Beth Wilson

I've thought about this legislation and the impacts I observed firsthand. I can't say with certainty that it directly affected our SG participation over the years but my gut feeling is that it did over time.

I was graduating with a BS degree in 1972 and we started seeing the impact at NC State around 1975 when Kay Yow was hired as the women's basketball coach and several women’s sports were being added. The big impact as a result of Title IX was the creation of scholarships for women student athletes. That was a game-changer literally. Scholarships allowed Kay and the other coaches an opportunity to recruit excellent athletes who could then also afford to get a college degree. Finally, there seemed to be a sense of equality in college athletics. Women’s collegiate sports were not, and probably still are not (with a few exceptions), major revenue producers. Having sat on the athletics council at NCSU for many years, I can tell you that ADs and coaches are motivated by how much revenue a sport generates. Without Title IX it is hard to imagine that there would be any semblance of equality.

When I think of this legislation, I think of two words: equality, and opportunity. No question as others have said that the arc of justice bends slowly, but it is hard to imagine the current success story of women’s collegiate athletics without this legislation. Nora Lynn Finch did an interesting zoom talk several months ago about how colleges started hiring women coaches and assistant athletic directors just a few years after the legislation. Her personal insight is revealing. There's still a long way to go but I can remember the AD wanted to drop a certain women’s sport and the faculty on the council, and some of the coaches raised the roof! The sport stayed.

No doubt, the opportunities given to young women to play sports at the college level have produced healthy, active older women who have participated in Senior Games. Lonnie Proctor is the model for this fact. It would be interesting to know how many women played sports in high school and/or college and how that became the motivator to stay active.

Although, as you noted, many strong women created and nurtured the Senior Games program in NC, we too are products of equality and opportunity. All of us enjoyed successful careers that gave us the courage to start a new program like Senior Games. I remember being hired as the first female faculty member in the then College of Forest Resources, joining a small group of women faculty across campus. I joined the faculty in 1975. Is it a coincidence that the incentive to hire women to traditional male-dominated fields was influenced somehow by Title IX? We'll never know for sure. Perhaps its passage caused a culture on campus and in other settings where for the first time people were actively thinking about the need for women in every aspect of campus life. You have to think that Title IX started a dialogue that may not have existed otherwise. Our society is better for any legislation that promotes equality and opportunity.

Beth Wilson is an NC Senior Games Board Member.