Thursday I got invited to the Minneapolis Athena Awards banquet. It honors 50-some seniors from Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs who have excelled in athletics, in school and in the community.

I’m going to try and make the May 4th event this year. From time to time, I hear that the time for the Athena Awards is long gone. That girls have the same athletic opportunities as boys.

I wish that were true. But all it takes to crush that notion is hearing about the Park of Cottage Grove softball situation this week. The reality is, girls still lag far behind boys sometimes.

It took somebody outside the school to file a Title IX complaint to get the Wolfpack, one of the state’s premier softball programs, on near equal footing with the baseball team.

Their previous softball field, based on the pictures submitted with the complaint remind me of the grade school field my daughters and I used to practice at. Except Park’s backstop was worse.

How embarrassing must it have been for Park players to go on the road, then come back to their home field which had no dugouts, no fence, and a chewed up right field thanks to football practices held on that turf in the fall.

Oh sure, the school was working on a solution. But how many girls would have graduated before one was found without a Title IX complaint to spur action quicker?

No need for Athena Awards — don’t you dare mention that to me. I have pictures to show you now. In Cottage Grove, female ballplayers were second-class athletes until this spring.

And this was at a school which had one of the state’s top programs. Incredible. This is 2007.

Are there more Park of Cottage Grove stories out there? My sad guess is unquestionably yes.

P.S. St. Paul has an Athena Awards banquet, too. It’s April 18, next Wednesday. Congratulations girls. You deserve it. 

 

 

   

Â

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 12:09 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.