THE GAZETTE
Thursday, August 14, 2014 bo
Page A-9
NON-LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Slow and steady progress on Title IX improvements Some county schools still don’t have softball fields on campus
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BY TED BLACK STAFF WRITER
It has been more than 40 years since the landmark Title IX education amendment was passed in 1972, prohibiting financial discrimination of the basis of sex in all education programs or activities. But it took 30 years for softball players in Prince George’s County to realize that they were not playing on a level field. During the spring of 2002, Jack Mowatt, the current local Amateur Softball Association commissioner and a former umpire, decided that after two decades of watching the conditions of the softball field decline that it was time to do something about it. Mowatt and another umpire began taking photographs of potential hazards at each school and collected them into two scrapbooks.
Bladensburg High School’s softball field is in poor condition. Initially, Mowatt went to county athletic directors — even at private schools, which are not subject Title IX laws — and eventually to the county’s Board of Education with his extensive photographs. Mowatt thought he had properly addressed the problem, but six months later, he realized little was being done. That’s when former longtime Parkdale High School softball
MONEY
Continued from Page A-1 players want it to look nice, and when they strap on their equipment, they want to look nice playing in it, too. But unless there’s change at the Temple Hills school, they’ll likely have another season with second-class gear, playing on a second-class field and feeling like they’re a second-class team, said Stephen Powell, Crossland’s third coach in as many seasons. “Our kids have been fighting a negative mindset for years because their surroundings don’t say that they’re worthy of better, and it impacts them on the field, it impacts them in the classroom, it impacts their expectations,” said Powell, 64. Crossland has had its fair share of successful athletic programs, but its football team, coming off a 1-9 season, has spent the better part of the past decade at the bottom of the standings — and its equipment and field could be part of the reason why, Powell said. Prince George’s high schools each receive $17,000 for athletics, plus $2,000 specifically for football, and additional funds to cover helmet expenses, according to Earl Hawkins, athletic director for Prince George’s County Public Schools. But Powell, along with several county coaches, said that’s not enough to field a winning team. “The county provides money, the school provides money, and it’s nowhere near what we should have,” said Powell, a volunteer assistant coach last season. “It puts our kids at a disadvantage immediately.” Eric Knight, Crossland’s athletic director, said that equipment management and fundraising are essential in developing winning varsity teams and that the Cavaliers football team has lacked in both of these areas in recent years. “If you don’t fundraise, and this is for any sport, you’re going to have to live off what you get from the budget,” Knight said. “And what you get from there is not going to be enough for the extras that you want or may need.” At Fairmont Heights High School, which was 1-9 last season, insufficient fundraising and a lack of cooperation from its athletic department have made equipment maintenance difficult, said Jeff Johnson, a second-year coach at the Capitol Heights school. “Some of [the uniforms] are fading, some of them are raggy, some of them, the numbers are coming off, but we’re still going to wear them,” Johnson said. “... We’re just hurting here.”
BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE
coach Gene Robertson joined the fray and insisted the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. get involved. “We took pictures of fields where we thought there were safety issues,” Mowatt said. “Not for us, but for the girls. The softball fields were a mess and the boys’ baseball fields weren’t in much better shape. Some softball fields had pipes
and tree stumps sticking out of the ground, no fences protecting girls in warm-up areas and some had no benches.’ Coincidentally, Robertson coached the Parkdale softball team that did not have a true home field at the time and still does not. Although the Panthers’ baseball team plays home games at the Riverdale school, the softball team still travels to Charles Carroll Middle School in New Carrollton for home games and practices. It is not provided bus transportation to and from the school for practices for the four-mile round trip. When the county and the NWLC first reached an agreement, the softball fields at Largo and Central high schools soon became the beacons of the project. Largo not only received covered dugouts and a new backstop, the outfield fence was capped with a yellow, plastic protective tubing. Soon the other schools would see similar improvements, although two county high schools, Parkdale and Potomac, still do not have softball
fields on school grounds. In the 10 years since the Title IX issue, the county softball fields are mowed twice each spring by Tru-Green, a landscaping company. But during the winter, many of the dirt infields are overrun by weeds and high grass. At Bladensburg, the infield is not level and even routine grounders can take bizarre hops. Longtime Central softball coach Luanne Smith was one of the beneficiaries of the upgraded conditions that eventually transpired. Central is also one of the few county schools were the outfield grass of the softball field is not used as a practice field for fall sports teams. With the exception of Bowie, which also uses the Belair Annex field for practice, most county schools simply use the baseball/softball outfields for practice as a necessity. “As an athlete, I don’t know if Title IX really helped me because I went to private school,” said Smith, a 1986 Elizabeth Seton graduate. “But as a coach it certainly did. I would ... say my
field at Central is one of the two or three best in the county. That wasn’t always the case. At least we always had a field on school property.” Former Bowie High School softball standout Erin King remembers the disparity between the Bulldogs’ home field and several other fields in the county. King also spent an ample amount of time playing travel softball in her youth for the Severna Park Hornets where field conditions were not an issue. “I don’t think I ever played on a field where I didn’t feel safe,” said King, who later played for Dickinson College and was selected to the Prince George’s Gazette’s All-Decade team for 2000-09. “You could tell that a lot of the fields were not kept up like the one at Bowie. A lot of them did not have covered dugouts and some had a lot of rocks in the infield. But you just focused on playing once the game started.” tblack@gazette.net
“Our kids have been fighting a negative mindset for years because their surroundings don’t say that they’re worthy of better, and it impacts them on the field, it impacts them in the classroom, it impacts their expectations.” Stephen Powell, Crossland High football coach At Bladensburg High School, 2-8 last season, new coach Lester Overton said the team could not afford headsets last season. Overton said that low football participation numbers make competing with other county schools a challenge. “When you try to fundraise, the money doesn’t come in ...I’d have to do a lot of fundraising to equal [other county schools],” said Overton, who purchased used headsets for the upcoming season. Suitland High School coach Ed Shields, the president of the Prince George’s County Football Coaches Association, said a combination of factors contribute to fundraising discrepancies, including school location and coaching staff continuity. “Some of the programs that keep switching coaches, they’re the ones that really get hurt,” said Shields, a sixth-year coach at the District Heights school. Crossland is expected to field a junior varsity squad for the first time since 2009 and the team also started a football booster club, though Knight said fundraising attempts like this have been futile in the past. Players said they feel optimistic about the team’s future, but aren’t expecting change to happen overnight. “We’re trying to upgrade and do better things, but it’s taking a long time,” said Crossland senior Eriq Hall. “The grass grew a little bit ... it looks better than it did.” egoldwein@gazette.net
DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE
The Crossland High School track has weeds poking through the running surface.
