While We're Young Ideas

By TERRY LYONS

BOSTON – It was a tumultuous week to say the least.

Starting with a wonderful, quiet and restful Father’s Day, finishing Sunday with a White Mountain Creamery mint chocolate chip ice cream treat after enjoying an entertaining U.S. Open golf tournament right up the block at The Country Club in Brookline, the week started off fine.

The week continued, we had three games of the NHL Stanley Cup Final, with Game 4 a series-swaying overtime win (3-2) by the Colorado Avalanche at Tampa to take a 3-games-to-1 series lead back to Denver where they hoped to close it out. But, the Tampa Bay Lightning did not go down, winning Friday’s Game 6, 3-2, to keep Lord Stanley’s Cup in its case and volley the series back to Tampa-St. Pete Sunday night (tonight).

The Golden State Warriors had a victory parade. The NBA held its annual Draft. Brooks Koepka and Abraham Ancer were the latest two PGA TOUR professionals to jump to the LIV Golf, accepting zillions for sure. … College Baseball is closing in on the winner of the 2022 College World Series with Oklahoma and Ole Miss squaring off on Sunday and Monday.

Thursday was the most important day of the week as the sporting industry celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Title IX, the landmark federal law that changed the world for women’s athletics and evened the playing field for girls in youth programs, elementary school, high school and college while building the foundation for women playing sports with a goal to become professionals.

June 23, 1972 was the date, and the sporting emphasis of Title IX was packed nicely into a larger list of educational reforms for any program seeking federal funding. It was monumental in many ways legally and ground-breaking for the pioneers of women’s sports. Professionals like tennis legend Billie Jean King, long distance runner Kathrine Switzer, tennis great Althea Gibson and basketballer Anne Meyers Drysdale led the way and the multitude would follow.

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

According to a study by the Women’s Sports Foundation reported in The New York Times, high school participation rose from 294,015 in the 1971-72 school year to 3.4 million in 2018-19. At the collegiate level, participation at N.C.A.A. schools rose from 29,977 athletes in women’s sports in 1971-72 to 215,486 in 2020-21. Men’s sports reportedly had 275,769 athletes competing in 2020-21. Talk about evening the playing field.

The landmark legal proclamation was a major step for education and women’s sports but for those experiencing Title IX while in high school, the law was less important than the statement it was making: That being “it’s cool for the girls to play sports” – all sports – and “it’s just as cool” for the boys to support their classmates, attend home games, travel to away games and root hard for the girls’ teams.

At Holy Trinity, it was about Debbie Basel grabbing an offensive rebound with a quick put-back or Clare Krummenacker knocking down a shot with a stroke as silky as Jamaal Wilkes’ jumper.

At St. John’s, it was watching Trinity grad Laura Edney swim through the water like a Chris-Craft cruising the Long Island Sound.

There might’ve been some pushback from old-school coaches and athletic administrators who didn’t want to give-up their sacred gymnasium time, but the student body spoke. Let them play! Game On!

As time passed by and Title IX paved the way in many different sports, the competition brought forth serious competitors like Summer Sanders-Schlopy, the most decorated Olympic swimmer at the 1992 Summer Games. Sanders-Schlopy, once an anchor for NBA Inside Stuff and a regular TV commentator and show host, took home two gold, a silver and a bronze for a USA Women’s swim team that just ROCKED the ‘92 Barcelona Olympics.

Around the hoop, the results of Title IX became quite apparent on the USA Basketball Women’s World Championship and Olympics front, especially between 1996 (See the new ESPN 30-for-30 “Dream On” currently streaming) and 2020 when the “Supreme Team” won seven consecutive gold medals, and five of the last six World Cups of Basketball behind a team full of Title Niners.

The women’s basketball team of ‘96 led the way, along with the gold-medal winning women’s gymnastics team at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics that the women dominated in terms of awareness, event attendance and fan affinity.

There were Title IX benefits off the playing field as well, as women took their rightful places in sports administration on the community, high school, collegiate and professional levels as the Boomers of 1972 grew-up with sports and the sports industry grew-up with them.

Yet in 2022, there is still more to accomplish to balance the playing field, the job opportunities, coaching and administrative salaries and pay in sports where women generate revenue to great lengths, like the USA women’s national team in soccer, grand slam tennis and LPGA golf. Basketball and ice hockey are well on their way, the WNBA in its 25th year of existence.

“Across the board, we’ve all won,” said Dr. Courtney Flowers to The New York Times. “But sometimes, we have to recalibrate and make sure that in the next 50 years we’re not saying the same thing and advocating for the same thing and figure out what does equity look like now?”

“Title IX — in many ways — has defined my life,” said Teri Schindler, a former colleague at the NBA. “As a member of the University of Notre Dame women’s swim team that took the program to varsity status and earned All-America honors for me and my teammates to stints setting up the Big East Conference television network, covering the University of Connecticut undefeated women’s basketball teams and with the National Basketball Association and nascent WNBA — it offered me ways to compete and opportunities to learn and work that were unprecedented.

