Girls Muscling In on Boys’ Teams : High schools: Foes of mixed-gender teams say girls’ athletics would suffer. Proponents say anything less is discrimination. State officials will take up the proposal in February.

Erica Haskell, a freshman at Nevada Union High School in Nevada City, Calif., wants to play for the boys’ junior varsity soccer team, but the California Interscholastic Federation, citing its rules that govern high school athletics in the state, won’t allow it.

Haskell, who has played soccer with boys on youth league teams for six years, doesn’t understand why she isn’t allowed to compete with the boys in high school.

If she can compete on that level, why shouldn’t she be allowed to?

That’s a question CIF officials recently have been forced to consider because of regulations proposed by the state Department of Education that would allow girls to play on boys’ teams if they are talented enough.

Current CIF rules allow girls to compete on boys’ teams if there is no equivalent sport offered the girls, which means, for example, girls may play on the football team but not the boys’ basketball or tennis teams.

If the state Board of Education, which has tabled the issue until February, approves the regulations, it could lead to a situation in which the best female athletes could eschew girls’ teams to compete with the boys.

It’s a scenario that pleases the groups that have been pressuring the state Board of Education to comply with a sex equity law passed by the state Legislature in 1982, but frightens CIF officials who believe such a rule would damage girls’ athletics.

CIF officials, who hadn’t seen the draft of the regulations until a few weeks before they were considered by the board last May, asked the Board of Education to delay its vote on the regulations. The postponement gives the CIF a chance to inform its membership, composed of the 10 sections and 1,146 schools in the secondary school districts of California. Friday, the CIF will broach the issue for the first time at its Federated Council meeting in Palm Springs.

Although the CIF has no official position, its officials do not hesitate to argue against the proposed rule, which contradicts the organization’s bylaws.

“Basically, if all the superstar females are on boys’ teams . . . the girls’ teams necessarily become second-best and female athletes no longer have role models that they can admire,” said Margaret Davis, CIF associate commissioner.

“You’ve got lots of men and women who have spent years building girls’ athletics into the premier position that it now enjoys, and with one regulation you can relegate those high-level teams into the also-rans.”

The groups favoring the regulations, including the state Commission on the Status of Women, the Southern California Women’s Law Center and the California Chapter of the National Organization for Women, believe it’s a simple matter of preventing sexual discrimination.

“If a girl can be competitive and get on the boys’ team, then it should be her choice whether or not to participate on that team,” said Abby Leibman, managing director of the Women’s Law Center. “The issue has sort of resolved itself into a question of who is it that decides where a girl participates. Is it the girl and her parents or is it the monolithic entity of CIF?

“We clearly come down on the side of the girls to be the ones to make a choice.”

Erica Haskell’s father, Eben, realizes his daughter might not benefit from playing four years of high school soccer with the boys instead of the girls. But he said she wants to play with the boys because friends from her youth league are on the team.

“If she played boys’ soccer for four years, she would end up to be a fairly average player on the boys’ team. If she played on the girls’ team, she would be one of the best players,” he said, agreeing that Erica’s potential might not be realized on the boys’ team.

“But why are we forced to consider something like that? Why can’t the team be picked on the basis of talent?

“There are some players on the boys’ team who aren’t as good as she is. She is facing her first example of the sex discrimination in her life and it’s hard to explain.”

When he learned of the CIF’s rule against girls playing on boys’ teams, Haskell contacted the women’s rights lawyers and offered to have Erica forgo girls’ soccer a year to take it to court.

The lawyers with whom he spoke, including some at the Women’s Law Center in Santa Monica, have declined to take the case at the moment.

Erica is the best example of someone who feels discriminated against by CIF rules. And her image is invoked regularly by the groups favoring a change.

The groups also stress that the issue they are addressing is only a part of the set of the sex equity regulations the Board of Education is considering. They contend that by delaying the process, the CIF is holding up regulations in areas such as sexual harassment, counseling, course access and marital and parental status.

The only significant opposition to the regulations, which are mandated by the Sex Equity in Education Act, a law passed in 1982 and amended in 1986 by the state Legislature, is against a subsection of Article 3 of the draft regulations, that states: “A female student shall be permitted to try out for and participate on an all-male team if she meets the objective, competitive skill requirements to participate, even though a female team exists in the same sport.”

By giving the best girl athletes the chance to perform at the highest level, the proponents of the regulation say, the system is affording them the opportunity to participate at the level where most of the public’s attention is directed. Some argue that because girls’ sports do not receive as much attention as the boys’, girls get the impression that they aren’t as important as boys.

“Don’t let anyone kid you. There is still no equality in athletics,” said Pat Towner, executive director of the state Commission on the Status of Women. “We are far from equality. . . .”

Sheri Ross, the girls’ athletic director at El Toro High School, doesn’t agree that the girls’ athletic program is second-rate, but she believes it would be if the top girls were allowed to play for boys’ teams.

Ross, who is also the girls’ swimming coach at El Toro, representing the California Athletic Directors Assn., was among those who spoke against the proposed rule at a public hearing in Sacramento in July. She told the board that allowing the best girls to abandon the teams created for them would seriously damage the girls’ athletic program. Not only would the best athletes be gone, but the athletes at the next skill level would no longer have anyone to push them, Ross said.

Ross’ opinion is shared by many involved in girls’ athletics. But because the CIF has yet to notify its members about the proposed rule change, few coaches know of the issue.

Ross and others say athletic programs for girls in high school have been markedly improved by Title IX, part of the Education Act Amendments of 1972, and the efforts of the men and women who direct the programs.

“They talk about terrible abuses as though it’s going on now and it really isn’t,” said Barbara Wilson, a former associate superintendent in the Tustin Unified School District who is working as a consultant for CIF on this issue. “Girls are being beautifully taken care of in high school athletics.”

Because of the gap in perceptions between CIF officials and the women’s groups, the state Department of Education held a meeting among CIF officials and Leibman of the Southern California Women’s Law Center and Verna Dauterive and Pat Towner of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Fred Tempes, an assistant state superintendent who attended the meeting, wrote in his Sept. 13 report to the board that Leibman believed she could come up with new language that would satisfy both sides. But in mid-October, Tempes said he had yet to see any new language and was pessimistic about the chances for a compromise.

“My hunch is that it’s going to come down to the state board,” Tempes said.

Leibman agrees that a compromise seems unlikely, saying she wasn’t able to come up with language she thought would be legal and acceptable to both sides.

If after the CIF takes the issue back to its members, the CIF’s position opposing the regulation is unchanged and if a compromise isn’t found, the state board will have to decide among options that might inspire litigation from the CIF or the women’s rights groups.

Among the issues CIF officials raise concerns local control. The state education code gives control of high school athletics to local school boards, which have delegated their authority to the CIF, and CIF officials believe the state Department of Education has overstepped its authority in athletics.