By Hunter Reid

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- On June 23, 1972, the landscape of collegiate athletics in the United States experienced perhaps its most profound change when President Richard M. Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which stated:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

For Furman University, the sweeping federal legislation reverberated from one end of campus to the other, not in tectonic fashion but incrementally over many years.  It still impacts the country a half century later and is consistently in the news and part of the national dialogue.

While Title IX is best known for its goal of ensuring equal opportunity in athletics, primarily at the collegiate level, it also addresses protection from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination in a school's academic curriculum and in other areas.

Fifty years in, what is an undisputed fact is that Title IX legislation changed lives by ushering in an era of expanded educational opportunity for women that previously was very limited or didn't exist at many institutions.  After becoming the law of the land, like any dramatic change to the fabric of society, Title IX's metal was tested from the outset — by schools themselves, by powerful lobbies such as revenue producing sports, and, incredibly, by the NCAA, which in 1976 sued (unsuccessfully) to challenge its legality.  The NCAA at the time didn't coordinate women's sports at the national level — a role filled primarily by the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).

After surviving a number of bruising legislative and legal challenges in its early years, Title IX gained needed muscle when, in 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), as it was then known, advanced the law's impact by moving from a "presumption of compliance standard" to an "obligation of compliance" through the development of the what became known as the "three-prong test" or "equal accommodations test" in assessing compliance.  The three criteria included participation, benefits and treatment, and athletic financial assistance.

Legislative and legal efforts to water down Title IX continued into the 1980s but were turned aside, most notably through The Civil Rights Act of 1987, which reversed the Supreme Court decision, Grove City v. Bell (1984), by reaffirming Title IX's institution-wide mandate, and Haffner v. Temple University (1988), which clarified direction regarding budgets, scholarships, and participation rates for male and female athletes.

Furman University's experience with Title IX has been similar to many schools.  While women's gymnastics, field hockey, and women's basketball were being played at the university by the late 1960s, it wasn't until the early 1970s that Furman's women's sports landscape expanded with the addition of golf and tennis, and later, swimming.

Female sports that emerged at Furman in the late 1960s and 70s shared many common threads, chief among them a threadbare, overwhelmingly Spartan existence featuring a near total lack of scholarships, facility challenges, as well as minimal equipment, operational, and administrative support.

"At that time we were just trying to figure things out," said Janet Cone '78, who recalls the infancy of Title IX at her alma mater.  "There wasn't any, or very little, scholarship money.  We were just glad to be able to continue playing sports.  I remember us piling into a van with all the equipment and driving to Appalachian State to play field hockey or basketball.  It was certainly not like it is today."

With her birds-eye view of the changing landscape of women's athletics, Cone, who coached basketball for over 20 years at Mars Hill, Western Carolina, St. Leo (Fla.), and Samford, and who has served as Director of Athletics at UNC Asheville since 2004, gained an appreciation and admiration for the early advocates for women's athletics on campus, speaking almost reverently of Dr. Ruth Reid, a longtime member of Furman's physical education (now health sciences) department faculty, and the influence she had on her as student and as an athlete.

"I would not have gone into coaching, education, or become an athletic director if not for Dr. Ruth Reid," she said.  "Dr. Reid was the one when I got to Furman (in the fall of 1974) who was doing all the things to help women student-athletes.  She was the one who inspired me the most with Title IX, because I went to Furman with the idea of majoring in pre-med and going on to medical school.  She said, 'Hey, you are smart enough to be a doctor, but there's something you love more that you can now pursue.' She just opened my eyes to the opportunities Title IX was going to give us — more chances to do a lot of things we loved, which for me was sports and the idea of coaching.  Up until then there weren't as many opportunities for us as there were for men.  That was when it started to change."

Betsy King '77 also experienced the early years of Title IX and was a three-sport participant, playing field hockey, basketball, and golf — the latter of which would take her into a world renown professional career that netted 34 tournament victories on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour and induction into both the LPGA and World Golf Halls of Fame.

"The result of Title IX had not really kicked in when I came to Furman," said King. "The advocates were really us, the athletes.  We formed the Women's Athletic Association, and each year a group of us met with the president (Dr. Gordon Blackwell, followed by Dr. John Johns) to ask for more support from the school.  I remember our entire budget for all of women's sports was $125,000."

Despite the scholarship challenges Furman female student-athletes faced in the early years of Title IX, the university was fortunate to have three key selling points that proved critical in luring King, a Reading, Pa., native and 1972 U.S. Girls' Junior Championship semifinalist, and other female golfers into the fold.

"I didn't have any scholarship opportunities coming out of high school," added King, who earned "a small, partial scholarship" at Furman beginning her junior year.  "I only applied to one other school and was accepted there, too, but I chose Furman because of its academic reputation and its beautiful campus. Of course, the school having its own golf course was a factor, too."

The blessing of an on-campus course — a rare asset for any school in those days, and even today —  undoubtedly helped women's golf assume flagship status as Furman's premier female sport in the 1970s, an effort that was underlined when King, along with Beth Daniel '79, a two-time U.S. Amateur Champion, Cindy Ferro '76, and Greenville native Sherri Turner '79 — all future members of the LPGA Tour — teamed up with Holly Hunt '79 to win the 1976 AIAW National Championship. 

