Why the quick start following Title IX?

Title IX had nothing to do with the better performance of girls in that era. The entire population was in far better shape back then, even girls who never played sports could be more athletic than many female "athletes" now.

Casual relationship between the data you list and the passing of Title IX. Your average person in the 70's wouldn't of known what the hell title IX was.

There is a decent set of data out there that researched progress made in the 70's and progress made in the 90's with female equality is sports. The 90's being when Title IX started being actively enforced and the 70's when it was written and passed.

It concluded that the social changes in the 70's were responsible for the great improvements vs. legislative enforcement of the 90's. Also suggested that the negative perspective of the law has hampered continued improvement as well.

Title IX another great example of it being hard/impossible to legislate social and moral conflicts or issues.....

if you want to talk about title ix on the high school level, then you have to indicate what it did on that level. I know about it on the college level: does it have the same effects on the high school level? If so, then it would have required that many girls's teams be created, which would have made possible any of the great performances, since you can't run well for a team if there is no team. But in general the girls and boys performances in the 70s are obviously both great because of the kind of training done and the general activity at the time.

This pattern you've noticed in Oregon high school running holds in most other states and nationally: girls in the late 70 and early 80 were just as fast or faster than they have ever been, including today.

A few points:

1) The same pattern is almost as strong for high school boys. Track and field was just a bigger thing then.

2) Although it wasn't formally enforced, I suspect that Title IX did make a difference, although probably not in terms of college scholarships. When, in the early 1970s, high school and college ADs got the message that girls had to be given opportunities, the first sports they added were track and field and cross country because it cost nothing to do so. You just tell the boys coach that he needs to coach the girls now too. That running opportunities came first matters because the most talented and competitive female athletes had little choice but to do track and field. Now there is soccer, lacrosse, basketball, and many other sports which draw away many of the best girl athletes.

National and state by state data on high school participation in all sports going back to about 1970 is free here:

http://www.nfhs.org/

My historical paper might also be of interest.

http://www.gvsu.edu/cms3/assets/6D2549F6-ED41-142A-2D7251DEDEE796B4/deanerfiles/13Deaner2006MoreMalesRunFast.pdf

I'm not taking any issue with Title IX - credit or discredit. I only mention it to illustrate that within 10 years of the effective beginning of girls high school sports there were many long standing records set. It just defies the pattern of how most movements develop. Things usually start small and grow in size and sophistication but the girls of the late 70s seemed to have skipped the build up.

One phenomenon of the late '70's/early eighties might have created a particular "shadow effect", namely, the popular running boom, especially among men in their 30s/40s. I know MANY women from that era who as children and early teens ran with their dad, and received a lot of positive reinforcement for participating in club AG programs as well as HS. That probably died off as the dads dropped out of the scene.

The boys performances seemed to peak in the mid-70's, prior to Title IX, but also before the peak of "The Running Boom".

As a HS runner in the mid/late 70's, I think jj... is right on target. We were much more active on a day-to-day basis in the 60's & 70's than most kids of my son's generation ('05 grad) - boys and girls alike. At that time the opportunity for girls to compete was just beginning to take off. I can only recall tennis, basketball, track, and softball for girls at my school. My senior year ('78) xc team had the first female participant at our school and she ran with the boys, as there were no girls' meets in our conference.

As for the boys...

My HS times were low to mid 17's for 3 miles (this was before they invented k's ). I ran largely to prepare for wrestling season and was the 6th man on our team with #'s 7 & 8 always nipping at my heels - and we were only 2nd best in our county. I look at results from county meets in recent years and only see one or two runners each year in the entire county running faster than I was over 30 years ago AND I DIDN'T EVEN SCORE for my team back then.

So, while there are some exceptional programs and individuals around, I think the depth isn't what it was back then. There are also more alternatives now, so other sports (particularly soccer, which we didn't have then) bleed off some potentially good runners - both male and female.

I refer to myself as one of the Title 9 babies. I entered HS in 1974 and it was the first year that my school and the state's schools had track and xc as full sports. Four years later, my college teams were the first "official" sports after being a club sport.

