable.

There’s not one girl to face guard; there are seven. There’s not one lock-off defender; there are seven. They are a team with players who take turns leading by example, and that quality — perhaps more than any other — has made them the dynasty they have become.

Northwestern may be a runaway favorite, but there is a lot to see when they take the field.

Five stats to watch for:

1.   How many goals does Northwestern manage to run up on Penn?

( In their game against Princeton, the Wildcats established a new program record with 373 goals scored this season.  That’s already 12 more than the championship team of two seasons ago).

2.  How many passes does Penn drop?

(My guess is will be under 10 in 60 minutes. Unreal. So consistent).

3.  How many aggressive double teams does Northwestern throw at its opponents?

(I bet more than 10 in 60 minutes. Also unreal. So high energy.)

4.   How many draw control does Penn’s Emma Spiro comes up with?

(She had 46 through the end of the regular season, dominating the Ivy League in that stat. But how does she fare against the Wildcats, also know for their aggression in the circle?)

5.    How many turnovers do North Carolina and Maryland commit?

(My prediction: It will be high on both ends, because of the hyper-aggressive run and gun game. Compare that state with Penn and you’ll be shocked these three teams have made it to the same point in the tournament.)

Lauren Taylor, who will receive her Master’s in Public Health from Yale on Monday, is assistant coach for the Yale Women’s Lacrosse team. As a player for Yale, she earned three All-America selections and was a four-time first team All-Ivy League selection.

Whether or not a judge rules that Quinnipiac University has violated Title IX by cutting its Women’s Volleyball team is less newsworthy than what we learned in court today.

That is, coaches manipulated rosters to meet Title IX requirements with men’s teams dropping players (and women’s teams padding rosters with players who wouldn’t get uniforms, equipment, playing time, or be able to travel with the team) in time for the school to submit required reports to the U.S. Department of Education showing they met gender equity rules.

Quinnipiac, like many colleges, chooses to demonstrate compliance with Title IX by meeting the proportionality prong of regulations. This means that the percentage of males and females in the student body must be reflected in the percentages of male and female athletes.

Increasingly, schools have used “roster management” as a tool to do this, meaning they will set target roster sizes for each sport to make numbers add up. This approach – we are hearing — is vulnerable to cheating.

Quinnipiac softball coach Germaine Fairchild, testified that she had been ordered to carry 25 players on her roster when she would normally have 17 to 19. Because these additional players were essentially only for compliance purposes (she did not receive extra budget to support their participation), most of them quit and by spring she could trim her roster to a manageable and appropriate 17.

“The number of female athletes receiving actual benefits was 17, not 26,” she testified, according to news reports.

Such manipulation of roster slots is outrageous – but likely not new and not limited to Quinnipiac University.

Two years ago, USA Today did a story highlighting the discrepancies between proportionality numbers as reported to the NCAA and to the U.S. Department of Education.

Unfortunately, the DOE collects, but doesn’t scrutinize the data it demands (or apparently care if it looks different from the NCAA numbers). This is a matter that needs attention – otherwise all the happy talk about the “benefits of Title IX” are merely camouflage for old-style gender bias.