- Now here's our moderator for a feminist perspective this evening, Walter Smith.

- I like to welcome you to feminist perspective, which is sponsored by the women's resource and career planning center and the Dean of women's office here at KU. I'm substituting for Dean Emily Taylor, who had another commitment to this evening. Tonight's topic is women in sports. And our guests this evening are several people, Claire McElroy, who is director of women's center neural sports at KU. Henry Shank, who was past chairman of the physical education department here. Jan Stokes, a freshmen woman at GSP hall. She's involved in intramural sports. Nancy Smith, a physical education major, and presently student teaching in the Shawnee Mission School District. And finally, Mary Kay Shop, who was past president of a women's intercollegiate sports club and very active in the inter-collegiate women's program here at KU. I like to start off this evening by asking all of you, general kind of question, how are women involved in sports and KU, what sort of things do they do they do here? Claire.

- My part in women's in sport or women's sports is concerned mostly with the intramural program here it's a recreational outlet, some striving for competitive activity. But I think mostly just to break for studies in a way to get down and work off some energy and have a good time.

- How about you Jen? How are you involved in that program?

- I'm involved in the intramural program. I participated in flag football and we're now in basketball season. And I feel that the intramural level, for me is a good level because I'm not that good in sports but it does provide an outlet for some physical activity and also a break from studies. And it's rather enjoyable, also.

- What sort of sports do we have here at KU, what sort of things the women get involved in?

- Well, there are several sports offered in the fall. They have kickball and flag football. They're various seasons and other things that are offered are swimming, and badminton, basketball, volleyball and they're also co-rec sports offering, men and women on the same teams and they offer co-rec volleyball, and co-work tennis, for some examples.

- How many people are involved to this kind of a program?

- In a year, you average about 1200 girls participating.

- Is there a time of the year that they're more involved in that other are pretty much throughout the year?

- Well, I think it was probably because of the sports offered but the majority of the students probably participate during the winter because they like volleyball and basketball, those are the two favorite.

- If somebody is interested how do they get involved in something like this?

- All you have to be is a woman student at KU and you can participate as an independent or you can sign up with a residence hall or a sorority a small living group, wherever you happen to be living. On their participation fees, that are paid by the living group, if you are in an organized unit or it's a small fee for an independent team and these go for the trophies, awards, officials so forth. And you just come down and fill out an entry form, show up for your games, it's very easy.

- If somebody were interested, how would they get in touch with, with you, I guess?

- That'd be fine. You can either call or come in person down to Robinson Gymnasium. It's 112 Robinson and just ask for information about that sport. There are a lot of posters up around campus with all the activity, dates, entry, deadlines and so forth. You can just know the sport you wanna participate in and come down about that time and ask for information.

- If you were playing on a team saying, Nancy or Mary Gale, how, what sort of a commitment is this, is this is like, you go out and practice every day?

- Well, we had hockey. We usually had it to about every day. I guess we have no practice on Fridays. You have that practice every day after classes and you're there, because your team's counting on you to be there. And if you don't get functioning as a team in your practices, you don't win a game. And some of the sports take a lot of extra work. Some people do some weight training or extra running depending on the sport. So it's a big commitment. Plus your grades have to be up when they're supposed to be.

- It takes about maybe two hours a day, two between two two and a half, maybe the most hours a day practice during any on-season, most of the seasons run, maybe two, two and a half months long. Some season, if you go into extra plays like the volleyball team just went to nationals and their season ran from beginning of October till, just finished in February. So they've had a long, long season. And so they've been committing almost two hours a day practicing.

- And this is on a intercollegiate level we're talking about right now?

- And if you're talking in terms to of an overlapping season, like I can remember a time when we used to practice field hockey from about 4:30 to say quarter six, go up and eat dinner, change clothes, and come back down for volleyball practice from seven to nine. In sophomore year, we did that. And this was when the seasons didn't overlap quite so much. It was just maybe a week or two practices but, about all you did was get back up the hill and change clothes again and go to bed. So that was talking in terms of a big commitment. You had two teams you were responsible to and two coaches, in a lot of cases.

- How about intramurally Jan, what your team did pretty well last fall? How much did they have to practice to do that?

- Well, practice, isn't quite that important on the intramural level. And you could practice as much as the people on your team wanna practice. We practice about one hour a week, which is not quite a commitment as in the intercollegiate level. But it really is up to the people on the team, how much they wanna practice.

- When a woman gets to KU, does she tend to know what's going on in the sports area?

- Oh, I was totally informed, definitely, yes.

- It really, being a freshmen, that's fresh in my mind. We do have a women's rec association person on our floor. We have a recreational chairman and most of the information that we get comes through her but I don't think that freshman women or women at KU at all, know what opportunities and programs are available, from an athletic point of view. And there seem to be a lot and that I'm just now becoming aware of.

- I think a tendency on that, at least when I was a freshman back in the olden days, was the fact that if you had a person who was in physical education they automatically became the WRA representative because they were always down to gym. So therefore they were there to pick up all the information. So you had people that were already involved with a sports program, released in contact with it, relaying information, and then it kind of branched out. But basically that was kind of a limited line of communication.

- I think it's particularly hard for the students who live off campus. And the smaller the living group, the easier it is for us to find ways to communicate with it. The off campus student, we have a real difficulty.

