Going to Bat for Better Access to Fields

Stephanie Romero is a tall 14-year-old softball star with a strong arm and hopes of playing in the Olympics someday. For now, she’s a pitcher and All Star player for the Indians, a team in the Montebello Ponytail Girls Softball Assn.

And Stephanie is angry.

For years, she and her teammates have been fighting for more space to play softball at a Montebello public park--space they say boys on adjoining fields get with no problem.

The boys get four fields at Grant Rea Memorial Park. The girls get one. There are 450 girls in the Ponytails and 580 boys in the Montebello Baseball Assn.

On Thursday, the girls, their coaches and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court charging that the city of Montebello has violated the girls’ civil rights by denying them equal access to city-owned fields.

Wearing their softball caps and jerseys, the eight girls named in the suit as representatives of the league spoke out at a news conference at the ACLU’s Southern California headquarters.

“Girls and boys should have equal access to equal things,” Stephanie said. “It’s very frustrating.”

The case comes barely a year after the city of Los Angeles was sued in a similar case and agreed to set up a program to equalize the resources between boys’ and girls’ sports.

And it highlights a growing concern among parents and their daughters nationwide that, although federal law--Title IX--has for more than 28 years mandated equal support for male and female sports in schools, no protections have been in place for girls in municipal leagues.

The larger boys’ Montebello Baseball Assn. should receive more field time--but not the 4-1 ratio it now enjoys, said Rocio Cordoba, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California.

“Such treatment of the Ponytails girls is not only illegal, it is debasing and brands girls as inferior, second-class citizens,” she said.

Montebello officials said they didn’t expect the problem to escalate into a lawsuit. They thought the Ponytails and the Montebello Baseball Assn. were working things out on their own, according to Steve Blancarte, assistant city administrator.

“The city has and will continue to be committed to gender equality for the allotment of field space and other things,” Blancarte said. “We do see a solution coming soon.”

The tension has been brewing for about two years, Ponytails parents said. But the two leagues can’t agree on a schedule for using the field.

Last year, Ponytails representatives testified before the City Council and “pleaded for more field space,” Cordoba said. “City officials are well aware of the size of the league and the lack of equality.”

In September, an assistant city administrator issued a report admitting the inequity and recommending that the girls be given access to another field, parents said. But no action was taken, they said.

“There have been confrontations on the field,” said Alicia Wrtaza, whose daughter Jesy is on the Ponytails Dodgers. “The boys coaches have ordered us off the field.”

Officials with the Montebello Baseball Assn. did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment Thursday.

Twenty years ago, the Ponytails--which includes girls 5 to 18--had just several dozen players and seven teams, said parent Anthony Munoz, who has been involved in the league for decades. Allocation of field space was not a problem.

This year, more than 450 girls registered to play on one of 37 teams. The shortage of field space has prompted the city, for the first time, to request that the Ponytails cap registration at 450. The boys do not have a city-requested cap.

“It’s not fair because when it’s our turn to warm up, we don’t have enough room,” said Lynette Romero, 12, who plays third base and shortstop for the Indians. “Sometimes there’s all this extra space on the boys’ field that the girls could use.”

Juggling field time, girls must play games scheduled back to back, allowing for little warmup time and more potential injuries, said Sal Morales, interim president of the Ponytails. For many games, there is no city space at all, and girls must travel to other Los Angeles County fields.

“Last year we played all over Southern California,” Morales said. “I don’t think we should be traveling all over L.A. County. I think we should be playing in our own town.”

A similar issue surfaced two years ago with the West Valley Softball Assn. in the San Fernando Valley: Girls there sued, with the help of the ACLU, for equal access to public playing fields.

Although the city has agreed to sponsor a program to attract more girls to city-run athletics, the discrimination case is pending and may end up in court, said Abby Leibman, executive director of the California Women’s Law Center, which is handling the case.

Since that case surfaced, dozens of other cities have pushed for--and, in many cases, won--improved treatment for girls’ athletics. Although negotiations are going on in areas from Riverside to upstate New York, the case in Montebello appears to be the only active lawsuit of its kind in the country, experts said.

Parents said they worry that the turmoil will discourage their daughters, many of whom have ambitions of playing college and Olympic softball, from pursuing their dreams.

National experts agreed.

“The dropout rate for girls up to the age of 14 is six times that for boys, and many times it’s because of that message,” said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the New York-based Women’s Sports Foundation.

Leibman said: “At so many levels it is a devastating message. For many of them, this is their first experience firsthand with the outrage of discrimination based on the fact that they’re female.

“Also, many of them are girls of color who have experienced racism already. . . . They face a dual barrier in a culture where we keep promising them equal justice, and now they find that those promises ring pretty hollow.”