Happy 25th Muffet!

For our fifth segment in our Title IX series, we pause to celebrate a titan in the world of women's sports.

In 1987, the world was a different place. A wall ran through the city of Berlin, Aretha Franklin was a chart-topper, disposable cameras were a new sensation, and Mark McGwire of the Oakland A’s was a rookie sensation.

So the hair might be shorter, the technology more advanced, and the politics different, but a few things are still the same. U2 is still rocking out, Magic Johnson is still making sports headlines, and Notre Dame Women’s Basketball is still in the same good hands.

Muffet McGraw was hired as Notre Dame’s Coach at a time when it was VERY good to be an Irish fan. Tim Brown ran away with the Heisman trophy, Lou Holtz was proving his mastery of coaching, and Notre Dame won its first national championship in a women’s sport (fencing).

No pressure.

To be Irish was to win. And win big. Luckily for Muffet, any fears of failure may have been assuaged by the fact that women’s college sports lied very much at the periphery of the American consciousness when she first took the job. A study in the late 1980s found that only 3% of media coverage of sports followed women. But she didn’t let obscurity get in the way of doing things the Irish way. In twenty five years, Coach McGraw’s teams have assembled a .733 winning percentage, seven conference championships, 10 sweet-16 appearances, and three trips to the National Championship game, including a National Title in 2001. Her foresight, skill, and leadership not only shot her to the top of A-list basketball coaches, but also sent Women’s Basketball rocketing into the hearts, minds, and living rooms of people everywhere.  A sport that was seldom covered in the 80s now has multi-year contracts with media outlets and regularly hosts games in front of sell-out crowds. A debt of gratitude is owed to Coach McGraw for the stewardship of both the sport she loves and the school for which she has worked for the past quarter century.

As we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX later this week, let us celebrate a woman who has not only witnessed, but influenced dramatic change of the sport for so many people!

Beyond the Bottom Line

This is the fourth installment in our ongoing series commemorating the 40^th anniversary of the passage of Title IX into federal law, which will be celebrated on June 23, 2012.

Men’s sports leagues are highly lucrative affairs. Sports entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry, and athletes, coaches, administrators, and owners all reap the financial benefits of a world that loves to watch professionals compete.

Women’s sports leagues fall at the other end of the spectrum. Players, coaches, and administrators are paid a decent wage, but rarely in excess of 5 figures. And many outfits, including the WNBA lose millions of dollars a year.

So why do women’s leagues exist? Just like all other business ventures, they are profit-seeking entities with investors to whom executives must report. Shouldn’t leagues like the WNBA close up shop? Personally, I cannot tell you the individual decisions made by a team or a league to continue operating at a loss, but I can hazard a guess: they see something beyond the bottom line.

In 1972, when Title IX was passed into law, there were two professional sports that had women with any kind of presence: golf and tennis. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was founded in the 1950s and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) was not even established fully until 1973. Neither league saw tremendous success at its beginning, and the salaries of all people involved with men’s sports dominated their counterparts in women’s. Public attention was minimal, but the competition was fierce, both on and off the field. WTA founder and tennis legend Billie Jean King fought tirelessly to attract sponsors, media coverage, and increased youth participation in tennis. She also challenged and defeated former Wimbledon Champion Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. Her tenacity galvanized women everywhere, and began a revolution that would change the outlook of women’s sports forever. Not only did her efforts on the court debunk any kind of myth that somehow women are inferior to men athletically, but in her groundbreaking efforts, she laid an example for millions of young women to pursue what they are passionate about, regardless of preconceived notions of what is possible. And not that it should be the ultimate litmus test of something’s worth, but now the WTA, as well as the LPGA are now extremely profitable.

When stakeholders in women’s sports leagues pursue their advancement, there is more history to be made than money. They are pioneering a cultural sports landscape that is still laden with in equalities between men and women. Although Title IX has been passed, colleges spend nearly double in recruiting male athletes as they do females. Although the ratio of high school males playing sports to females before Title IX was 12:1, there are still more than 1 million more boys playing than girls. Significant progress has been made, but there are still mountains to climb.

We need women’s sports leagues. They provide role models for young women and career paths for accomplished athletes. They can be profitable. They just need more people like Billie Jean King, who can see the inequalities, and demand more of their culture. They need savvy business people to find ways of making their operations sustainable. And they need you: the parent who encourages your daughter to try a new sport, the teacher that chooses not the perpetuate gender stereotypes, and the friend who never lets a friend settle for anything less than her best. The bottom line is that they need people who can see things far more important than, the bottom line.