GREG DOHLER/THE GAZETTE
Running back Darryl Brown (right) looks to get past a teammate Friday during Northwestern High School football practice in Hyattsville.
Contending with limited practice space Student-athletes’ safety while traveling to off-site practices a concern
costs after the initial installment, turf fields can endure the wear and tear of practices and are largely unaffected by inclement weather.
BY JENNIFER BEEKMAN STAFF WRITER
Making the best of what they have
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Prince George’s County is on the cusp of adding lacrosse to its list of varsity sports and while the growing number of student-athletes is a positive for the area, the possibility of adding four more teams to schools’ dockets — boys and girls varsity and junior varsity — would certainly add another wrinkle to an already growing issue: Finding enough practice space.
The push for turf continues With its recent renovation Oxon Hill High School became the first Prince George’s public high school to receive a turf stadium field this year with plans install the synthetic grass surface at Henry A. Wise in Upper Marlboro and Gwynn Park in Brandywine by next fall. But for the second straight year a bill proposing the installment of artificial turf fields at all 22 county public schools was turned away after passing through the county’s house delegation. Aside from the obvious safety benefits — no more sink holes in the middle of football fields — having artificial turf fields would give athletic directors options and flexibility when providing teams with their practice schedules, county athletic directors agreed. A major factor in the practice field space crunch is the need for teams to stay off grass stadium fields on nongame days to keep them playable. In addition to lower maintenance
For most schools it’s about using the space they have and many times that means football practice takes place on the outfield of softball or baseball diamonds. Or that soccer teams practice on smaller, mostly dirt fields. That is the case at Eleanor Roosevelt, Raiders girls soccer coach Bob Sowers said. At some schools football is the only team to practice on campus because transporting all the equipment is difficult. But at Bowie High School, even the football team travels offsite to the Belair Annex, Bulldogs Athletic Director Jessica Brandt said. “Before I took over, the other AD would allow football to practice on the softball field but I don’t because it’s not fair to those teams because that does tear those fields up,” Brandt said. “And the county won’t come out and roll the fields to level them out and get rid of the divots. Brandt has provided the Bulldogs football team with a storage shed by its practice field and converted two portable classrooms that weren’t being used — but could eventually be needed — into makeshift locker rooms so players wouldn’t have to walk the half a mile or more to practice in full pads.
Hit the road Satellite practices present a number of challenges for student-athletes, not the least of which is actually getting to the designated field. Some fields
are within walking distance — Brandt said some of Bowie’s coaches use the trek as the team’s warmup — but some are not. Issues with cost aside — and it could be thousands of dollars — school buses are not available to sports programs between the hours of 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., Brandt said, while they’re making their after school rounds. Each school is provided with one bus for athletics before 4 p.m., Brandt added, but it’s for whichever team is playing an away game on that particular day. Getting to and from practice is a full team effort, from student-athletes with driver’s licenses to parents’ daily commitment to transporting athletes, athletic directors agreed. But not every school is fortunate enough to have those means, Brandt said. And athletic directors agreed they would prefer not to have athletes in cars with student drivers, though Brandt said she is also concerned about kids walking as well. Other challenges facing teams that practice offsite are lack of restroom facilities and making sure all safety protocols are followed. Each school has several automated external defibrillators on site and it’s a county requirement that all coaches have access to one. But there is only one portable one, which Brandt said she gives to the football team. “We’re right behind the school on this nasty dirt field,” Sowers said. “But it’s nice being on the campus even if it is [not a nice] field. If you practice somewhere else, then you have to get buses and that’s a hassle and you have to rent fields. We have bathrooms where we are. It’s a dirt field but we make do.” jbeekman@gazette.net