OCTOBER 1999

Women athletes just keep playing

By Jan Pudlow
Special to the Florida State Times

It was 1977, and Florida State's women's volleyball team had qualified to go to the regionals. The only way the team could afford to go to the game was to use an old van, property of FSU.
So many young women were crammed into that van that one had to sit in the runway where the door slid shut.
"I swore that would not happen again," recalled Barbara Palmer, FSU women's athletics director from 1977 to 1985. "Why would we put our daughters in harm's way? We wouldn't do that to our sons."

She'd been on the job only a few months when, as Palmer tells it, the van incident inspired her "to go to the wall on women's athletics - I will never forget it."
Palmer said she was shocked to see men's sports enjoy a $5-million budget, while women scraped by with $163,000 for all seven sports.

There were no women's athletic scholarships. There were no full-time coaches. A few "part-time" coaches earned $2,500 a year.
Palmer took her fight to the Legislature, lobbying and testifying about the need for parity in women's sports.

Stories/October Charlie Barnes News Notes Compression In Memoriam Favorite Prof Home

Barbara Palmer, left, and
Fran Cannon at softball/
soccer complex

And she won. In 1979, women's athletics at FSU received about $1.5 million, with another $500,000 for facilities, and the first full-time coaches.

"The neat thing was it happened at all of the universities," Palmer said.
It took seven years to begin to realize the victories of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that requires gender equality in educational activities, including sports.
Today, the challenge continues to make women's sports at FSU all they can be.
And Palmer is ever vigilant. She is co-chair of a new group called the Committee of Thirty, in recognition of 30 years of women's sports at FSU.

Her hope is that the Committee of Thirty will raise awareness about women's sports, raise money for women's sports and create a networking system for coaches and players to get jobs after they graduate.
Her co-chair, Fran Cannon, is no stranger. From 1961 to '91, Cannon taught with Palmer's mother, Betty Palmer, at FSU's department of leisure, recreation and parks, and Barbara was one of her students.

Cannon, who graduated from FSU in '48, witnessed its change from a women's college to co-ed. "Once we became co-ed and the attention was on men's sports, women just kind of lost out," said Cannon, 73.

But the women athletes kept on playing.

"We refused to give up, because we saw the value of what sports did for men, and we knew it could do the same thing for women," Cannon said. "People got the attitude that FSU didn't care about women's sports. And it was true there for a while. But it's changed. I'm greatly impressed with the progress we've made under (Athletic Director) Dave Hart and (Seminole Boosters President) Andy Miller."
They've been willing to pump more resources into women's athletics, Cannon said. But the women want to step up to the plate themselves.

And they know they have their work cut out for them. Of 150 endowed scholarships for athletes at FSU, only 23 are designated for women, said Michael Grantham, on the National Board of the Seminole Boosters. And when he tries to raise money for women's athletics, he said, he has run into roadblocks.

"When I ask them for a $1,000 gift for softball, I hear, 'You mean women's softball? If it was for football, I'd love to help.' "

So the Committee of Thirty is on a mission to tell the world how good sports are for women, how good women's sports are at FSU, and how much better they can be.
They realize that a big part of succeeding in raising women's athletics at FSU to a higher level is to get more fans to the games.
To those who have never come to a women's sports event at FSU, Dr. Billie Jones delivers this message: "They're missing a good time!"
And she hopes her membership on the Committee of Thirty will help spread the word that "It really is OK to be a woman and to be an athlete."

On the FSU women's faculty from 1972-89, Jones taught a full load of classes, advised 150 students and then, on top of it all, was an unpaid coach in softball and volleyball.
"There wasn't money, and if there was to be a team, that's the way it was," she said with a shrug. "In 1972, we had a $2,400 budget for everything. We could get state cars, but we had to drive them. We had no money for motels and food, and we had to reach into our own pockets."

"What I most envied was a time and a place to practice," Jones said, remembering how the women's teams had to wait until the men were finished using the courts at Tully and Montgomery gyms. "But the young women who played loved it," Jones said. "And that's what kept me going."

Love of women's sports is what inspires the Committee of Thirty to help FSU build on past successes, which include national championships.

"I think the Committee of Thirty will really raise awareness of women's athletics and help us be where we need to be in the upper echelon nationally, to be a Tennessee and a Stanford," said Jo Anne Graf, FSU head softball coach. When she went to FSU in the mid-'70s, Graf recalled with a grimace, the men's intramural sports kicked the women intramural sports over to the Marching Chiefs band practice field. Joel Padgett, director of gift planning with the Seminole Boosters, says he has faith that the Committee of Thirty will boost women's sports to the next level. "This is a group that's tenacious and not accustomed to losing at anything, I'll tell you that," Padgett said.

Palmer, veteran in the war for equality in women's sports at FSU, is hopeful, too.
"The timing is perfect. We just need to get out and raise the awareness about womens athletics. Plenty of people out there have daughters."

When she thinks back to the old days, Palmer said, "We were really seen as a threat to men's athletics. I think now it's not viewed so much that way. Now, more and more, young women are coming through high school in athletic programs and wanting to go to college on scholarships.

I think parents are just as supportive of their daughters as their sons. Enough time has gone by that scars from the struggle have healed."

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