Greg Crawford:Driven by Madness

I rode my bike this morning to work. I ride every day—a whopping 3 miles round-trip!

Dr. Greg Crawford, Dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, rode his bike this morning, too. He’s also been riding every day.

The difference between the two of us is that over the past couple weeks he’s been dealing with incredible winds in his face, high speed traffic rushing by, and he has had to traverse one of the nation’s major mountain chains.  And I suppose he’s not riding to an office. He’s riding to a cure.

Dr. Crawford is spending his summer vacation combining three of Notre Dame’s strongest attributes—research, service, and sports—to make a real difference in the world. He is riding across the United States on a bicycle to raise money and promote awareness for research to prevent and cure Niemann-Pick disease Type C (NP-C), a fatal disease found in children. He left Boston May 21, and will arrive in Pebble Beach, CA on June 22, to meet up with former ND Football Coach Ara Parseghian, who has lost three grandchildren to the disease, and who founded a foundation to support NP-C research.

If you read about NP-C you’ll find sadness. The disease is described as “always fatal,” it affects children almost exclusively, and there is no cure. Reading outlooks like these is overwhelming and makes me ask “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” The outlooks make Dr. Crawford ask something different: “How can I prevent this?”

Dr. Crawford has been blessed with an incredible mind, a giving heart, and a body equipped to handle the wear of long-distance biking. Many people with those gifts are content to be a solid researcher, spouse, and adventurer. Crawford is combining these three gifts to save lives. Many dream of a world without NP-C; Crawford is taking steps to make that dream a reality.

Dr. Crawford’s “Road to Discovery” is yet another demonstration of how a Champion in athletics can be a leader for real change in our world.  Anyone who has gone through any kind of grueling sports experience can identify with the sacrifice that Dr. Crawford is making. Although we may not be able to fathom the feeling of riding 160 miles in a single day, the immensity of his goal stirs up questions in us as to what kind of madness would drive him to take on this challenge. 

And my guess is that it is madness that is driving him. We live in a world that has seen people walk on the moon, dive to the depths of the ocean, and travel at the speed of sound. Yet parents still have to go to the doctor and learn that child has a disease, and they can do nothing to heal them.  Is that not madness? I’ll bet Dr. Crawford thinks so.

To follow Dr. Crawford's journey, or to learn about how to donate to his fundraising effort, check out his blog at roadtodiscovery.nd.edu.

Coaching Young Women...What's the difference?

This is the third installment in our continuing blog series on issues surrounding women in sports, leading up to the 40th anniversary of Title IX on June 23.

One of the “vexing” subjects that coaches and parents of young people face is the “challenge” of coaching girls in youth sports.

Despite the complex pieces on coaching women out there, Play Like a Champion Today®, advises coaches to not over-think this “issue.”

An important part of coaching is to always remind yourself why you are coaching. Chances are that you are there to spend time with your children, teach valuable character lessons, and to create meaningful memories for yourself and for young people. Are any of those goals gender specific? Would you approach any of them differently for a boy or a girl? Doubtful. So don’t approach coaching differently. There are probably going to be differences in experiences of coaching boys and girls, especially as they get older, but none of the differences between them effect the way that kids receive instructions , develop moral decision-making, and enhance their physical abilities.

When coaching a single sex team, it’s important to avoid traditional gender stereotypes and to get to know the individuals on your team. Getting to know them as Amanda, Shanti, Claire, and Yvonne rather than just “girls” will allow you to see that each person on your team has strengths, weaknesses, assets, and liabilities as young athletes. Once you ignore what you expect Linda be doing as a girl, you will see that she is good fielding shortstop, a confident leader that struggles with her hitting abilities, and worries about her grades in school. Then you will find the ways that you can influence her best as a coach, and she can best impact the team as a player.

Gender-specific coaching can lead to coaching that ignores the development of the whole athlete in favor of perpetuating stereotypes, which can be dangerous for both boys and girls. As psychologist Dr. Nicole Lavoi writes in a recent blog, “if a coach believes or uncritically accepts that boys are inherently more aggressive and competitive, the coach may have different expectations and ways of structuring practices, interacting, communicating, motivating and leading girls. Similarly, if coaches believe boys don’t value connections and friendships, this too erases boys’ need for feeling a sense of belongingness.”

Title IX was a landmark in removing barriers against women in sport with the support of the law, but so many of the barriers that girls and women encounter are beyond the effect of the law. They are in deep-seeded stereotypes of a woman’s ability, social tendencies, and emotional make-up. As coaches and parents of young athletes, we have the ability to make a real difference in the way our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and friends choose to (not) play into those stereotypes. As mentors of young women, let us champion their abilities, coach them in their individual weaknesses, and avoid the traps of traditional thinking.