- The intercollegiate and interscholastic programs for women and girls are relatively new. We didn't have much until about eight years ago. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo gave women's a big boost, and again, the Olympics in Mexico city. And of course this year, and we now have, I take a little pride the fact that I recommended that the chancellor, that we being charter members of the National Women's Sport Organization which is called AIAW, associated association. Let's see what is that? Could you help me out.

- Association for women. And this is under the auspices of the American association for health physical education recreation. They are really just getting this thing organized. They have nine different regions, each region has officers, of course, they sponsored tournaments within the regions and the winners of the room, usually the winners and second place teams gone to the national championships and our girls I believe just got back from a national championships out at Brigham Young University in volleyball and did a quite well although, they didn't win.

- You were telling me a little bit about the history of our women's intercollegiate club the other other day. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

- Well, the clubs only been in existence for about a year. So so-called, were really only to start, we always really started up until this fall. So when we really organized ourselves, but like there have been in a collegiate sports for women as far back as I know is, 1966. And we, at that time, I think only sponsored two sports, hockey and, and basketball. Now, we have eight sports. We have hockey, volleyball, basketball, softball, tennis swimming, just gonna be initiated next year, track and field, golf, and gymnastics. I think that's all of them. We've really come a long way in our programs since then, I mean from two sports with about a $200 budget to now we have a $9,000 budget, which still, it's hard to run nine sports on.

- $200, in 1966 to run a program and $9,000 for this school year.

- Right.

- Where did that money come?

- It all comes from the student Senate. They supported our program, ever since '66, first of it, it originally came out of the intramural budget. They gave us $200 to have two teams and then we, after that, we started applying on our own and we finally got into the thousands. We went from, we went gradually out from about three 3,500 and they raised it to 4,000, then 4,500. And then last year we pushed really hard and got it almost doubled to 9,000. This is the first year we've had that much money.

- Because that's one of the big problems that the girls have had ever since they started into this thing, because most of the men's integrative programs have been finance through gate receipts and spectators have paid the price and the group, all the girls have had spectators while they haven't usually charged at the gate. There hasn't been, that had been that attracted to take it, bring in thousands of dollars. And then of course, the girls have had other problems too, a lot of other problems. One of which it had been an adequate facilities, time to practice, places to practice, and play. These things weren't anticipated when a number of buildings were built, even when Robinson Gym was built, we weren't anticipating having so many varsity teams for women. This is true with interscholastic, that lacks over the state and or the country as a whole because they built one gym and meant most communities and this has to take care of both boys and girls, and they had, the boys had already sort of preempted this gym and so all the girls had trouble of getting in and finding practice time for us to play.

- That's true, and this is a problem that, that's not only unique here but I've noticed it where on student teaching, the Shawnee Mission District is a pretty good about financing. But again, they're limited on facilities. There's only so much space in the gym and no matter how much money you have, you're not gonna stretch that one building, but they're going, like one of the teachers comes up something like, four in the morning and gets things to going. And then he has swim practices in the morning and they have some at track people working out for the women, and this type of thing. So you're talking about extending the day when women athletics you'll come maybe at six or 6:30 to workout, and then maybe you'll have another after-school practice every once in a while. This is true with their swimming, or track and field, and tennis, and their golf, the fine facilities. This is a real problem because like you said, the financing and the buildings, just aren't there, that, that we're having to find this extra time. And then personnel too, you're talking about sponsoring nine sports, we were talking about nine, at least nine coaches. You have three people staffing at a department, and you better hope that they all can do three sports really well and they don't happen to be at different times that they can stagger them through a season. And this is another problem, is finding coaches period and let alone good coaches. And this is, we're trying to expand really rapidly and we're kind of short on a lot of things.

- That's true, cause it wasn't any backlog of coaches because after all it hadn't had athletics. And so, and since they prefer the women coaches and rightly so, I think, while there hasn't been this there hasn't been any wealth of experienced coaches to draw on, as far as the women are concerned.

- How does a woman prepare herself to be a coach in this day and age?

- That's a good question. Right now, the physical education department is working on a coaching emphasis. There aren't presently is a coaching emphasis for men but there isn't as such right now, any from women. And it's one of the things we're working for in women's, in the women's physical education program because we see this as something that's gonna be coming about in the near future. And some something we have to prepare our physical education people for.

- Are you getting some coaching experience?

- Somewhat, a Shop and I, both are kinda caught in a bind because we've helped set up some of these programs for this coaching emphasis but won't be here to get the benefit of any of them. So the fact that student teaching does give me a chance because all the ladies do coach, our two sports and they'll be doing swimming and track and field, assuming while, I'm there anyway. I would say for people now, the best thing to do wouldn't be, to find someone that you can work with and help, a little bit, that you can study in it from right now and read a lot, and just trying to be around where things are going on, and visit tournaments and stuff. Even if it's not maybe your major, your interest is sports. Cause you can always pick up something from a different sport on, might be better for years. I would say, that's what to do now. That's what I'm gonna trying to do.

- Some people are concerned about getting jobs once they get out of college. Is this an area that woman might think of, as she has some interest in sports?

- I would say now, if you can coach gymnastics, or swimming, or track and field, and golf, or tennis, I've heard people talking that they would like to hire coaches in those particular areas. I don't know exactly statistically what the emphasis would be, but I think that she would have a better chance if you could coach one or two sports and if you can't coach any.

