Recent women’s successes part of Title IX Journey

The 2022-23 season at the University of South Dakota marked a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the legislation that opened the door for girls and women to be part of high school and college sports programs.

Some of the stories of those early days – when institutions and their administrations were still trying to navigate the legal and cultural impact of this federally mandated undertaking – sound downright ridiculous now.

In a way, that’s the best part of this. If what happened 50 years ago didn’t sound like it happened during the Middle Ages then the progress since then would not have been what many were hoping it would be.

Those 50 years clearly show that the values and joys we associate with participating in athletics are not based on gender. It’s an obvious point, but bears repeating in any reference to the history of Title IX and the dramatic impact it made on our country.

At USD, the Coyotes were in step with what was going on all over the nation at the time. There were bills to pay that weren’t there in the past. There were new teams needing locker rooms, playing surfaces, bus rides, practice times, scholarships and a salaried coaching staff. Accommodating this transformation did not happen overnight in Vermillion or anywhere else.

Competitive and academic success has been a huge part of the progress since then, as have facility upgrades and increased fan engagement. This is to say nothing of the thousands of women whose lives are better because they went to school and played sports at USD.

USD has won the women’s all-sports trophy in the Summit League seven times in the last eight years. Included in that is an incredible run of success by a basketball program that has won five Summit League titles since 2015 and had a Sweet 16 appearance in 2022.

The volleyball program has advanced to the NCAA tournament four of the last five seasons and last year won both the regular-season Summit League title and Summit tournament title for the first time in program history.

The track and field squad lit up the DakotaDome in February, winning the program’s fourth conference title as members of the Summit League and the 23rd overall. Add on the cross country harriers’ five-straight Summit crowns from 2014-18 for a history of success.

Three USD squads also finished runner-up last season: women's swimming and diving, women's outdoor track and field, and women's golf.

New opportunities have continued to present themselves for women’s athletics at USD in more recent years as well. Women’s soccer played its first season in 1999 and women’s triathlon was added in 2018, increasing USD’s offering to 10 women’s sports.

“Part of this legacy is the success of our student-athletes and the facilities that we’ve been able to build to provide opportunities,” USD athletic director David Herbster said. “But more importantly, it’s about how we look to treat every student athlete as an individual – I think the culture of treating everyone like they’re part of a family is what has really helped us move forward.”

For a long time now, Tina Keller, a physics professor at USD for 28 years, was part of that family as the Faculty Athletics Representative from USD from 2006-17. Now retired, Keller was also a scholarship athlete in her own right as a basketball player at North Dakota State after starring at Little Falls High School in Minnesota.

She has seen Coyote athletics evolve and can also offer insight into the beginning stages of the history that Title IX has brought about.

“From a personal perspective, I was part of the generation that was the first to really benefit from Title IX,” Keller said. “We were probably the first to see some big differences.”

When Keller was in grade school, her high school didn’t have a girls basketball team. By the time she got to high school in the late 1970s, however, she was getting opportunities in sports that had been denied previous generations. There was still a ways to go – a lot of schools had only basketball and track and field when the legislation began to affect high schools and colleges – but the framework was in place.

Culturally, there was more than a little catching up to do.

“I played tennis in high school and to warm up we’d do a lap around the baseball field that was right next to the tennis courts,” Keller remembered. “How far is it to run around a baseball field – less than a quarter mile, right? And people saw this and were worried that we were running a little too much. It might not be healthy for us.”

Chad Lavin’s association with USD sports goes back to the early 1970s. He was a basketball player for the Coyotes, then a graduate assistant for the men’s program. A few years later he was offered the job as the head women’s basketball coach.

From 1982-86 and again from 1998-2008, Lavin coached the women’s basketball program at USD. The Coyotes played for a national Division II championship in Kearney, Nebraska, his last season before an overflow crowd made up of almost all USD fans.

It was the last basketball game USD played as a Division II school and it was a long, long way from when he first took over the program in 1982.

“One of the things I remember from that first era is that no one came to the games,” Lavin said. “I would always count the number of people who were there during the national anthem. I remember we were playing for our third conference championship in a row one night and I counted 12 people in the stands.”

Some of his experiences as a Title IX pioneer were humorous.

“The DakotaDome was a great thing for USD but I don’t think they designed it thinking that the women’s basketball team would have a male coach,” he said. “It wasn’t a bad locker room but you had to walk through the women’s shower area to get there.”

There were occasional consequences before games when the coach was headed to the locker room to deliver a pre-game pep talk.

“There were a couple different doors to the women’s shower so you couldn’t keep track of who was going in there,” Lavin said. “There were a few crazy incidents.”

Last fall, USD was host to a volleyball tournament that included Louisville, a program that would end up advancing to the national championship contest against Texas. It was another sign of change for the better.

“Louisville was playing in a tournament in the Sanford Coyote Sports Center in a tournament we were hosting,” Keller said. “Thirty years ago we weren’t playing volleyball in the Dome – we were playing our games at the high school until football season was over.

“The investment in the facilities have benefited both the men’s and women’s programs but I think it’s really had a huge impact on the women’s teams.”

With knowledge of the history comes perspective that might not be there for younger athletes. Ultimately that’s for the best. It means the worst of it took place before they were born.

“Women played basketball in South Dakota in the 1920s – we’ve all seen the pictures of the women in their dresses,” Keller said.  “But after that you really had to fight to play. I’m very happy for the young women of today and I hope they realize those opportunities weren’t always there.”

There are still opportunities for improvement as it applies to women’s sports. In some conferences, basketball referees make less for officiating a women’s game than they do a men’s game, for instance. But there is also great pride in the progress, particularly from those who have seen it up close and helped bring it about.

“There are a few down years here and there but USD has become a force in basketball and their facilities are off the charts,” Lavin said. “And look at what they’ve done in volleyball and women’s track and cross country and softball. It’s been fun to watch. USD has done a great job of hiring and they’ve put more money into women’s sports. You’re seeing the end result of that.”