I think of the women older than me as the true "pioneers" since there weren't official programs for them and they went out and competed anyway.

I am not sure you can say that Title 9 was not "actively enforced" until the 90s as I think many states started having programs beginning in 1974-75. Of course, I was in the more progressive NE, perhaps in the south things were different.

Interestingly, I am now watching a really noticeable increase in the number of women competitors in the 50-54 age group at the national level in both track and xc. I think this is an echo effect of Title 9. Many of us who benefitted from the first wave of official girls sports are still running. I think this is especially apparent in xc. The women who did not have exposure to xc in HS are less likely, IMO, to try something a bit different like xc.

How many Men's college track and field programs have been dropped in the past ten years.

I thought schools were supposed to offer programs based on popularity and interest.

Boys high school track and field has the second highest number of participates of all sports at the high school level.

What a shame

Rizzo and leanermeaner both offer salient points. 2 other factors to consider:

* There just weren't that many sports for women back then on the HS or college level. Track, basketball, golf, swimming, volleyball, maybe softball. Soccer was in its infancy and nobody did things like field hockey or lax.

* Muddy girl and her peers are Baby Boomers. There's a hell of a lot of them out there--it's the largest generation of Americans. I'd argue--and would love to study--the fact that the "echo boom" of the late 90s/2000s led to a greater range of kids participating in track, and thus a greater chance of outlier athletes running great times. By comparison, my generation (graduated HS in 1991) was one of the smallest, and both that and prevailing training philosophies contributed to relatively slow times even among elites.

Why isn't Kate Conant of South Eugene on that list at 4:25.8?

Bahahaha they suck ass. I saw Chanelle Price run at a dual meet. She would have gotten 3rd in the guys 800 lol. Prolly could have beaten her if we raced cuz I wouldn't want to lose to a girl though.

???afoehasappeared??? wrote:

Bahahaha they suck ass. I saw Chanelle Price run at a dual meet. She would have gotten 3rd in the guys 800 lol. Prolly could have beaten her if we raced cuz I wouldn't want to lose to a girl though.

That is what is amazing about these early performances. Leann Warren ran 2:03 only seven years after girls started running track and 30 years later only four girls have run faster, nationally. Chanelle ran 2:01 in high school and has shaved only a fraction of a second off of that mark as a college junior. She's great but the girls today have 35 years of history to work with. In 1979 there wasn't much history at all.

Mary Decker was running 4:40 (indoor WR) and 2:01 at age 15, before Title IX, reminiscent of Ryun's prodigy-type performances a decade before. The pool of girl's tracksters in the early '70's was VERY small by current standards, but the top-level was of similar quality.

1979 wrote:

???afoehasappeared??? wrote:

Bahahaha they suck ass. I saw Chanelle Price run at a dual meet. She would have gotten 3rd in the guys 800 lol. Prolly could have beaten her if we raced cuz I wouldn't want to lose to a girl though.

That is what is amazing about these early performances. Leann Warren ran 2:03 only seven years after girls started running track and 30 years later only four girls have run faster, nationally. Chanelle ran 2:01 in high school and has shaved only a fraction of a second off of that mark as a college junior. She's great but the girls today have 35 years of history to work with. In 1979 there wasn't much history at all.

"There Should Be A Law" wrote:

Title IX had nothing to do with the better performance of girls in that era. The entire population was in far better shape back then, even girls who never played sports could be more athletic than many female "athletes" now.

A good example of someone being an idiot and just talking out of their ass

Maybe because people didn't baby girls with regards to training then?

Now everyone tells girls they can't train as hard as guys or run nearly as many miles. Complete speculation, but it might be possible that the early girls teams just took their cue from the guys at the time and ran a lot of mileage.

aettee wrote:

Maybe because people didn't baby girls with regards to training then?

Now everyone tells girls they can't train as hard as guys or run nearly as many miles. Complete speculation, but it might be possible that the early girls teams just took their cue from the guys at the time and ran a lot of mileage.

Baby them in regards to training? You do remember this is right after an era where people thought their vaginas would fall out if they ran longer than 800 meters. Women weren't allowed in marathons until the early 70's.