- I think also, especially on the collegiate level right now, there is a demand for teachers on the collegiate level too. Two coach, in addition to, being able to teach. I know that some universities are saying, okay, fine but what, what can you coach? Can you coach? And even the high schools are looking for people that say, well, okay, you've got to find record but can you coach? We need somebody to coach gymnastics say, or something like that.

- They're asking academic people to a lot of women. There's some English teachers that are taking like the tennis and golf and the Shawnee Missionary, I know. And this is the thing that they're beginning to ask a lot of their women applicants, not just our physical education people, well, is there a sport that you could coach? Now, this would be something for a person to think about when they're talking in terms of a teaching minor or like you say, a little extra increment or something to do that they are interested in. We have a lot of young women tennis players, and golfers that don't necessarily go in physical education, wholeheartedly. This is, another possibility it's kinda like the men have done in the past but I think it's a good one.

- I remember back when I was teaching back in Ohio, though teaching a salary scale, we were paying a thousand dollars or something like that for the football coach. I can't remember if the GAA representative was even mentioned on the pay scale, things any different in the last five years or so.

- I think in most of the public schools, that there is an increment for coaching, both men and women. Now what that increment is, I don't know whether how large it is, but I'm sure that they pay an extra increment on the salary here in Orange and then the Shawnee Mission schools and most of the larger communities. They usually don't pay as much for an assistant coach, or as they do a head coach and as much for a so-called individual sport as they would a team sport. But what those increments are, I don't know, and I suppose it would vary from school to school.

- I understand that our volleyball team did well or did well in the regionals and then not as well as expected or something like that in the finals. But what kind of a routine does a woman go through to participate in that kind of a program?

- Well, you mean, as far as daily schedule? Well, they start out with, they have try out to the beginning and then they cut down to, as as many as they can carry.

- How many would have tried out for something like, one?

- It's 31 year I tried out, I don't know what it was this year.

- Well, I'm not sure exactly how many.

- It doubled, I'd say.

- There were quite, there's the interest is growing. I mean, there's more and more people trying out every year, for different sports, like even in field hockey which is not well known in Kansas, I mean, we've had, when I was a freshman and came here, we had about half of our team, didn't, had never picked up a hockey stick before. Now, it's gotten to the point where we have more people that have played it and that know what they're doing. For instance, this year we had about 20 people at the beginning that came out cause if you're not willing to devote the time or the energy, you're gonna cut yourself before you get anywhere. Cause you're here, you come home the first two days and you can't even move. That is, it's not what it's right for you, but they are in increasing in number and they start training, and the training period is probably the most difficult with the whole season conditioning yourself. Once you get into the routine though, it's not as hard and you get past working on fundamental skills, and into strategy, and that's where we're really interesting. You learn, you start to scrimmage against other teams. The competition is, really the peak. I mean, when you get out there and you're competing against someone else. We've had really good luck this year, we had a field hockey team, took state volleyball team, took state, went to regionals, took second at regionals and then just recently returned from nationals. That's about all the team. The tennis team also had a nine in one record. They only have one defeat. So our teams are doing fairly well this year.

- One of the things that has been some concern amongst a good many people. This national organization has a rule that you cannot give athletic scholarships. This is of course, different from the way the men operate. One of the reasons for this, undoubtedly is because they is because of the expenses involved. About two or three athletic scholarships we worked with, would wipe out all of the present girls budget. I saw that the women have tried to avoid this and they've tried to avoid some other things that men are doing, thinking that this is a better course of action, whether this will remain in effect or remains to be seen. Now, a girl can take an academic scholarship and understand, and still maintain her eligibility but she cannot be given a scholarship because she's a good basketball player or a volleyball player, or something of this nature.

- Good sides and some bad sides, I was like, for example we talked about the time, that it takes, after school. And I know, the first team that I competed on was at spring sport with softball and I'd worked in a cafeteria at Ellsworth. And I know I had to cut back a lot of work hours that I'd usually worked like a dinner meal and I wasn't even getting home for dinner. I was having this light play jazz. And this is a real problem. If you're trying to put yourself through schools, as I was, you have to draw the line somewhere. So it's unfortunate, that this happens. But on the other hand too, when you start talking about paying people to play as it seems to become, some of the men, you run into a problem with justifying your program. I think that Shop and I, would be kind of an agreement on the fact that, that it's just more than winning. We like to win, and that's important and we've both played hockey this year. And I know we've both always, gave a 110. but at the same time, there are other values that come from this. And when you start getting down just to putting points on the board and it doesn't particularly matter how they get there I think this is one of the major things that a lot of the women are thinking about, in terms of the scholarships and the recruiting, and this, and that because you're talking about bringing people to school that maybe don't belong in that particular university would be happier, smaller or larger school, with maybe a different major. And then they sacrifice some things to come and play like four years of basketball or whatever. And then of course we don't have the pro ranks yet, which I think it's to our advantage, but that they could go into, so here they have four years of basketball, and maybe that's all they have to show for it. And these were some of the disadvantages. I'm sure we'll get some calls on these, but I leave the things that I think people are thinking about. And I know a lot of people think that women are dragging their feet, but I think in some cases it's justified in some cases, I don't agree. I think right now I haven't even, I don't think we like Mr. Shank said, to pay athletes would be, I mean, completely out of our texts. We can't even pay our coaches really. I mean, our coaches, it's all a voluntary basis. We say, look, we need somebody to coach this week. Can you do it? We had a real problems with, we've had even at KU, we've had graduate assistants doing the coaching a lot of times, which is a real burden on them because here they are trying to work on their thesis and teaching classes and then coaching on the, they're given about 125% of your day and they go home and dead beat, but when season's over, you just don't have any time.

