Year of the Women

Four years after the United States established itself as the most powerful nation in women’s sports at the Summer Games in Atlanta, that dominance is under attack. Strides made by countries attempting to mimic the Americans’ success and recent difficulties encountered by elite U.S. women’s teams threaten to end America’s reign in women’s sports at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.

The U.S. women won team gold medals in basketball, soccer, softball and gymnastics in Atlanta, spurring unprecedented publicity for female athletes and leading to the trumpeting of 1996 as the Year of the Woman by some U.S. media outlets. These athletes represented the first generation of women to grow up entirely under the umbrella of Title IX, the uniquely American 1972 law that requires federally funded institutions to provide equal support to men’s and women’s athletics.

As the 2000 Olympics approach, none of the ’96 champions appears heavily favored to win the gold again when the Games begin in Sydney on Sept. 15.

“America is being hunted in women’s sports right now,” Women’s Sports Foundation President Nancy Lieberman-Cline said recently.

Since the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the number of female athletes has more than doubled at the Summer Games. As more sports are offered, and more attention is paid to female athletes, nations that for years considered sports unladylike and all but ignored their women’s programs have begun investing in them. Though smaller nations can’t match the financial and population resources in the United States, countries on the cusp of success have poured even more money into women’s athletics, hoping to unseat the U.S. champions and replicate their popularity.

“This is going to be our biggest challenge ever to date,” said U.S. soccer player Carla Overbeck.

Furthermore, the Americans’ problems go beyond the improvement of their competitors.

Since becoming America’s darlings by winning the prestigious Women’s World Cup last summer, the U.S. soccer players have endured a coaching change, a contentious contract dispute with the U.S. Soccer Federation and a brief strike.

The U.S. women’s basketball team is a victim of its own success: The gold medal helped spur the formation of a women’s professional league, whose season will cut into the U.S. team’s practice time this summer.

The governing body of U.S. women’s softball, the Amateur Softball Association, lacks the funds to support its star players year-round, so most of the players are scattered around the country, splitting their time between amateur leagues, weeklong camps every month and other professions.

The U.S. women’s gymnastics team, which has always been strong in individual events but had never won the team gold medal before 1996, has finished sixth at the past two world championships.

“This is the most exciting time I’ve ever been here, because we are challenged,” said U.S. women’s gymnastics team director Kathy Kelly, who has been with the program for 15 years. “We begged (the gymnasts) to step to the plate and swing the bat.”

Olympic organizers sold more tickets for women’s sporting events in Atlanta than were sold for the entire Barcelona Olympics four years earlier. The number of female competitors increased by 36 percent, from 2,708 in 1992 to 3,685 in 1996.

At the conclusion of the Games, pitcher Lisa Fernandez, one of the top players on the gold-medal winning softball team, stood outside a well-known night spot in Atlanta wondering how to get inside. The line out the door was long and entries appeared to be restricted.

National Basketball Assoc. superstar Scottie Pippen--a member of the U.S. men’s team--was being escorted in when someone shouted: “Those women played on the Olympic softball team!”

Pippen whisked them inside, NBA star Charles Barkley greeted them at the door, Washington Wizards guard Mitch Richmond approached to offer congratulations and several NBA Olympians asked for autographs. Fernandez said she and her teammates felt like stars.

And then she realized: They were stars.

The flood of attention came with impeccable timing: It happened the summer before the 25th anniversary of Title IX, which is considered responsible for providing athletic opportunities to American women that, until recently, have been unrivaled worldwide. Even before the 1996 Olympics, the United States was considered a powerhouse in women’s sports, matched only, perhaps, by the mighty teams fielded by the former Soviet Union. The Atlanta Games provided the stage--not to mention the home-field advantage--for the United States to display its preeminence.

Within a year after the Games, a professional women’s softball league and two pro women’s basketball leagues--one of which has since folded--got off the ground. The first athletic shoes featuring female athletes hit store shelves and product manufacturers expanded the range of sports gear specially designed for women.

The Olympic success also led Marla Messing, who directed last summer’s Women’s World Cup, to call for those matches to be played in major stadiums nationwide rather than in small ones in the northeast. Her instincts about the growth of women’s sports were correct: More than 650,000 people showed up for the 32-game tournament, and a crowd of more than 90,000 attended the Women’s World Cup final, in which the United States defeated China.

As women’s sports found mainstream popularity in the United States, they took more basic developmental steps in other nations. Brazil and Nigeria have emerged in women’s soccer. Australia has moved into the elite class in women’s softball, and both Brazil and Australia have strengthened their basketball programs. China remains a power in a wide range of sports. The dissolution of the former Soviet Union led to a more wide-open competition in basketball and gymnastics. Meanwhile, nations with strong men’s athletic traditions such as England, Italy and Mexico have only recently begun spending money on their women’s programs.

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The magic of 1996 for the American women’s teams began with the dramatics of hobbled U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug, who capped the gymnasts’ gold medal victory by executing a near perfect vault despite torn ligaments in her ankle. In women’s soccer and softball, both Olympic sports for the first time at the ’96 Games, the U.S. squads defeated the Chinese in thrilling final games. More than 76,000 people jammed a stadium in Athens, Ga., to watch the U.S. soccer team’s 2-1 victory. An overflow crowd packed a cozy ballpark in Columbus, Ga., for a 3-1 win in softball that introduced Americans to Dot Richardson, Michele Smith and Fernandez.

The run of gold medals was capped by the U.S. basketball team’s victory over Brazil in front of nearly 33,000. It was the team’s 60th straight victory and one that resulted in dancing and cartwheeling and crying on the court.

And, perhaps, in living rooms across the country.

