Playing Games with Women’s Sports Over two decades have passed since the enactment of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, including athletics. As a result of Title IX, women and girls have benefited from more athletic participation opportunities and more equitable facilities. Because of Title IX, more women have received athletic scholarships and thus opportunities for higher education that some may not have been able to afford otherwise. In addition, because of Title IX the salaries of coaches for women's teams have increased. Despite the obstacles women face in athletics, many women have led and are leading the way to gender equity.In 1995, some legendary tennis players such as Martina Navarotilova, Chris Avert, founded Women’s Sports Legends Foundation. In 1997, seven more players joined this group with several common goals of marketing themselves as ambassadors for women and sports. They pooled their resources and called on their individual talents as players, teachers, entertainers and leaders. As Newsday’s soccer columnist Johnette Howard observed, "Dream Team players have done more for American soccer than any homegrown athletes in the sport’s history”. In 1996, the US women’s soccer team won the Olympic gold medal and, in the summer of 1999, they faced down the best international competition in the World Cup beating China in the World championship game to win the grueling, month-long tournament.The latter conquest generated an unseen excitement about Women’s sport in the general public. These events moved soccer from the back pages of a few big city newspapers to the covers of Newsweek, Time, People, and front of cereal boxes. Forty million people tuned in to Women’s soccer team win the World Cup. This expansion of the U.S. soccer audience benefited not just the women, but the men’s national team and Major League Soccer, too...