- The women who were involved at least in the intercollegiate sports program I'm making an awful lot of sacrifices in order to get some rewards?

- I would say so. Another thing to talk about grad system, is we have a lot of turnover in graduate system. They finished their master's and go on and get other good positions. And every team I've competed on, I've had a different hockey coach every year a different volleyball coach every year and a different softball coach every year. And so you have trouble in, in building that, our team and keeping a good attitude going from year to year. I think that now that we're settling down a little more here at KU, I think the university has been very wise in some of their hiring and that we're beginning to get some continuity with our program and establishing the general program. Part of that came from the fact that KU's chosen to host a volleyball tournament two years ago. And I think that accounts for a lot of our interest in all of our sports volleyball, of course, it really gave a boost to, but like Shop's said, that the field hockey and stuff, people are becoming more interested because we got some fairly good publicity on it. And it was a pretty good tournament. And I think this brought a lot of interest and, brought a lot of the men to our side, the guys said, Hey, this is pretty neat stuff. And I think it was a real good PR thing for KU. And I think that's one thing that's helped our program and helps some of the programs surrounding us it was that particular tournament.

- Or so I think that one of the, one of the big problems that hasn't really the jury is still out on is a question of who is gonna administer the women's properly? And at present time, most of the administration has carried out through the physical education departments at various colleges and high school, but there is some thoughts that maybe it should be done through the intercollegiate program that the men have set up through it. Another possibility is through an entirely separate and independent set up. And there is some movement in that direction now in some of our college and universities. And so the administration of this thing has not been decided, and I think that will make a big difference who administers the program and how it's financed, and whether we really a wholeheartedly behind it or not. And this is all gonna be something that would be decided, I suspect in the next four or five years, maybe not permanently, but for the time being anyhow.

- Same thing could be said for the intramural program. Many, many universities in the nation have separate intramural departments. Whereas we are still under the department of physical education. We weren't our intramural department although our funding is separate.

- Do you folks have any druthers about how you'd like to see some things in the future in regard to women in intercollegiate, intramural sports? I see there's some issues to be discussed, are there?

- I don't think I'd like to see the women go under the men's athletic department. I think we've stayed away from them because of the fears of scholarships and things such as that. We've seen some of their mistakes, as far as that's concerned, I think it's only right that they'd go on their own, if once the financing and once the facilities, and stuff is available, then that takes a long time to build up.

- I think I'm gonna agree with Shop. I would like to see us, stay as separate entity right now. I think that some of the thinking is different. And I think that, I don't know what called them this, but women's attitudes are different and women's athletics are completely different than men in a lot of cases. And I'd liked it to see him stay that way. I think there's a lot of advantages to women's athletics that the men don't have and of course, vice versa.

- At the high school level, why this is been taken over by the state high school activity association in almost all States and where this was done. They brought in a woman to administer the program under the director, or the direction of the, executive secretary. I suspect that this could be done if we were taken over by the intercollegiate athletic department. So that they could still maintain their individual. I'm not, I'm not real sure that the women wanna do that. I think one of the problems that the NCAA has been talking about recently is whether women will be allowed to compete in the same sports programs as men. For example, if you have a good golfer, can they play on a university golf team?

- I know it's happening in the high school level, starting to happen in the college too. Okay, maybe here's a good place to break.

- The Metropolitan Opera has been broadcasting its performances for the last 41 years. These broadcasts have been heard all across country allowing people in every state to share on the musical extravaganzas presented in New York City. K-A-N-U has been carrying these live broadcasts for many years and is doing so again, this year. The metropolitan opera broadcasts begin at 1:00 PM every Saturday from now until the middle of April. And now here's Milton Cross

- Do a feminist perspective on KMU. Here, once again is our moderator Walter Smith.

- Welcome back to the feminist perspective. Tonight we're talking about women in sports and I'd like to invite your calls on the subject to 864-4530. We've been talking about women in kind of competitive sports situations intramural competitive sports and intercollegiate competitive sports. Are there some other reasons for women getting into athletic go, programs?

- I think that the attitude toward people has changed and I know that more and more people are participating in like in tennis, and golf, paddle ball, is a new thing that a lot of women are undertaking when they can get into the handball course. That's a real big thing now, and jogging, and the fitness programs that are offered here at the university. Because it doesn't seem to be as close at such a stigma anymore to, to rather to have a few muscles and to be in good physical condition. I think people are becoming, in general, more health conscious and are thinking in terms of heart attacks and their cardiovascular system and this type of thing, which is what we all deal with every day and are more conscious of. And I think women too, are taking this attitude and people are a lot more permissive about it now. I see a girl in sweat clothes running down and they'd go, my, what is this? It's not unladylike, but it's considered, almost a neat thing to do now. And I'd say that this attitude changes that more, just recreational sports you're doing this just because you wanna do them type thing, than there ever was before.

