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Originally Posted by fastpitch
No need to start calling me names because I want equality in sports programs. As you stated it, equal funding for girls and boys programs. It is obvious that this is not the case when you throw in football. We've seen Title IX make its way through the courts, be challenged by the Executive Branch, be upheld in most cases and contribute greatly to womens' sports. In Georgia we did not even have softball fields for the girls before Title IX. Now athletic directors at high schools hide behind booster club money. I am not exaggerating when I say $10K for the softball field and $100k for the baseball field. No one challenges it because it will impact their daughter's ability to play at the school.
We started an annual tournament that raised $12K each of the last 2 years so now our softball field looks much better but still does not match the baseball facilities. The school loves this because they do have some limits to what they can spend on boys' sports versus girls. When you raise money for the girls they can spend more on the boys.
Athletic directors at each school administer their programs differently. What I am asking is why do we continue to pour excessive amounts of money into certain sports instead of expanding the sporting programs so that more children can participate. In our case, hockey and bicycling are school activities and not sports. There are so many sports that could be offered and so many more children would be involved in activities that keep them out of trouble.
Instead, everything is focused on the school football program. The baseball parents even complain of this. If your son is not a football player, he is second class and with schools in excess of 2,000 students not everyone can be a football star, or even a second or third string player.
It should be all about the kids and offering more opportunity. The more sports that are funded the more children participate. In our locale a lot of folks complain about the lack of skill in our rec leagues because of too many travel teams. I say, look at all these girls that are getting an opportunity to play and to play the positions they want to learn. Now if we could just get good coaches that could teach them.
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Now that we are totally off the subject of softball and talking about equality of sports funding……
I’m the father of 5 sons. #1 played baseball through HS; #2 was a football player; #3 played hockey; #4 didn’t play sports but became a certified SCUBA diver at age 10; & #5 played soccer & baseball.
Football had the big stadium. But charged admission to the games and sold lots of food to raise additional money + fund raising projects.
Baseball (and softball) had nice varsity fields but nothing on the scale of football but baseball didn’t bring as many fans out. Free to watch most of the games (playoffs weren’t free) but sold food + other fund raising projects.
Hockey was played at public rinks. Admission was charged (to cover some of the rink rental) and other fund raising projects.
Soccer was played on well mowed and lined fields, usually not on school property and survived mainly due to fund raising.
So which sport should I hate the most? Should I favor taking money from the football program and give it to the soccer program just because football earns more money because they put a couple thousand paying fans in the stadium each game? Maybe I should hate the softball program because they had a nice field and the hockey team had to rent public rinks....shouldn't the school have built their own ice rink? With that logic maybe a fry cook should earn as much as a doctor or a Hummer cost the same as a Ford Focus.