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An NCAA committee recommends prohibiting the practice of women's basketball teams from scrimmaging against men. They say it is contrary to the spirit of Title IX, and that it "implies an archaic notion of male preeminence that continues to impede progress toward gender equity and inclusion."
In other words, I guess, scrimmaging against men implies that men are better at basketball, which is contrary to what we wish was true. So if we prohibit it, what we wish was true might come true.
What a bunch of nonsense. Women basketball coaches, of course, want to keep doing it. It seems they are more worried about developing their players than they are some feminist political agenda.
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Gender Equity in Practice
> Walk into just about any gym where a college women's basketball
team is practicing this winter, and chances are you'll see men running
up and down the court and battling for rebounds alongside the female
players.
>
> The squads aren't co-ed, at least formally so. But the vast
majority of college women's teams practice against a regular cadre of
male volunteers - usually students who competed in high school but
couldn't cut it at the men's collegiate level - in the belief that
going up against bigger, stronger, faster men will sharpen the female
players' skills and toughen them up for games against their peers.
>
> Now the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Committee on
Women's Athletics wants the practice stopped, arguing that it
undermines the spirit of Title IX and gender equity. Not only does the
approach reduce the time that female players themselves get to work on
their skills, the panel argued, but it "implies an archaic notion of
male preeminence that continues to impede progress toward gender
equity and inclusion."
>
> "The CWA feels that the trend of the use of male practice players
does much more harm than good in the long run and discriminates
against some of our female athletes," the NCAA committee wrote in its
statement this month calling for the association to ban the practice.
(NOTE: The NCAA's Web site is down for maintenance, so this link and
others from the NCAA site are not working right now.)
>
> The topic is being hotly debated within the NCAA, and opinion is
divided within the association and the world of women's sports
broadly. The NCAA's Division III colleges will consider restricting
the practice at the association's annual convention next month, and
Divisions I and II are studying the issue.
>
> It is not at all clear that the stance of the Committee on Women's
Athletics represents the views of other advocates for women's sports.
Among the members of the NCAA's women's basketball committee, "there
are varying ways we feel about this," says Judy Southard, Title IX
coordinator at Louisiana State University, who heads that panel.
>
> Women's basketball coaches overwhelmingly support the use of male
players, according to a survey by the Women's Basketball Coaches
Association. "With all the issues we could be rallying around for
women's athletics, to make sure we're being truly integrated, it's
mind boggling that this is what's getting all the focus," said Beth
Bass, who heads the basketball coaches' group. "Most of us grew up
playing with and against the guys, and it's how a lot of us improved.
That's what we're looking at here: 'Let me have the opportunity to
improve.'"
>
> Bass's group produced a position paper this fall that cited
several reasons why the use of male practice players is a plus. Most
college teams (especially in basketball, but the practice extends to
sports such as volleyball, s****r and even hockey) use men's teams to
mimic the styles and schemes of their opponents, so that players on
the women's team can concentrate on learning their own plays.
Second, "because males are often bigger, stronger and faster than
female players, women student-athletes should practice skills against
them in order to improve their skills.. For example, in a shooting
drill, taller male practice players might stand in front of the
shooter as the defender, requiring her to learn how to alter her shot."
>
> The Committee on Women's Athletics sought to rebut those positions
in its own statement last week. "Studying your opponent is a major
part of game preparation," the panel said. The main effect of having
male players stand in for opponents is that "each week hours of
practice/scrimmage time usually given to female non-starters in game
preparation will now be assumed by male, non-student-athletes. The CWA
sees this as a significant lost opportunity for female student-
athletes."
>
> Women can find other methods of improving than playing against
men, the panel suggests. "There are many ways (training, nutrition,
etc.) that female student-athletes can work on getting faster and
stronger," the panel argues. "Athletes at every level have continued
to evolve through drills and practice without including bigger,
stronger and faster opponents in these drills." Including male players
in these drills also results in female athletes "standing by as males
take positions the women have earned through years of dedication to
their sport and missing their own chance to improve their skills."
>
> Although the committee's statement focuses on the practical
implications of using male practice players - in the form of
diminished practice time for women - philosophical objections seem to
underlie the panel's passionate view. "The message to female student-
athletes seems to be, `you are not good enough to make our starters
better, so we need to use men instead.' This approach implies an
archaic notion of male preeminence that continues to impede progress
toward gender equity and inclusion. Without the use of male practice
players, does women's athletics not inherently retain its own unique
quality of competition and skill?"
>
> In their responses to the panel's call for banning male
participation in women's practices, many female athletes and coaches
seem mystified that the committee appears reluctant to accept that
physical differences remain between men and women. "Men are so much
more athletic than females," Renee Montgomery, a junior guard at the
University of Connecticut, told the New Haven Register. "When you are
playing against guys who can do what you can do and better every day,
it is going to make you better."
>
> "This is the politically correct gone awry," Joanne P. McCallie,
Michigan State University's women's basketball coach, told USA
Today. "It's absolutely absurd. It's short-sighted. It's got nothing
to do with equity and everything to do with politics."
>
> Members of the NCAA's Division III will have the first crack at
deciding whether the crackdown on men's players has traction. They
will weigh a proposal at the association's meeting in Orlando next
month that would allow women's teams to continue to practice against
men, but in severely limited ways: They could do so only once a week
during the traditional season, and the number of male players they
could use would would be limited to fewer than half of the number of
players required to field a starting team in their sport (for example,
a basketball team with five starting players could use only two male
practice players).
>
> The Women's Basketball Coaches Association has put forward an
alternative proposal that would restrict the use of male players to
three practices a week, and limit their number to the number of
players in a starting lineup (so a basketball team could use a full
squad of five male players.)
>
> Bass, of the basketball coaches' group, said she hopes NCAA
officials will recognize that if individual colleges or coaches have
abused the use of male practice players in ways that really limit
opportunity for women, those abuses are best dealt with by
administrators at those colleges, rather than through sweeping rule
changes that "throw the baby out with the bath water."
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