- It seems to me that there's more of a personal emphasis on health attitudes and physical fitness that a lot of women become involved in sports, not for the competitiveness of it, but just for physical fitness reasons, maybe it's to lose weight, maybe it's to gain muscle tone, or if it's just have fun. It seems to me that when women come to KU, they don't realize that there are facilities and programs available to them. They become involved in sports on a personal level. Like they may go out jogging, on an individual level. And that the women's rec association has to kind of recruit to get people involved in the intramural level. There seems to be an emphasis in high school, on men in sport. So when the men come to the university they seek out the facilities that are available for them. But women just don't realize that there are facilities available for them on an intramural level.

- One thing, if we find, and that there are a few rare women who do quite well in professional sports. We have two former members of physical education department who are now with the professional golf circuit. Marilyn Smith and Judy Kimball, are doing quite well. Karen McGee and Mrs. Karen McGee in Kansas City, quite frequently wins not only the Kansas City Tournament but the Missouri tournament in golf. So we do have a lot of girls do very well at the state and national levels in both the amateur and professional sports.

- Besides golf, what other kinds of opportunities are there for women in professional sports?

- Tennis is one, especially in, certain areas of the country. Tennis is very, very big and it's, there are a lot of women in professional tennis now. Last summer, they had television telecasts from somewhere. I can't remember exactly where in England but they had a big tournament over there, it's Wimbledon, I didn't know where to go.

- I have that Kansas State that singles girls champion as a sophomore and one of my physical education classes at East. And Karen plays every day. And they have a racket club in Kansas City. But there are a lot of young kids players in that particular area are coming up. And a lot of them are thinking in terms of the professional circuit, and actually making living, or trying to make living at like, at this type of thing. And I don't think a lot of people really thought of it that much before, but this is, I think, like I said, younger kids that are sophomore in high school thinking along this line.

- Right now, they're waiting for a woman to get into professional sports it's pretty much on our own. We don't have a feeder program at all. I just don't read that often about the women on the sports page. Any reactions to that or why that situation is?

- There's no money right now. There's just so much sports that's publicized. And like, you look at what is in there and it's professional football, basketball. Now I saw, like in this type of thing that is hard, I guess the papers don't think it's gonna be in that much general interest, unless you have something unbelievably unique. And perhaps you had a big space because the hockey story didn't come through, it was late on the wire. So then maybe you run this a second. Maybe their flukes, the ones we get in, I don't know. But I guess they don't think that it's that much general interest or maybe there was a concern in the past about offending some people who didn't think it was feminine. This might be part of the reason that that's has been held out in the past. That's just all personal opinion but those might be some possibilities. Claire.

- I think that probably covers it pretty well.

- I, there was a time back a number of years ago that when it was thought to be unfeminine to participate in masculine, and you develop masculine characteristics when you participated in sports and the women who participated were thought to be mannish and so on. Well, I feel the girls, a few of the people got their ideas along this line. I suspect from watching the Russian women weight throwers, or the Discus, and shot butters, and they weren't, they were rather managed. But if they would have, instead of that was the Russian gymnast who were very feminine and very attractive. I think they would get a little different idea of the way that women can look when they participate in sports.

- Mr. Shank, you're right up my alley with the comments. I don't know how many times I've heard this type of thing. And like, for example we're talking about facilities at Robinson. We just got through a rather wonderful donation in universal gym, which is a weight set. And a lot of girls, it's a good type of way to workout. And if you're talking in terms of training for sport because you don't have to readjust them where you're gonna drop them on your feet on this type of thing, it's a real nice machine. And a lot of girls do workout with weights for their different sports. And it's not a bad idea just in general. And I know people at home are just recalling from the thought of their daughter out, having a swashbuckling bullet, but it's really not true. You can gain up to, I think, 40% of your strength before you have any change in muscle size at all. I personally, I've worked out on weights and I don't have a mustache or a beard and I stand about 5'5 and about a hundred and whatever, no about 115-20. I don't know, we have two gentlemen here that could, maybe think I look like a, I dunno, alligator wrestler from Florida but whatever their opinion is. But I think that you can, you can be active and you can do these types of things. And I think it's healthy for you. I've seen lots of little 80 pound girls that marry football players and have 10, 15 pound babies. And by the time the kids six months old they're putting them in a wheelbarrow carrying them around the house. And I mean, this is all the truth because, they just haven't taken care of themselves and build up what they have. And I think these are things we're gonna have to consider. You're talking about, three or four sacks of groceries in and out of small foreign cars, plus kids up and down and laundry up and down stairs. And these are things that women really have to think about. And then when they're 40 and their husband comes home and says, Hey, dinner and Chacha, she says, forget it. What day I had today. I think these are things that women would have to consider and I really think that our programs can really help them in a lot of long on this line. My soap box is serious. Had to say that tonight

- How, how do well other women or men react to a willing participant in athletics?

- I think it really varies. There's still sports where men, some men kind of wonder about the women participants and others like swimming. I think in a lot of it's through the Olympics and the success of American swimmers have had particularly the women and that pretty much now is considered, it was all right for women to participate in swimming or gymnastics or figure skating, but field hockey? That's pretty brutal out there. Maybe those women are a little different. And I think just with time, I think that will change because, you know, if you come out and watch our field hockey team, you'll finds some very beautiful women. And I think a lot of men have found that out. They have quite of following now.

