It all seems so clear.

High school athletics feature boys teams and girls teams. Boys play with and against boys, girls play with and against girls.

Well, it's that way for the vast majority of the time, but cross- gendering has occurred at Butler County schools over the years. Megan Gasparin has played football at Seneca Valley while Amanda Leyland and Amy Anderson have done likewise at Karns City. Chelsea Fuller has wrestled at Slippery Rock.

Butler started a boys volleyball program after two boys — Chad Mowry and Bryan Deal — played on the girls team to be involved in the sport.

Mars and Seneca Valley started girls golf teams after girls competed on the boys teams.

"I'm all for equal opportunity and this should be about equal opportunity,"Mars athletic director Scott Heinauer said. "I have no problem with a girl going out for football or wrestling because there is no counterpart sport for that gender.

"But in basketball, soccer, track and field, baseball, softball and tennis, there are boys and girls teams and it should stay that way."

This issue recently came to light when Quaker Valley tennis player Annie Houghton played on the boys team this spring and won the WPIALsingles championship.

Houghton missed the girls tennis season in the fall because of an injury, so she decided to try playing for the boys team this spring.

"It's OKto do that,"Butler boys volleyball coach Lew Liparulo said. "In sports like volleyball and tennis, where the boys and girls seasons don't go on at the same time, a kid can choose one or the other.

"You can't do both. Had (Houghton) played girls tennis in the fall, she couldn't have competed for the boys in the spring."

When Mowry and Deal decided to play for Butler's girls volleyball team in the fall of 1993, Liparulo explained to them that they couldn't play for a boys team that spring if Butler formed a program.

"We had two other boys try out for the girls team that year, but they decided not to play,"Liparulo said. "There was a chance we'd be forming a boys team and they decided to wait.

"When our boys team was formed that spring, those two guys played. The other two (Mowry and Deal) could not."

Karns City athletic director Tom Wagner, a member of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Directors Association, said there is no rule that prevents cross-gendering if an athlete chooses to do so.

"That's an issue that needs to be taken care of,"he said.

WPIALExecutive Director and former Butler athletic director Tim O'Malley agreed. He said individual schools can pass their own rules on cross-gendering, but the PIAAand WPIALdo not have the power to mandate any laws on the issue.

PSADAis currently working with the state school boards association, principals association, superintendents association and the state Department of Education in addressing cross-gendering in high school athletics.

"I give the Houghton girl all the credit in the world for her accomplishment,"O'Malley said. "We just don't want any kid doing it for the wrong reason.

"This is a subject that's in the forefront right now. The 84 Lumber Classic's big story is that Michelle Wie is playing in it. Boys are getting on girls field hockey and lacrosse teams at schools that don't offer it as a boys sport."

Safety concerns become an issue when boys are playing on girls teams.

"If you have five or six boys playing on a girls volleyball team, does that constitute being a girls team?"Seneca Valley athletic director Greg Caprara pondered. "Boys are bigger, stronger and faster than girls in most cases. That's just the way it is."

Liparulo admitted that when his 1993 girls volleyball team arrived at road games and took the court for warm-ups with a couple of boys in uniform, "people treated us like we had some type of disease or something."

Peggy Pennepacker, athletic director and assistant principal at Blue Mountain High School and one of Pennsylvania's authorities on Title IXissues, said that boys do not belong on girls teams.

Besides taking up a roster spot and thus denying a girl that spot, boys do create a danger factor on girls athletic teams, she said.

"There's a reason why the girls volleyball net is lower, girls use smaller basketballs, girls lacrosse teams don't have helmets and shoulder pads on — It's a different game,"Pennepacker said.

Title IX, which requires equal opportunity for female athletes at the collegiate level, was instituted in 1972. Pennepacker said that one in 27 girls participated in high school sports in 1971.

She emphasized that one in every three high school females participate today.

"Where Title IXmessed up was in starting with the colleges, from the top down,"Pennepacker said. "They should have started from the bottom up, having girls sports instituted at the grade-school and junior-high levels first.

"You have to teach the girls first. The interest is there."

But is the safety?

"Can you imagine a boy playing girls softball and lining a ball off an aluminum bat at a third baseman?"Heinauer said. "That's not safe."

Caprara said wrestling is OKfor girls because everyone competes at the same weight class. Football is a different story.

"A 155-pound girl trying to play tight end or linebacker on a boys football team is too high a risk for injury as far as I'm concerned," he said.

Pennepacker has no issue with girls trying out for boys football or wrestling teams.

"You can't prevent it, even with the injury risk,"Pennepacker said. "She has the right to get hurt, so to speak. Football and wrestling are sports that teach kids a lot of wonderful things.

"There are more and more girls wrestling teams forming at the college level. There is a professional women's football league now. The girls have to start somewhere."

Caprara admitted that boys may have to deal with the psychological issue of losing a starting position to a girl, if not a match in a competition.

"If it happens, it happens,"he said. "It mimics life, in a way. Later on in life, he may lose a job to a girl."