Opinion - A league of their own?
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Article RatingThere's a double standard around these parts. A big one.
A shade over seven years ago, Erika Woods locked her chin-strap in place, marched into Mechanicsburg's Friday night football game against Carlisle and lofted an extra point through the uprights. It was a momentous occasion.
Five years ago, Julia DeLuca wrestled against boys in Carlisle's 100-pound weight class. It was a major step for girls looking to compete in sports where there are no viable female equivalents. Proponents of Title IX -- which partially calls for equal athletic opportunities for students, regardless of gender -- saw a dramatic victory.
This season, as has been the trend for the last decade, a couple of local boys suited up for their schools' field hockey teams. And some people absolutely hate it.
"[I will never play a boy] as long as I'm here, and if the school board says I have to let a boy play, that's fine -- I'll have coached my last game at Camp Hill," Lions coach Anna Baldini said.
Problem is, the boys playing in The Sentinel's coverage area -- Mike Acela, Travis Dechene and Adam Alexander at Big Spring, and John Schwartzer at Cedar Cliff -- are completely within the rules.
A 27-year-old injunction against the PIAA prevents the association from "establishing any rules or regulations that would prohibit boys from playing or practicing on girls' teams, or girls playing or practicing on boys' teams."
Not only that, but the Title IX provisions prohibiting sex discrimination in athletics, which have done so much to advance women's opportunities to play sports, apply here, too.
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 says that "No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid."
Local high schools receive federal funds for special education programs. But that applicability only makes it doubly frustrating for opponents.
"Title IX is there for a reason, and it wasn't meant for the advantageous affects of guys," Baldini said. "I, and other coaches that don't want boys playing (field hockey), are not pro-women. This isn't some giant women's-lib issue. We're pro-right."
Which is why there should be a boys' high school hockey league.
Baldini is uncomfortable with boys taking away girls' spots on the field, and she's right. Any boy playing in a game is one less girl running around.
So give the boys their own league.
Some coaches are upset about the boys' physical advantages, and they're right.
Neither Big Spring nor Cedar Cliff made districts this season (the Bulldogs finished eighth in the Keystone, the Colts fourth in the Commonwealth), but Central Dauphin fared better.
Behind the play of goalie Gabe Grab, a member of the U.S. National Men's under-16 team, the Rams finished 12-5-2 overall and grabbed the third Commonwealth playoff spot for districts. Central Dauphin lost in the first round of the District 3-AAA playoffs Tuesday.
"CD had an average team, but a fabulous goalie," Cedar Cliff coach Cristal Price said. "It's not like the coach went recruiting or anything, but when the girls saw him diving to stop balls in practice, they said, 'We want him!' "
So form a new league. Let boys throw themselves in front of other boys' shots.
Today, some female players feel intimidated by the boys.
"I don't like playing against them, and I don't know how I'd feel playing with one," Camp Hill junior Jess Hollinger, who was felled by a boy's shot in a game, said of the boys. "I know I don't like playing against them."
In September, Carlisle's school district decided not to let an eighth-grader at Lamberton Middle School play field hockey because he posed a danger to the girls.
A new league would let boys muscle each other for position and splinter each other's shins on followthroughs.
Every year, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association hears more and more about the evils of boys playing "girls'" field hockey, and every year the organization thinks less and less about helping create a place for the boys to play.
"This issue (of cross-gender sports) only comes up around field hockey season," PIAA spokeswoman Melissa Nash Mertz said. "But when it comes up, a new league isn't ever brought up."
That stinks.
Worldwide, field hockey may well be more popular than soccer. Men's field hockey was introduced into the Olympics 72 years before women's field hockey was. The game is played extensively by men almost everywhere but in the United States, where male players are siphoned into sparse co-ed community leagues.
There were only seven boys' high school field hockey teams in the country this season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. There were 1,646 female teams in the U.S.
The federation recognized only 194 male high school players -- in California, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont -- exactly 60,543 fewer than the number of recognized girls.
Unfortunately, the Mid-Penn is not likely to help change those numbers any time soon. A boys' league here faces stiff opposition from people like Carlisle High School Athletic Director Dave Eavenson, who was reluctant to even discuss the avenues through which a new league might be formed.
"I don't want to give anybody ideas about how to even do that," he said. "There is no boys' (high school) field hockey in Pennsylvania."
Baldini, for one, would love to knock that on its head.
"My brother was a heck of a field hockey player, and I have coached guys' field hockey -- all the way to the Keystone gold medal," she said. "I am not opposed to boys playing in their own leagues. And I would be so helpful to any guys wanting to form their own league. I'd think it was great."
Hey, every guy playing in his own league is one less disrupting the girls' game.
And Cumberland Valley coach Patrick Weigle is sure that the participation numbers would be there.
"Right now there are not enough boys for a league, but if you just said, 'Hey, we're starting a team next year,' and put up some fliers, at a school like CV you'd get 50 or 100 boys come out. And I guarantee you that some of them would like it.
"It would be like lacrosse -- in five years every school would have a boys' field hockey team."
Acela said that he would happily leave the girls' team for one of his own, and he agrees that the participation would be there -- assuming slight alterations to the attire.
"I'd definitely like to see a boys' league," he said. "I think there would be enough guys who'd want to play.
"I think the uniform would make a difference, though. Guys wouldn't want to wear the skirt."