- Field hockey is one sport too, that it's a rather unique to the United States and that we're the only country in the whole world that has more women participants in it, than men. And in the Olympics it's men that participate in field hockey

- Almost all together. I don't know that there was a woman field hockey team in the Olympics. It was on, I think, all man.

- It's interesting too, in a sport like field hockey that looks so brutal. There's really a lot of finesse involved and you're talking about some really good stick work, which isn't, slapping somebody in the shins it's, get around a small ball, move down the field in this type of thing, whereas to spectator who just sees it for the first time, she's, they're killing each other. And this isn't ours too. In fact, the better the team, the fewer, bruises, shins that you have in this type of thing. And I think this was true with a lot of sports, like basketball and volleyball. There's not so much, brute strength with the women because they just haven't had it in the past. Even your more advanced athletes like what is Diedricksen that used to play about everything. It wasn't a strong person by any means, but just, you know, had good technique and a lot of finesse, I think this is one thing that women's athletics emphasize more than say strength. And so I think there's been some misconception on that part. You know, I think it's been technique.

- Also in a sport like volleyball where you don't have any bodily content, I think is, one is another reason why, they like, and also watching the Olympics this year with so many women's volleyball teams. For sure has come to me, not considered this by some people is, not feminine.

- A lot of people has attitudes and some not.

- But some sports like basketball, sometimes they, there are some men that stoked to, Oh, wow, she's too tough.

- How about the women? How do they react, react to each other? Like when you're organizing an intramural basketball team .

- As the men's reaction. And just kind of depends on what they have been brought up with. If their family has kind of frowned on it, then they kind of tend to go on in a lot of cases. It's just who they're with, I would say.

- I think it's well accepted. There seems to be good spirit in my own dorm with the team that I'm on. We have support from the girls in the dorm. We do have followers that come and watch us play and cheer us on. And I think the following takes its toll on the way we play too. Since we do have some support, we enjoy playing and we try a little bit harder. We feel like we're not only playing for ourselves but for, you know, we're representing the people in the dorm or whatever living group you live in.

- You just brought to mind something that might be a real curve ball here tonight. But how about some of the things like cheerleaders and majorettes and all that sort of thing. That's at least somewhat of a participation in sports.

- The private schools do have them. Who was it we played with this year, Shop?

- Sunset Hill, when we played them in field hockey, they brought not only the. The team, they brought their cheerleaders, six of them to cheer. We played a high school, for a scrimmage game and they had all great following up. I bet they had 25, 30 people that.

- We have more game, in a high school game. We do from the whole university of Kansas and was a home game. They had more kids there from their high school than we did watching us.

- But we beat them anywhere.

- I was fortunate to get to attend the Olympics in Munich this past fall and saw a number of those fine volleyball teams play down. Believe me, those women's volleyball teams in the Olympics. I could probably beat any men's team around this part of the country. They, they were terrific. And I suppose most of you saw those on television. So you know how fun they were. I also was sat right across the mile on a train from Cathy Rigby, the, our best gymnast, women's gymnast. And she is small as you probably know, about 4'8 or 10 and, and married a football player. I saw recently that one of the professional football player. So you were...

- Shelby ready!

- I think any good women athlete is respected. No matter what her her event or fee, whatever her sport is if she's really talented, she's got it. Then I don't think that there's many men that will put her down because of it because if she's really knows what she's doing, there, I have never, I've never seen anybody cut down a very good woman athlete, nursing a man do that.

- How about at the national intercollegiate level? We mentioned a little bit ago, AIAW, what about the Olympics, NCAA, AAU Pan-American games, things like that, are things changing in this area for women?

- There's a very interesting competition taking place this summer in Moscow, Russia for university women and men both it's a university athletes, and there's gonna be a strong contingent of athletes from America's over. And they are selecting at the present time. I think if just selected the women's basketball team to go over there and represent the United States. And it's called, Fisu. Don't ask me that numbers, but I think there'll be a quite a contingent in track and field, and basketball and several of the other sports representing the United States, as well as many other countries that world over in Moscow, or something.

- What about NCAA or organizations at that level?

- There's very little in NCAA, as far as I know. Don't know that there's any competition though. Right now, there's been a case or two where the, some of the women wanna play on the men's teams and that I'm not sure how those are coming out but there hasn't been much that, but there have been a good little competition in AAU circles, where the women have played AAU basketball and track and fields, and so on. And there are a number of Women's track and field clubs throughout United States. We always have a number of women athletes running at the Kansas relays, for example.

- Yeah, there's a lot in AAU has done a lot for women's track and field, particularly. They've held our national competition indoors and outdoors for, I don't know how many years but for quite a while. And it had, for instance, this year they had that's the Olympic stepping stone as they call it, for women because it's the only place they really do get the high competition right before the Olympics. And matter of fact, everybody that qualified at the AAU went on to the Olympic trials this year.

- How about the training facilities and so forth? For women, say the Olympics, something like that, cause there's still the disparity between men's and women's facilities, coaches, and so forth.

