Commentary : It’s National Women in Sports Day : For First Time, Their Contribution Is Being Recognized

Today is the first National Women in Sports Day.

It is a day set aside to recognize the accomplishments of women who are athletes, coaches and administrators, owners of professional teams, sports journalists and sports commentators. It also recognizes women who volunteer their time year after year to raise money and lend their expertise and support to grass roots sports programs.

Throughout our nation, colleagues of mine are celebrating this day. From the White House and the halls of Congress, to the State House in Sacramento and the Amateur Athletic Foundation in Los Angeles, women are leading the way today in gathering together women and men who care about sport, and its impact on our lives.

They are seeking change, as well as recognition of the vital role that women must play in the world of sport. To their voices, I add mine. We are joined today in a call for action. What we are calling for is renewed dedication, and commitment of energy and creativity to the teaching of sport and cultivation of leadership among women.

Fortunately, there are those who, for years, have worked to create opportunities in sport. I am a beneficiary of such work. My career in sport has encompassed a vast array of opportunities. I have had the opportunity to compete as a rower at Connecticut College and in the Olympic Games, to serve on the Executive Board of the U.S. Olympic Committee, as well as the Boards of Vesper Boat Club and the U.S. Rowing Assn. I worked as a vice president for the L.A. Olympic Organizing Village at the University of Southern California. Now, I am a vice president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. Most recently, I was elected to membership on the International Olympic Committee, the organization that is trustee of the Olympic Games. From these experiences, I know that we have barely scratched the surface in understanding what sport has to offer.

Take for example the area of coaching. Most children are coached by people whose only training is their own experience as children. The techniques being used are decades old. And since women often lack childhood sports experience, the notion of coaching youngsters may not even occur to many--usually because there’s no place to learn how, and few, if any, models to draw upon. We must find ways to develop better methods of coaching and to make such knowledge available to women and others who work with our children. Administration and organizational skills are also necessary to put sports facilities to better use in our communities and schools. Playing fields lie empty because there is no skilled adult leadership to support meaningful sports experiences for our youth.

As a black woman, I was certainly not in the mainstream of sport in America. Thus, I had a different perspective on sport. I brought an enthusiasm and perhaps naivete that led me to challenge the norms and to take a stand for athletes’ rights. Think of all the other distinctive views available to us as we take sport in the United States and the world into the next century.

We must use all of the energy and imagination we can find if we hope to successfully address the problems besetting sport, or to take advantage of the benefits it offers us. We can’t afford to ignore all that women can do for sport, nor all that sport can do to benefit our lives. What a shame it would be to waste such resources. It doesn’t matter if we are addressing the troubled state of some collegiate sports, or the lack of opportunity for the kid on the block or whether we are looking at athletic achievement at the highest levels, or the learning of sport in our neighborhood parks and schools.

Sport is a lifetime experience. It has profound effects on our families and communities. As we learn more about how to serve our children, we will learn more about how to serve ourselves. Such action requires the diverse leadership skills of women, as well as men, as we take sport in the United States and the world into the next century.

Throughout history, women have contributed to the culture of sport. In the first modern Olympic Games, celebrated in 1896, women were not allowed to compete. One woman who, nevertheless, dared to run in the marathon was removed from the race before the finish. She was in the right place at the wrong time. She knew what she wanted to accomplish, but she was denied that opportunity.

There are many women, however, whose achievements in sport were not to be denied. They are women, who like their male counterparts, are special because they are champions: Althea Gibson, Babe Didrickson, Wilma Rudolph, Wyomia Tyus, Billie Jean King, Flo Hyman, Cheryl Miller, Nancy Lopez, Martina Navratilova, Debi Thomas, to name a few. Their records speak for themselves.

What’s missing now, as in ancient times, is not the extraordinary individual, but a concerted effort by current leaders to recruit and train future generations of coaches, administrators, journalists and others in sport. It takes courage to compete, and also to develop new career pathways that will tap the talent of women.