The McCormick Family and their Title IX Suit
A family decision, but in the end it was our daughter who made it happen.
By Elaine McCormick
It was not an easy decision for our family to decide to file a Title IX lawsuit. There were lots of discussions around the dinner table and some of them got pretty heated. I was against it, not because I didn’t believe in Title IX, I just didn’t want to put our daughter or our family in the middle of a lawsuit. My husband changed my mind when he offered this point of view: how could we teach principals, morals and ethics, not to mention right and wrong to our children if we did not follow through on this just because it might be inconvenient to us. As for our daughter, Kate, she was adamant. It was the right thing to do whether she got the benefits from it or not.
Kate had played soccer since she was in preschool on both co-ed and all-girl teams. She loved the running, going one-on-one for the ball and being part of a team. In short, she loved everything about it. She played on highly competitive teams continuing to excel in the game she loved and she couldn’t wait to play for her high school. Her dream was to play in college.
In little town of Pelham, N.Y. and some others in Westchester County, the boys had always played high school soccer in the fall and the girls played in the spring. It doesn’t seem like that big a deal till you realize that the rest of our county, state and region all played girls and boys soccer in the fall, so that’s when the State Championships took place. That meant while the Pelham boys had the opportunity to compete all the way up to a state title, the girls could only go as far as a section title because that’s all there was in the spring. Our daughter and her teammates were about to hit their first glass ceiling.
It seemed simple enough, we thought we’d talk to the Athletic Director, point out the unfairness of it all, and then he would figure out a way to gradually bring the girls into a fall season. How naïve we were. My husband met with the athletic director who basically said they didn’t have the field space to let both boys and girls play in the fall so things were going to stay as they were. End of discussion.
An attorney friend, Paul Robbins, had asked us if Kate and her father wanted to participate as plaintiffs in the Title IX lawsuit along with other families from neighboring towns. As a family, we agreed that Kate wouldn’t talk to the press about the lawsuit. We didn’t want to rub the school district’s nose in it, and we figured once the lawsuit was filed, they would see the light and agree to change the girls’ season from spring to fall. Other schools in Westchester County had voluntarily changed seasons as soon as they heard the suit was filed. We were wrong; Pelham chose to fight the case. Once word got out, the phone calls started coming. I was shocked by the things some parents said to us. Some of Kate’s friends stopped talking to her. Plaintiffs from some nearby towns pulled out of the lawsuit because of the pressure and worry that their children would suffer retributions from coaches, referees and school officials.
Kate made the high school varsity team, managed to juggle it with her other soccer commitments and things seemed to settle down a bit while the lawsuit worked it’s way through the system. In her junior year, things got more complicated. That’s the year you get really serious if you want to play in college. Club and Elite teams (the kind of teams college coaches mostly recruit from) play spring seasons so as not to interfere with the high school fall season (they too assumed everyone played in the fall) and to help the girls avoid overplaying and the injuries that can cause.
Kate wanted to continue to play at a higher level with her nationally-ranked club team and had also been selected for the Olympic Development team. Remaining in high school soccer meant playing for three teams at the same time, which also meant a lot of wear and tear on her body. But if she quit the high school team, she was told there was a chance it would jeopardize the lawsuit. So during the spring of her junior year, she chose to play on all three teams. Sometimes it meant that her father had to pick her up early from a high school game and drive up to Albany for the Olympic Development Program team’s mandatory practice. Other times, it meant being late to her club team practice because of a high school game and facing her club coach’s ire. It was never easy, but we were proud of how strong and committed she stayed.
The results of the lawsuit were announced in the late spring of that same year, just days before the Pelham High School team was to play for the Section 1 title. The courts ruled that Pelham would have to come up with a plan to move girls’ soccer to the fall. Our phone was ringing off the hook, but Kate said she would rather not talk to the reporters. She had her club’s State Cup finals game to get ready for on Sunday and was also psyching up for Monday’s important high school game. She was just glad the lawsuit was over and hoped that now everyone could move on.
At the game on Sunday, Kate went to change direction during a play and her knee gave out. She heard the dreaded pop that every soccer player knows means you tore your ACL (what some consider a typical overuse injury). She knew it meant serious surgery and 6-9 months of rehab before she could play soccer again. She wouldn’t be able to attend previously scheduled college soccer camps or college showcases in the summer and her dream of playing Division 1 college soccer was now a big question mark, but that Monday she attended the Pelham High School game on crutches, and came home having lost her voice cheering her team on to their title as Section 1 champs. When the high school coach called that night after their victory, I thought he was calling to say how sorry he was about her injury, but all he said was that he needed her to bring her uniform back the next day. Kate had finished the season second in assists for the team, but later that week, when the nominations were made for all section and all league, her name was not on the list.
She recovered from her injury to play again in her senior year for her final spring season at her high school. She had been recruited to play soccer at Davidson College, a Division 1 school in North Carolina, because the assistant coach had seen her play on the Olympic Development Program team, but she was not offered a scholarship. There were no high school sports awards with her name on them, no athlete of the week nominations by the high school coach, no college recommendations by the coach or athletic director. She was however named to some all-star teams, but I was told a coach from another high school had nominated her because he thought she deserved it.
Did Kate miss some opportunities because of her participation in the Title IX lawsuit? Probably. But she’s not looking back. She’s achieved her dream of playing college soccer at a great school and she still loves it. And in the fall of 2006, for the first time ever, the Pelham Varsity girls and boys teams finally had the same season and the same opportunities and both teams went on to play postseason games. All Kate ever wanted was for the girls to have a chance go for it. As she said in a local scholarship essay contest “ I can’t wait for the day when I can come back to Pelham and cheer for the girls soccer team as they run onto the field to play in their very first State Championship game.” Whether they win or lose, she’ll probably be hoarse. She is after all, a team player.