How Title IX changed girls hoops forever
At first they couldn't cross mid-court.
They wore skirts. Sometimes, it was six-on-six.
College and high school basketball 50 years ago certainly was nothing like the game that is being played now around Butler County and the world.
“I think they thought women weren't physically capable of playing full court,” said Slippery Rock resident Melinda Rhoads, 63, with a chuckle. “I think they were worried we weren't capable of running that much, or something like that.”
Rhoads was a sixth-grader 50 years ago playing at St. Joseph's Elementary School in Oil City.
They played six-on-six back then. Only one player on each team was permitted to cross half-court.
They were called rovers and Rhoads has a hard time recognizing the game she played back then versus the one that's played now.
But when she moved into Oil City High School, basketball as it is now was just beginning to sprout for girls.
“It was five-on-five, but we used a man's ball,” Rhoads said.
But Oil City was ahead of the curve because of the involvement of youth in the sport at the lower levels.
Not many elementary schools in the state even had six-on-six teams.
Rhoads was an instant star in high school, scoring more than 1,000 career points on an Oilers team that ran roughshod over its competition.
“We had a really good team — we were ahead of our time,” Rhoads said. “There were no rules about who you could or couldn't play in that time, so we scrimmaged Edinboro's college team and beat them.”
Rhoads also rode a wave of new opportunities to play basketball at a high level beyond high school.
Title IX had a lot to do with that.
The federal civil rights law passed in 1972. The crux of the law read: “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.”
That had a profound effect on college athletics.
“Title IX changed everything,” Rhoads said.
Still, progress was slow.
When Rhoads joined the women's basketball team at then Slippery Rock College, she wasn't recruited.
She and 180 others attended a weeklong tryout.
“They posted names on a board at the end of each day,” Rhoads said. “If your name wasn't on it, you went home. If your name was on it, you came back the next day.
“We were told by the upperclassmen to wear bright colors so we'd get noticed,” Rhoads added, laughing. “I didn't. I was always pretty confident and confident in my ability.”
Rhoads not only made the varsity team, she became the first player in Slippery Rock College history at the time to start as a freshman.
“We all benefitted from Title IX,” Rhoads said.
Those benefits have been felt profoundly in the years that followed.
Rhoads has seen it with her own eyes.Her three daughters, Jence and twins Karly and Kourtney, all had opportunities to play in college.Jence, who is still the all-time leading scorer in Slippery Rock history with 2,172 points, earned a full scholarship to NCAA Division I Vanderbilt University and played professionally overseas.Karly and Kourtney both enjoyed solid athletic and academic careers at NCAA Division II Kentucky Wesleyan College.“The game has certainly evolved,” Rhoads said. “It's so much faster and the skill level is off the charts now. In the time when I played, you just played and you didn't work a lot on your skills. You just showed up. You learned how to dribble and shoot when you were little and went out and played.”Now, like many other sports, women's basketball is a nearly year-round endeavor.Rhoads knows that well, too. She's been a girls basketball coach at the junior high level at Slippery Rock since 1994 and the boys coach at the same level for the last 12 years.She's seen the ebb and flow of time on the game up close.“Numbers are falling off a little,” Rhoads said. “Part of that is because of all the options kids have these days, and that's great. But now the casual player kinds of gets left behind. When they get to certain level, they're too far behind the others and leave to do something else. That's the bad part about it.”Rhoads once coached in high school at Mars. She took over the program for legendary coach Carol DeVenzio, who led the Planets to the state final in 1977.DeVenzio was part of the very early days of Mars basketball in 1965, when it was club team.“It wasn't a very exciting game back then,” DeVenzio said. “Because of Title IX, it really took off.”DeVenzio said opportunities for girls to play a sport like basketball exploded.“In the beginning, girls didn't have a choice,” she said. “They could be a cheerleader or pretty much nothing.”DeVenzio was always around basketball.Her uncle, Chuck DeVenzio, was a boys basketball coach at Springdale and North Allegheny.As a coach at Mars, she said she knew she had a special group before the state championship run.But what playing basketball provided her and her players went far beyond the actual game.“The opportunity to play was the best thing since sliced bread,” DeVenzio said. “The leadership opportunities of organized sports is priceless. It's a safe place to learn life lessons. It shows you that you can still work hard and do everything right and still lose, but the sun will come up in the morning.”