- I don't think of that level, I think that if you're good enough to get there usually fine. So they, someone gives you something. One of the American gymnast practicing in a Lutheran Church somewhere had her, I don't know if she was, being run, even set up, but one of the gals that had done some practicing there for lack of facilities. But I think once you get to that level, I think that you like Shop says, you have the respect, when someone does accommodate you. There's a lot of people that will back amateur athletes and really help them. You know your gonna start just out of generosity, cause they're really interested and I think this comes into play a lot

- That's another thing and especially women they have the difficulty of sponsoring themselves. They paid to go to all the track meets and stuff out of their own pocket. You know, everything comes out of their own pocket for maybe the chance to go to Olympics and stuff. Of course, that's the way it's supposed to be with the men too, for the AEU.

- You're talking about a lot of travel and stuff, like maybe a attract me in California and then another weekend on Missouri and then maybe one in Texas if you're clamoring inside and calls, you know you've got some real problems there and it's a lot of money.

- And what about our volleyball team that just went out to Utah? How did they.

- It was student Santa Maria, right?

- No, actually it wasn't. It was, we got the, the money to fly. They had the, well, they almost had to fly because it would have taken so many days to drive out and drive back, that they would've missed quite a bit of school. So all we did was we went to the alumni association and told them

- It wasn't the endowment association.

- Endowment association, yeah, right. Endowment, and they gave us money to send the team out fly out and then.

- But as far as your regular expenses are in your collegiate programs financed by a $9,000 grand from the student Senate with the exception of maybe a little bit from endowment association or something like that. Well, a little bit different question rather. Are there enough women participants in sports to make it worthwhile, to try to make some changes we've talked about perhaps. So more coaches being are being paid a little bit more so that they can being paid at all so that they're not completely just volunteering out of the goodness of their heart and having some facilities and things like that, but are there enough women around who like this sort of thing?

- I think the attitude is coming along all the time that more and more people are stepping in. But I think even if you just have a few good people I think it would be worth giving some facilities, on a good coach. If you're talking about quality people, I don't believe in just running a lot of people through a program for the sake of saying, look how large our program is. But I think in the past we've had quality people that have been sincerely interested in the handmade the sacrifices, coming to 7:30 in the morning practices because that was one time you could schedule a gym for volleyball tournament, and this and that. Coming in on rainy days with sock over your hockey sticks hitting the ball around in the gym and stuff like that. So I think that there, we've had interest in the past when we haven't had good things. And I think that it's only gonna continue and it looks to me from what I can see, the kids only improve. And I'm thinking it's very worthwhile.

- Not only that, there's more than just, right now, we just support like, one team for every sport. There has been interest in the past. We can't, we do cut our teams, and they're kids are really interested in competing on the intercollegiate level.

- We just couldn't afford to carry.

- We can't afford to take them on all the trips, we can't afford to their lodging, or the food, or the transportation. And a lot of the university is only surrounding areas are having A and as well as a B team to compete. And I see this is something that's good because you may have an A team that has experienced for instance, this year in our volleyball team we may have maybe two people that come back three, at the most. And they were almost all juniors and seniors and someone would be doing their student teaching next year

- Or is this just points up the need for facilities points up to the real need for this completion of the second phase of Robinson Gymnasium. And we have, we have needed it. We have needed that badly, not only for intramurals but an intercollegiate athletics for women but just for recreational purposes as well. So this is one of the things which we really need desperately on this campus is a completion of that second phase of Robinson Gymnasium.

- I'd like to back up Mr. Shank on that too. I think this is something that we've talked about and of course we've all been on committees for, but this is true when you're talking in terms of supporting a competitive program, men's and women's, you're talking about an organized in the rural program and then just a plain recreational program. If you feel like, you know, shelving the books for one night and playing paddle ball and you come down and the course are full, you have to sign up a month in advance, or if you wanna swim and it's not the night to swim, and it was cold outside, even your golf clothes rot, and your tennis racket you go out and freeze. I mean, we're talking about things that actually happened to people and this is the type of thing we need. We need a pool for recreation and we need one for competition because these are just the types of things that are coming along. And if we're gonna provide for all the interests of people, we have to have these different facilities. And of course now in the past we've tried to give a type of something, I think maybe a competition and intramurals, and then, well if the gym's open guys, and you're there fine. And this is a really hard thing to have to decide but this is what happens. And so you've got to have more facilities so people can come down and compete on the level that they wanna compete. Because right now we're offering supposedly three areas, your recreation, your intramurals and your competition, but, recreation is what suffers in anybody's program. It seems, which is really sad which is maybe what we need more of.

- Of course, one thing maybe she'd point down is that all these areas come after the instructional phase, which is number one priority in the facilitator. And for example, like the swimming class is close out the morning, the second day or the evening of the first day of enrollment. You can't get in a swimming class if you're not a senior just about and enroll first. And there's no other times in the day that we can schedule swimming classes. They're just no more time.

- Not only indoor facilities are suffering, but now that they began building the student health center down by Robinson, our outdoor facilities are just closing up just as fast. We have in the fall, there's so many men football teams that now they have to move them over to the other side of Iowa which is, it's hard to coordinate, keep a program going when you have, your fields here, there, and everywhere, scattered all around. And it is, we're just another, we're building more tennis courts down by Robinson. There's hardly a few fields left and it's, and even that land is being confiscated for more and more buildings, really.