Let’s simplify our approach. Learn her name. Coach to her strengths and weaknesses. Realize that she is an awesome individual. The rest will take care of itself.

Our Uganda travels continued with our Notre Dame students having the opportunity to teach the Play Like A Champion Today® Player Champion Curriculum to the children in both Kkindu Primary and Hopeful School, both village schools, far from the city center. Every child received their very own book – much to their delight. The students helped the children identify that everyone can and should play sports because it is good for our health, it is fun and it is the opportunity to learn lessons and values. Then our students helped the school children identify the characteristics of a Champion and how each and every child can become a Champion in sport and in life. An integral part of this work was conducting research along with the classroom character lessons. The children were given pre and post tests addressing the role of sport in their life. Play Like A Champion Today® will analyze the results of these tests to assess the role that sport might play in a developing country. We will also analyze whether the city school children pose a different profile than the rural village school children when they are involved in sport. As our PLACT partners across the United States were presenting our PLACT youth coach workshop on Saturday in cities across America, Clark and Kristin were presenting an adapted form of our youth coach workshop on Friday in a classroom in Kkindu presenting to 25 coaches from the village and the surrounding sub-county. On Saturday, Clark and Kristin worked with Dr. Harriet Mutonyi, Faculty Director of Education at UMU, Uganda Martyrs University and Alex Ndibwami, Athletic Director at UMU. Sports leaders (tutors, coaches etc.) that are members of the National University Sports Federation of Uganda (NUSFU)and coaches from the surrounding Nkozi subcounty joined to experience how to most effectively lead children in an educational sports experience. We discovered the universal reality of coaching as a ministerial service; the full understanding of the spirituality present in the sport experience and the Universal values of a Champion. Coaches embraced the GROW approach to child development and discussed together how to effectively communicate the lessons of sport. Coaches from both workshops set off to their home schools/parishes to impart this fresh information to their home communities. PLACT now has trained trainers spread throughout the fields and cities of Uganda. Pictured here are coaches from the UMU workshop and the Village of Kkindu.

Some Videos from the Trip

A Champion Child at St. Peter’s Primary School

Notre Dame Fencer, Alex Coccia, works with some budding fencers in Kkindu

Uganda Cranes! WE GO!

The Universal Language of Sport = Joy and God's Grace

Pictured are Kkindu Primary Head Teacher, Joseph Kazibwe; John Kakande, Head of all PLACT activities in the village; Fr. Emmanuel, Pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Kkindu and Kristin Sheehan

On Wednesday in Uganda, our Notre Dame PLACT contingent traveled to the rural village of Kkindu outside the town of Masaka. Together with our students we visited two primary schools, Kkindu Primary and Hopeful School. We met with the head teachers and discussed their dreams for their sports programs and we played sports and games with the children. Our hearts swelled with love and our spirits soared with joy as we became a part of these childrens' lives – in the classroom as we taught lessons with their teachers and in the school yard as we kicked the soccer ball and sang circle songs. The big smiles that you see represent the true joy of connecting with God’s children through the glory of play.

Champions Throughout Uganda

On Wednesday in Uganda, Clark Power, Kevin Dugan and Kristin Sheehan gathered together with the leaders of the Catholic Church at St. Augustine Institute Catholic Secretariat. Together we explored the idea of sport as a means of educational development for all young people. We discovered that sport in Uganda is often reserved for only the most skilled athletes having the opportunity to compete. We presented the Play Like A Champion Today® philosophy of sport as valuable for all children in offering physical healthfulness and a mode of providing lessons that can lead to emotional, social and moral development. All children in Uganda can become Champions and “win” through playing sport. This message was heartily embraced by the group. Thus, we began discussions on how the Play Like A Champion Today® philosophy might best be disseminated to every sports tutor (Uganda’s name for physical education teachers or coaches) in every Catholic parish throughout the country. Ugandan church leaders expressed the desire to see the program in a two-fold capacity. First every sports tutor can be taught the Champion philosophy and ministerial approach to coaching sport and second, every child can be given the “champion” curriculum in understanding the powerful role that sport can play in their whole development. As members of one universal Catholic Church, Notre Dame’s Play Like A Champion Today® looks forward with excitement to partnering with the Church in Uganda to create sports programs that will deeply impact every young person in the county.

Happy Birthday Fr. Ted!

