"Problems start with tryouts" from the April 11, 1974 Door County Advocate
JIM ROBERTSON
JIM ROBERTSON
Problems start with tryouts
As noted in the preceding column, my position on girls in sports is that they should remain segregated, that while there are a few tom boys who might be able to break into boys sports they are the exception rather than the rule.
Consider track which will soon be with us. This is a noncontact, individual sport but check if you will the difference between boys and girls times. You will find a wide variation that makes an attempt at integrated competition a farce.
Two years ago Sturgeon Bay's Mary LeRoy won a state 440 championship with a time of 62 seconds. A great effort for a girl but it wouldn't even make a boys team, let alone a state title.
But physical differences aside, there are other problems involved if we are to consider integrated sports programs, not the least of which is an admitted chauvinistic attitude among males.
But is it a chauvinistic attitude or is it really a hard look at reality? If Sturgeon Bay's top girl runner could hardly hope to make the boys track team with her state championship time, how many other girls can hope to crack the starting lineup in Little League?
But as much as a Little League manager shudders to think of a girl waiting her turn on the bench, the problem doesn't start there. It starts with the tryouts in late April and early May.
Tryouts are held each year to determine which boys are talented enough to make the teams. Sturgeon Bay has an eight team league, the maximum number allowed by Little League, with 15 boys to a team.
Multiply eight teams by 15 boys and you get 120 boys in the "varsity" Sturgeon Bay Little League. But now let's remember that there are between eight and 11 boys returning to each team from the previous year. Figure nine as the average and you get 72 returnees with room for only 48 more.
So tryouts are held for as many as 75 new boys. From these 75 only 40 to 50 can be chosen. The rest have to go into Farm League.
So you can see it's no easy task for the managers to sift the wheat from the chaff in a few hours of tryouts. Let a boy have a bad night, or at worst two bad nights, and he's headed for the farm system.
Now, as NOW suggests, we should let girls try out for Little League. As a former Little League manager, I think it would really complicate the problem. While trying not to discriminate against girls, we could in effect be discriminating against the boys.
In other words, would Little League managers put a girl or two on their teams simply to keep the women libbers off their backs? And in doing so, would they be sending a boy who they feel is a better player than the girl to the Farm league?
Now we come to the game itself. True, the most that girls say they want is a chance but what if the manager decides they aren't good enough to crack the starting lineup. Is he going to be haunted by the fear that people will think of his decision as typically chauvinistic?
Now let's get into the game. It's bad enough for a manager to be looking at the bench and wondering how to substitute one boy for another let alone having to look at girls and worrying if he substitutes a boy first what everybody will be thinking. And if he substitutes a girl ahead of a boy for that reason, isn't he discriminating against the boy?
So why not just have separate leagues for girls and boys? Remember what UW-GB Basketball Coach Dave Buss says, that if we let girls play on boys teams then we have to let boys play on girls teams. And Like Buss says, don't be surprised if you have boys coming over from Farm League taking over the girls teams.
And if Sturgeon Bay does go to a separate Little League for girls, let's not forget it will need managers and coaches. Women who think their daughters should be playing baseball should also be ready to step forward and help manage and coach. Yes, and umpire too.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Other posts about girls sports
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/girls-sports