“My mother started this effort with me when she set up our community’s first softball league for girls – I hope I have furthered it. I am certainly richer for it and it has infused everything I’ve done since … here’s to this Title IX anniversary and all the women who compete, on and off the field,” said Schindler.

DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE: While Title IX was being celebrated across the land, the Supreme Court of the United States came down with two rulings that crashed the Title IX party like an unwelcome drunk at an outdoor wedding. First, on Thursday, the SCOTUS struck down a New York handgun-licensing law that required New Yorkers who want to carry a handgun in public to show a special need to defend themselves. The 6-3 ruling, written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, is the court’s first significant decision on gun rights in over a decade. In a far-reaching ruling, the court made clear that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right “to keep and bear arms” protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. Going forward, Thomas explained, courts should uphold gun restrictions only if there is a tradition of such regulation in U.S. history.

The landmark SCOTUS decision came six weeks after a gunman killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, and a couple weeks after 21 people – 19 children and two teachers – were shot to death at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Under intense pressure, the Senate Republicans relented and reached an agreement on bipartisan gun-safety legislation that is the first federal gun-control legislation in nearly 30 years. The 80-page bill requires tougher background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 and provides more funding for mental-health resources. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law upon it arriving on his desk, Saturday, June 25.

One branch of government was easing the ability to carry concealed weapons in New York, while other branches were taking baby steps to curtail access to guns. None, mind you, addressed the main issue of assault rifles, such as the AR-15 and its 30-Plus capacity ammunition magazines, which gunned down the 19 children in Uvalde, Texas on May 24th nor the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 which took the lives of 17 students while injuring 17 others nor the December 12, 2012 mass murder at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut when 20 of 26 victims were children aged six and seven. Of course there were many others, in night clubs at concerts in Las Vegas, movie theaters, shopping malls and churches. The list goes on and on.

While the New York gun law reversal was a stunner, mainly since it dated back to 1913, the SCOTUS wasn’t done.

On Friday, as they often do when trying to bury an unpopular decision, the SCOTUS went against some 66% of USA voters’ opinions when they reversed the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution of the United States generally protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion. The decision sent shock waves across the United States, as the 5-4 vote to overturn the 50-year law was largely due to three recent SCOTUS appointees by President Donald Trump. The confirmation of those associate justices was largely done by men.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert issued a statement regarding the decision (Mississippi: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization):

“The NBA and WNBA believe that women should be able to make their own decisions concerning their health and future, and we believe that freedom should be protected. We will continue to advocate for gender and health equity, including ensuring our employees have access to reproductive health care, regardless of their location.”

The three Democratic-appointed justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — dissented while Chief Justice John Roberts joined the justices to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law, but Roberts criticized his conservative colleagues for taking the additional step of overturning Roe v. Wade. They were Republican-appointed justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who all supported Justice Samuel Alito’s 5-4 majority opinion to reverse the standing law, and toss the decision-making to the elected officials in each State.

The tumult of protestors began immediately as the ruling was tipped when a draft of Alito’s opinion was leaked to the world weeks ago. The hypocrisy of celebrating women’s rights one day and turning them upside down the next is not lost by women who will head to the voting machines this November, nor will the SCOTUS ruling to ease gun laws while mass murders are taking place by the week. The Senate took a baby-step, largely to say they did so come campaign time.

The end-game will be decided in New York where 8-in-10 Democratic voters believe the gun laws should be more strict as opposed to the SCOTUS ruling. That comes in a largely Democratic-leaning State. Add the 50+ percent of women to the anti-Supreme Court trend, and there could be major issues in the 2022 mid-term elections this Fall.

One thing is for sure, the Title IX girls of voting age, women, mothers – both urban and suburban – are pissed.

HERE NOW, THE NOTES: Both the men’s and women’s USA Basketball 3×3 teams took losses this week. The women to Canada in the quarterfinals and the men lost to host Belgium in the qualifying round and then were eliminated by Lithuania in the quarters. … USA Basketball added center Will Davis II (College Park Skyhawks) will join the July 2022 USA Men’s World Cup Qualifying Team in Miami, as the team prepares for a pair of World Cup Qualifying Games this week in Puerto Rico and Cuba.

Davis was a member of the November 2021 USA Basketball Men’s World Cup Qualifying Team. In one game vs. Cuba, he recorded four points, four rebounds and two assists in 12 minutes. Davis also played in one game in the FIBA AmeriCup Qualifying February 2021 games, helping the USA to a win over Mexico (95-76) with 10 points, five rebounds and one block in 20 minutes. … To close the 2021-22 season, Davis played 19 total games in the NBA G League with the South Bay Lakers, Raptors 905 and the College Park Skyhawks. He averaged 2.9 points and 2.4 rebounds in 10.0 minutes.

The USA squad, coached by Jim Boylen, opened training camp Friday night in preparation for the third competition window of 2021-23 FIBA World Cup Qualifying games that will see the USA (3-1) face Puerto Rico (2-2) in San Juan, Puerto Rico on July 1, and Cuba (0-4) in Havana on July 4.

For additional information on the USA World Cup of Basketball qualifying, visit HERE.