Come June 23, this country will quite rightly celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation that has done so much to level the playing field for women when it comes to both opportunity and fairness in everything from sports to education to employment.
But as important and necessary as it has been on so many fronts, one could also understand if former Notre Dame High School and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga baseball pitcher John Sellman might be less than thrilled to honor the occasion.
That’s because, particularly in its early years, Title IX also forced more than a few universities to drop certain men’s sports due to those schools’ inability to properly fund them while also complying with the legislation’s requirements, including sports participation, though that was never an original goal of Title IX.
And thanks to UTC’s limited athletic department budget (some things never change), the school elected to drop its baseball program in the early 1980s in order to better comply with Title IX. Suddenly, shockingly, Sellman and his teammates were no longer able to play the sport they’d loved their whole lives.
“I was somewhat oblivious to Title IX in the beginning,” he said Saturday. “But it definitely hurt when the school dropped baseball. I was mad as (heck). It was a kick to the gut.”