As Title IX unfolded amid a minefield of legal and legislative challenges, the changing sports scene saw gymnastics and field hockey at Furman replaced by volleyball and softball by the early 1980s.

Despite the expansion of women's sports, funding and scholarship support continued to prove challenging, as did a national tug-o-war between the AIAW and NCAA over governance and championship sponsorships, a struggle the NCAA eventually won for Division I programs in 1981.

While incorporation under the NCAA umbrella would eventually prove to be a leap forward for women's athletics, one of the biggest victories for Furman from an organization standpoint came in 1986 when the Southern Conference began administering women's sports.  Practically overnight, Lady Paladin teams (as they were then known) began competing for championships.

By 1990 Furman, in an effort to re-balance its athletics program based on available resources and conference sports sponsorships, eliminated its underfunded wrestling program, as well as its non-league sponsored men's and women's swimming teams. That action, specifically the dropping of women's swimming, triggered a complaint to the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which by then had assumed the task of Title IX enforcement.  While women's swimming was ultimately not restored, the complaint and resulting investigation led Furman to finally address an array of scholarship, facility, and staffing deficiencies with respect to its women's sports program.  In short order the investment yielded major returns.

Beginning in 1992 and running through 2004 Furman captured the SoCon's Germann Cup, which is awarded annually to the league's top women's sports program.  The addition of women's soccer to the fold in 1994, spurred in part by the Title IX investigation three years prior and by the university adhering to "interest and accommodation" requirements contained within the law, was another major catalyst as the Paladins proved dominant in the sport from day one while also establishing league dynasties in tennis and extending the university's national tradition in women's golf.

Other sports also benefited from Furman's increased investment, including women's basketball, volleyball, softball, and cross country, all of which registered an improvement in overall competitiveness.

Jackie Smith Carson, a standout basketball player who was twice named SoCon Player of the Year in her career while also helping Furman to an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2000, is acquainted with the challenges her sport had endured, having played for longtime Paladin coach Sherry Carter (1982-01), a veteran of many on-campus struggles to make Title IX's promise of increased opportunity and competitiveness a reality.

"As a student-athlete I didn't fully understand the importance of Title IX and the doors it opened for women, particularly minority women, in sports like basketball," said Carson, who returned to her alma mater in 2010 to direct the program she had starred in as a player.  "We knew coach Carter was fighting for our program and for women's athletics but didn't appreciate what came with that fight. Now as a head coach, I understand how you simply want the absolute best for your student-athletes and what that now looks like, especially on the heels of the discrepancies highlighted between 2021 Men's and Women's NCAA National Championships.

"Title IX opened the door, and Furman continues to improve opportunities, resources, and our female student-athletes' experience because of it. It's amazing to see the growth that has come since my playing days, and I look forward to it continuing, in opportunities and resources, for all our female athletic programs so we can all compete at the highest level within our conference, and also nationally."

Not surprisingly, by most measures Furman's Title IX experience has produced its biggest yield over the last 36 years.  Since 1986, Paladin women's athletics teams have combined to win 115 SoCon Championships, register 61 of its 69 women's NCAA Tournament appearances, produce 41 of the school's 43 women's All-Americans, including 2020 national player of the year, golfer Natalie Srinivasan, and claim a league high 17 Germann Cups, including five straight from 2015-19.  In addition, over the last six years Furman, thanks in major part to the success of its women's sports teams, has topped the SoCon and ranked among the nation's elite in Learfield IMG College Sports Directors' Cup competition, which awards points based on each institution's NCAA Tournament competition finish in up to 20 sports in Division I — 10 women's and 10 men's.

In 2023 Furman will co-host with the SoCon a NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament Regional in downtown Greenville.

As Title IX concludes its first half century of existence and embarks on its sixth decade, a level of pride in the hard-won progress courses through the words of some its Furman pioneers, including Cone.

"I'm a little different when folks ask me about Title IX.  Some have horror stories, and there were certainly those, but by the grace of God I always had women and men around me who taught me ways of getting things done without apologizing for it or creating a bunch of issues.  You should never apologize in asking for what you deserve to have.

"I still remember the day in 1996 when I was called by Samford to come interview for their women's basketball head coaching position.  They said, 'We don't have a team,' and my reaction was, 'What, you don't have a team?'  I thought it was a joke, and they said, 'No, we're having to add women's basketball and soccer.'  Now I look at them and all they have done.  

"It reminds me that had I gone to Samford (as a student), I wouldn't have been able to play sports and, more than likely, not become an athletics director or serve on the NCAA's Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee (as the lone female member, from 2015-19).  It's just another example of how Title IX created opportunities and how it impacted me.  It paved the way for me to be a coach and an athletics director, and it's done the same for so many women.

"We might not have been doing things right when we started, but through the years it's gotten a lot better.  Furman's learned a lot of lessons."

Julie Paré contributed to this feature.