As the 2nd part in our series on Title IX, we would like to wish a very warm Happy Birthday to Father Theodore “Ted” Hesburgh, CSC today! A celebrated figure in the worlds of civil rights, academia, and Roman Catholicism, Fr. Ted has accomplished a lot of things in 95 years on the planet. He was one of the longest tenured presidents of an American university, serving Notre Dame for 35 years in its highest office. He has walked hand in hand with Martin Luther King Jr. in the struggle for racial equality, visited the South Pole, carried the Olympic torch, served as an advisor to multiple US presidents, and been awarded a world record 150 honorary degrees.

But among his accolades and achievements, none sticks out as more influential than his leadership to make Notre Dame a coeducational university.

Notre Dame became coed in 1972, coinciding with the passage of Title IX into federal law. So, right away, Notre Dame was doing something it had never done before: field women’s sports teams. A school that had been synonymous with its men’s football team entered into a new phase of history: one in which the Fighting Irish would become known for something other than their success on the gridiron. The women of Notre Dame brought their first national championship home in 1987 when the fencers took the title. Since then, women have secured 8 additional national titles in three sports for the Irish, and led the nation in academic performance on several occasions.

There was a time when thinking of Notre Dame with women would have been something of a joke. Notre Dame was an all-male institution. Simple as that. It wasn’t misogynistic, but thinking of a Notre Dame with female students would have been, at one point, laughable. It took a visionary, imaginative leader in Hesburgh to conceptualize a Notre Dame that saw no boundaries to entry, and no limits to the minds it could educate.

The same kind of vision and intellectual imagination is needed in viewing sports in our culture. There was a time in which sports were considered simply a male affair, but it took pioneers in women’s sports, like Pat Summitt, Billie Jean King, Muffet McGraw, Annika Sörenstam, and countless others to expand narrow conventional thinking on sports. Title IX was a start, but there are still boundaries to overcome, and women and men everywhere working to incorporate more women into sports, and help young girls and women live up to their potential in sports.

The beauty of bringing about equal opportunity in sports is that its implications lie far outside the gymnasium, the diamond, or the field. When we learn to see men and women as equals in sports, we learn to see them as equals in politics, in academia, in business, …in life. So often sports is a predictor of future social trends (much as Jackie Robinson was a harbinger for racial equality), and so as a society, we must think honestly, critically, and thoughtfully about the role of women and girls in sports. And to do that, we need thoughtful, visionary leaders. We need more people like Fr. Ted! 

Sports Day at St. Peter's Primary School

Kristin Sheehan, PLACT Program Director, reports from Uganda:

Play Like A Champion Today®’s delegation began today with the roosters crowing gloriously outside our windows as the sun rose. We boarded our transport and traveled back for our second day at St. Peter’s Primary School. Upon arrival, we gathered with the children in prayer and assembly explaining our “Sports Day” together. We unpacked our equipment and set up the biggest field day you can imagine. 400 Primary 6^th grade children were broken up into groups to play netball and to learn American Football, softball, lacrosse, and baseball.  The excitement was palpable as the children selected their game of choice and ran off to learn, to play, to have fun and to grow in ability and in spirit.

Our Notre Dame student/athletes acted as coaches, served as referees and most importantly became mentors throughout the clinic period. Then came the culmination of a large football (American soccer) competition. Boys from the four 6^th grade classes each competed to earn a spot in the final soccer competition while the girls competed in a netball championship. The action was not contained to the playing field as spectators joined in on the fun, shaking Irish green Kelly Care’s Foundation pom-poms and leading their favorite team in cheers. Green happens to be the school color for St. Peter’s School, so all the Green Pom-poms where left with the school children –much to their thrill.

The final soccer match went down to a shootout with P6 Blue ending in Victory. However, every St. Peter’s child was a Champion today in sport. After presenting the victorious team with a trophy and the entire school with two nets for their soccer posts, as well as many, many sport balls, the children sang songs for us while the school’s brass band (the oldest band in Uganda) played march music. It was a start to finish sport extravaganza.

The group completed the day listening to traditional Ugandan percussion music again at the National Theatre put on by the Percussion Discussion. We all enjoyed some traditional dancing and everyone even got to participate in helping keep the rhythm through beating the drums.  

Tomorrow, Kevin, Clark and Kristin with join with the Ugandan Catholic Secretariat and discuss the resounding potential of sport for holistic youth development. We will present our Player Handbook while the Notre Dame students return to St. Peter’s Primary to complete the classroom lessons in the Player Handbook with every P6 student, these lessons discuss what it means to be a Champion in sport and in life, particularly focused upon virtue development through the sport experience. Then, we will travel to the village of Kkindu near the town of Masaka. Excited for more great things!