- Were in problem too, like Shop and I put hockey right next to the football game. And this sounds humorous when you think in terms of a hockey ball running over in the middle of a flight football game, but about the time somebody does a little tap dance on that and breaks a leg or really gets hurt. And then we're gonna start realizing just how to pile on top of each other. Where some hockey player gets hit me with the football or colitis some of these people. And these were funny accidents if nobody gets hurt but you're talking about serious safety hazards too. When you start, getting a program when you've got just more and more than your facilities can handle.

- Let's go back a little bit to the high school, Nancy you're student teaching now, and Jan you just got out of high school. What, what sort of things are the high school kids?

- Well, my high school have fairly active girls athletic association or GAA. We had inner school teams, we had intramural, sessions and things. We also had recreational facilities, but it seemed like the inter-school team suffered because lack of of coaching. Our coaches were completely volunteer. They were most of the Phys Ed teachers or the GAA advisors. It did take a lot of time. There was a lot of practicing involved and many times, the people that were coaching just did not have the time. And it wasn't more sacrificing other things since they didn't get any sort of financial aid from it at all, that was just, it was an incentive but they gave as best they could know at the time that they have. But I did come from a fairly active high school with emphasis on sports. So we had a pretty well pretty good program for girls. But it did, it played very much second fiddle to the boys athletic opportunities.

- Well, at Shawnee Mission East, they have three women physical education teachers and all of them coach some sport the gymnastics team just won the district there. And so they have women's gymnastics, they have women's track and field, and swimming, and they have a volleyball team and basketball. And I think I pretty well. They've had tennis and they've had it in the fall. And they're talking about a golf too. I don't know if they've had that before or not. And I think it kind of comes and goes if you have a good golfer, but we're kind of playing the same fill too. It's if facilities are a major problem, they're a problem in instructional classes, we had an assembly right in my third hour basketball class, there was no other place to go. We had taken the first hour to the wrestling room because we had a band for pictures in their first hour then the third hour assembly. So by third hour, there's no place to move them because both off the gym fulfill, the restroom was filled. The halls were filled, we just had no place. So we had to have him sit in the locker room and I had to give him just a wonderful lecture on basketball rules that they just really loved. But this is the type of problem we run into even during a day and scheduling. And I think again, scheduling is a key problem and the fact that the people are being stretched so thin because everybody's coaching or assistant coaching probably two or three things. And you're talking in terms of coming early like either splitting, either swim in the morning or swim in the afternoon, tennis is the same way. And the track and field is the same way, it's when the kids can get there. So you've got a gal come, maybe six in the morning and maybe come and you stay until 4:35 at night, and you start talking about that. And that is a really long day, and not to mention teaching in between and being a nice person. So I would say they're overstretched a little bit.

- So we can say the same sort of things that the college and high school level that there's lots of interests on the parts of women in intercollegiate, not necessarily included but intramural and recreational kind of activities but the facilities and personnel budgets are really overtaxed to meet the demand.

- I think one thing that would help women in any level of collegiate sports would be a little bit more public recognition. It seems there's very little coverage of any women's sports, whether it's the intercollegiate teams or the intramural level. And I think a little bit more publicity citywide or with KU publications could help the sports program here at KU.

- Something too, I might suggest is that people would come to intramural games or are come to some of our, collegiate games. I think you'd roll and join. A lot of times, there are a lot more excited professional life likes, where everything is you always know what's gonna happen. Like I think baseball more is, can really be boring because there's only so many possibilities of what happens. You know, they've got it figured on computer the guy's batting average and more is probably gonna hit them. They've got the fielders average figure. So you know that, what's all the possibilities, but we're still at the level where it's like, high school and college games where an upset comes and you don't know. And I think that's, what's exciting about sport because when you play you do the very best you can at that particular moment. And maybe it's not your best day, and you just, don't always perform but I think this is one thing that's really good. And I think people would enjoy it. I know people well, a lot of guys told me that and what the reasoning behind this is but they'd really rather watch women's teams participate. And, but they really do enjoy it from either, the extent you are the athletic way, but they they do once they watch it, like guys would coached younger girls softball teams, once they get to they really go wild, they will enjoy. And, and I think, it's like, try to like it. I think it's, it's a really good thing.

- So let's see, if somebody tonight has found out that there is a woman's sports program at KU, they can contact the women's physical education department at Robinson gymnasium,

- And talk to Claire McElroy.

- And talked to Claire McElroy, 864-4076 and get more information about the kind of things that are available to them here. I'd certainly like to thank all you for being on the show tonight. And I'd like to make some announcements about some upcoming events on Thursday night, this week February 8th at the union, the Commission on the Status of Women, to stat, is sponsoring a program on alternative life lifestyles. That's Thursday evening at 7:30 in the big eight room in the union. Next Tuesday, February 13th, you may be interested that the ERA is being considered at the legislature into Pico. There will be hearing starting at 2:45, if you'd like some more information about the ERA and would be interested in attending the hearings. You could call Mary Mitchelson. She's the president of the commission on the status of women at 864-4088. And also you can course call the Dean of women's office for information about that 864-3552. And I'd also like to announce I've been handed this, that cake.

- That's is a big one.

- Kate, you will be playing K-State and women's basketball at the field house Wednesday night at 7:30. Thank you.

- Listen again, next Monday at seven, for a feminist perspective, presented in cooperation with the office of the Dean of Women at the University of Kansas.