Boys Sue to Play In Skirts With Girls
By Erin White
The Wall Street Journal
Contributed by Bobby G
August 5, 1998
Some teenage boys are suing for the right to run around school athletic fields in pleated skirts. .
In an unusual legal twist, they have been using sex-discrimination laws to try to get onto girls' sports teams. Most of these cases involve field hockey, which in this country has traditionally been played by girls only.Competitors use curved wooden sticks to move a hard rubber ball, and the typical uniform includes a kilt.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, courts generally rejected an earlier wave of suits by male athletes, concluding that the boys would stifle the growth of girls' teams and might threaten the safety of weaker female athletes. But lawyers representing boys in the more recent cases are arguing that girls' teams are now robust enough to allow a few boys to play. These lawyers also say that it is patronizing to assume that girls can't keep up with boys in sports that don't depend on sheer brawn.
"What seemed to make common sense 10 years ago has to be looked at again.And looked at more carefully, because the numbers have changed, and the opportunities for girls have changed," says John Games. the staff attorney for the Maine Human Rights Commission, which has backed Jeremy Ellis, 17years old, in his quest to play high-school field hockey in Portland,Maine.
Field hockey caught Jeremy's fancy at summer camp during his middle-schooldays. An instructor from England, where male field hockey is popular,taught boys at the camp how to play. In the fall, Jeremy joined a coed middle-school team and decided he would try out for the high school team,even though it was all girls.
"It was weird that I was the only guy" gunning for a spot on the high-school team, he admits. He got some teasing. "Where's your skirt?''some classmates called out in the hallway. His prospective teammates,however, urged him to "go for it, do your own thing," he says.
When Jeremy showed up for tryouts as a high-school freshman in August1996, the school's athletic director yanked him from the field, Jeremy says, citing state rules aimed at promoting girls' sports. Helped by hi smother. Jo Ann Ellis, Jeremy filed a sex-discrimination complaint with theBaine Human Rights Commission. The boy didn't see himself as a crusader,he says, and thought the dispute would be resolved in a matter of weeks.
But the commission process took months, and when the agency finally ruled that Jeremy should be allowed to join the team, the Maine Principals' association sued in state court in Portland to block that action. "We're not objecting to Jeremy Ellis as an individual playing field hockey," saysRichard Tyler, executive director of the principals' association. Instead,he says, the concern was that if boys play, it might limit the number of girls who get to participate.
The Ellipses countersued the association, and two years after Jeremy first asked to play, the soon-to-be junior still doesn't have a trial date."It's just getting real frustrating," he says.
Legal actions seeking to put boys on girls' teams face tough odds because state and federal law on gender equity in education places heavy emphasis on whether an alleged victim can show historic bias. Courts have tended to look at whether a school's overall athletic program has limited opportunities for participation--not whether participation in a particular sport is restricted. Girls often can show such limited opportunities; boys can't. And while it is true that compared with 25 years ago, eight times as many girls today play high-school sports, male athletes still outnumber girls 3 to 2, according to the National Federation of State High School associations. "The Scale is still so much tipped in favor of men that it is well nigh impossible for them to win any sort of legal challenge," says christine Grant, director of the women's athletic department at the university of Iowa.
Not entirely impossible, though. During his sophomore year in 1991, NilesDraper of Chatham, Mass. donned a kilt and played offense on his school's varsity field hockey team without objection. He ran into trouble the next year, though, when four opposing teams refused to play Chatham High. They claimed that Niles -- who was five feet six inches tall and 145 pounds at the time -- posed a safety threat. Also, under state rules designed to protect all-girl teams that face coed rivals, Chatham could only play in the state tournament if another coed team qualified.
Nile's mother, Sandra Coilingwood, sued the state interscholastic league on his behalf in state court in Barnstable. Mass., in the fall of 1992. In rulings that year and in 1993, the court struck down the rule penalizing coed teams, saying it discriminated against boys.
Niles continued to play, turning in solid, unspectacular performances,according to coaches who watched him. Fred Ebbett, former athletic director for Chatham competitor Harwich High School, had worried that "if you open the door for one boy, you open the door for everybody." But he acknowledges that so far, there hasn't been a swarm of boys trying to join girls' teams. The reason, Mr. Ebbett speculates, is that Niles was required to wear a skirt. "That kind of limited the number of boys who wanted to go out," Mr. Ebbett says.
Headed to college this fall, following a stint in the Marines, Niles recalls that his stepfather encouraged him to persist in his quest to play field hockey. "If you quit, you're just going to let yourself and the team down," his stepfather told him. And Sarah Wunsch, Nile's attorney, says his victory was important as a matter of principle. "It was demeaning for the girls to be told that it was unsafe for them to play against a team where there was a boy," she maintains.
Brian Kleczek was less lucky in court. Inspired by watching his older sister play on the South Kingstown, RI varsity, he made the junior varsity as a sophomore in 1990. But just a few weeks later, state sports officials enforced their girls-only rule for field hockey and told him to turn in his stick.
Brian fought back, collecting 500 signatures from schoolmates who supported his desire to play. But his petition didn't impress the sports officials. So Brian's mother, Alyce Kleczek, wrote to the American Civil liberties Union, which took on the case. In 1991. a state court in providence, RI, ruled in his favor, saying. "The ban of boys is based on archaic and over broad generalizations and assumptions about female athletic ability."
One week later, Brian, then in the fall of his junior year, was set to make his debut. "I never practiced any harder than that week," he says.But when the big day came. he was called to the principal's office to learn that a member of the state Supreme Court had temporarily blocked the lower court's ruling. The Supreme Court later rejected hissed-discrimination argument.
After graduating, Brian applied to be the girls' field-hockey coach but was turned down for that, too. Now 24 and managing an ice-cream store, he predicts that eventually pressure from boys will force the integration of his favorite sport. But for now, he is "taking a break from field hockey."
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