“I felt a lot of camaraderie and a lot of patriotism,” said Smith, the Olympic softball pitcher. “Each [women’s team] had its own great little story. ... Each sport had its own little unique twist.”

Members of the 2000 Olympic women’s teams expect great storylines this year in Sydney--it’s just the happy endings that are in question.

The U.S. gymnastics team faltered after the post-Olympic departure of Bela Karolyi, the controversial Romanian defector who has coached nearly a dozen Olympic champions, and the ’96 Games’ gold medal team, nicknamed the “Magnificent Seven”: Strug, Dominique Moceanu, Shannon Miller, Dominique Dawes, Amy Chow, Jaycie Phelps and Amanda Borden. Young stars such as Elise Ray, who finished eighth in the all-around event at last year’s world championships, are developing.

But consecutive sixth-place finishes at the past two world championships prompted USA Gymnastics President Robert Colarossi to lure Karolyi out of retirement to repair the women’s program, now headlined by Ray, Vanessa Atler and Kristen Maloney. Meanwhile, ’96 stars Chow, Miller, Moceanu and Phelps, having observed the weakness of the current national team, also are attempting comebacks.

Though Karolyi has gotten quickly to work, inviting top gymnasts to monthly camps at his Houston area training center, he is being asked to work a small miracle: Bring about drastic improvement in a mere nine months. Karolyi wants the United States to return to the medal stand, which means pushing off Romania, Russia or China, the one-two-three finishers at the last two world championships.

“We are supposed to be among the best, and we are among the best, I guarantee that,” Karolyi said recently. “We will turn around the misconception that American gymnastics is weaker than before.”

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The U.S. soccer team followed its Olympic gold medal with continued international domination that culminated with the Women’s World Cup title last summer. Michelle Akers, Kristine Lilly, Briana Scurry, Brandi Chastain and Mia Hamm were among the players whose gritty performances inspired a legion of new fans, especially among young girls.

But head coach Tony DiCicco retired last November and his successor, April Heinrichs, wasn’t chosen until January. Meanwhile, the 20 players from last year’s World Cup squad refused to travel to Australia for a January tournament because of difficulties in negotiating a new contract. The matter was resolved, but not without vicious exchanges and lingering hard feelings between USSF officials and the players, who believe they were long underpaid.

“Everything that has happened has been emotional,” Hamm said. “[And] the spotlight has never been bigger. We know that.”

Added Overbeck: “Not to mention, every other team in the world wants to beat the United States because we won the last two major events.”

China, which has finished second to the United States at two straight world events--the Olympics and Women’s World Cup--has particular incentive. Brazil, whose women’s soccer program has grown from virtual non-existence to excellence in the last four years, would love to upset its neighbor to the north.

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All but one member of the U.S. Olympic softball team, which held a 10-year record of 118-2 when it secured its ’96 gold, declined to play in the Women’s Professional Softball League, which got off the ground under a different name in 1997.

Until last year, professionals were ineligible for Olympic competition. So though the core of the Olympic team remains intact, players have been spread across the country, working other jobs and playing softball on the side. Pitcher Lori Harrigan works as a security guard at a Las Vegas hotel. Many players work part-time as coaches or softball camp directors. Richardson, who hit the game-winning home run in the Olympic title game, works full-time as an orthopedic surgeon--and she’s 38 years old. First baseman Sheila Douty is 38; Michele Smith will be 33 when the Games get underway; Fernandez is 29.

While the U.S. players have aged and labored, the Australians--who handed the U.S. team its only loss in Atlanta and finished with the bronze medal--have invested considerable money and time in their softball program, determined to replicate the Americans’ success. China and Japan, formidable powers in 1996, remain threats.

“If the Australians continue like they [have], then the U.S. is going to be in for a real tough time,” said International Softball Federation President Don Porter. “They spent a lot of money; they have got some great athletes and a great development program.. . .[In the United States], it’s not developing to the point many of us would like to see it. It’s kind of taken a downturn.”

The U.S. women’s basketball team toured for a full year before the ’96 Olympics. Players said they bonded like sisters while compiling an amazing 60 straight victories during the extended road trip. This year’s Olympic team will have no such luxury. Their training period will be interrupted by the summer Women’s National Basketball Association season (every player except for Teresa Edwards plays in the league). Once the WNBA season concludes in late August, the U.S. players will have fewer than three weeks to ready themselves for the Olympics. That doesn’t bode well for a team that blamed a lack of preparation for its failure to win gold medals at the 1992 Olympics and the ’94 world championships.

The U.S. women are still considered the most talented team in the world. Under Coach Nell Fortner, they swept a U.S. tournament last fall involving Australia, Brazil and Poland. But concerns have nonetheless emerged. Two top players, Sheryl Swoopes and Cynthia Cooper of the WNBA’s champion Houston Comets, quit for personal reasons. And in an embarrassing--though insignificant--result, the U.S. team recently was defeated by the powerful University of Tennessee Lady Vols. That was followed by a loss to Brazil’s national team--silver medal winners in Atlanta--in the finals of a tournament in Sao Paulo.

Australia has been targeting the 2000 gold medal since 1996. Testament to the country’s strength is the fact that more Australians played in the WNBA last summer than players from any other country.

“It’s going to be challenging, not only physically but mentally,” U.S. Olympic guard Ruthie Bolton-Holifield said. “We believe no team out there is as talented as us. We have to learn how to play together. That’s going to be the key: Developing a chemistry on the court.”

The U.S. teams will be competing without the raucous, partisan crowds of Atlanta. The Australians, meanwhile, saw what 1996 meant to women’s sports in America and hope to duplicate that success.

Perhaps U.S. basketball player Lisa Leslie best summed up what’s at stake for each team.

“We have nothing to lose,” Leslie said, “except the gold medal.”