Читать книгу Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy - Robyn Ryle - Страница 14

The deliberations about how Title IX would be implemented reveal that the gender segregation in sports we largely take for granted today was never a given. In that historical moment, congresspeople considered that perhaps the best strategy for achieving gender equality in sports would be for women and men to play together. What might the sports world look like if we’d gone in the other direction? And could we be headed that way now?

Because of Title IX, we currently live in a world where both girls and boys start playing sports at a young age. Though most programs are gender-segregated, sometimes different genders do play together. Take the example of the St. John’s Chargers, a fifth-grade co-ed basketball team in New Jersey. The girls and boys on this team had played together since second grade. Ten games into their 2016–2017 season, officials with the Catholic Youth Organization league informed them that being co-ed was against the rules for middle school teams. Starting in fifth grade, teams had to be gender-segregated and so the team would have to forfeit their 10 wins up to that point in the season.^[33]

The Chargers’ 10 wins put them in third place in their division and they would have still been eligible for the league playoffs, but only if they played the rest of their season without the girls on their team. Parents put the question to the Chargers—should they go into the playoffs without the girls, or stick together? With a show of hands, all 11 players voted to stay together as a team. When a coach reminded the players that staying together would mean no playoffs and forfeiting the season, one of the players said, “It doesn’t matter.” For these 11 boys and girls, a gender-integrated team was important enough that they sacrificed larger competitive success so they could go on playing together.^[34]

Title IX was implemented in a way that maintained gender segregation in sports, but the story of this team of girls and boys is still a testament to the wide-reaching success of the legislation. The culture in which the players on the Chargers team grew up is one where athletic ability and interest in sports among girls is simply taken for granted. Of course girls play sports. Of course they want to win. Of course they’re exceptional athletes. The ruling of the Catholic Youth Organization league was eventually overturned, allowing the Chargers to continue playing together. You can imagine the boys and girls on that team wondering what the big deal was in the first place. That’s the world Title IX created, and maybe kids like these are a sign that gender segregation in sports may be on its way out.