Article: When Women Win Too Much

Article

When Women Win Too Much

Summary: A NJ high school coach won game after game after game, despite an unsupportive administration and ritualized sexist, homophobic harassment and vandalism from the football players. Then, after filing a Title IX complaint, she lost her job. Now she's fighting back.

Why, after winning more than 1000 games and eight state championships, did Nancy Welch Williams lose her job? Is hers a cautionary tale of the punishments that befall successful women?

Williams has coached softball, field hockey, and other sports and has taught physical education at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, New Jersey since 1970. Her softball record (343-93) is the best in the nation. But in February, the Board of Education voted 7-3 not to rehire her as the softball coach this spring, replacing her with Robert DiBernardo.

The board's explanation: Field hockey players allegedly harassed Shore cheerleaders during a dispute at a November 2 boys' soccer game.

But hockey players denied any involvement. Cheerleaders said they just wanted an apology. A parent's videotape of the game did not implicate any field hockey players in the argument. Besides, since when is the best coach in the country booted over such an incident? The hockey field and Williams' own home have been vandalized, apparently by football players, and no football coaches have been fired.

A better explanation: Williams wins too much. She wins games and community respect. She defeats barriers to girls' success. In the words of former student Eileen Ward Morano, Williams is "an assertive, strong-minded, confident female who obviously believes in equality in athletics."

Last fall, Williams filed a Title IX complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. Now the OCR is investigating her claim that she was denied reappointment in retaliation for filing the complaint.

Parents are furious. Of the 300 people in attendance at one board meeting, about 250 were Williams' supporters, according to the Atlanticville. More than 100 parents protested at next meeting.

Board President Ina Gelfound charged, "It's a cult-like situation [between Williams and her supporters], which is one of the reasons I think we need a change. We have to remember that this is only an extracurricular activity."

Students are devastated. They distribute petitions (161 signatures) and wear softball diamond-shaped tags saying "We support Coach Williams."

Williams has long insisted on athletic equity. "Just what the boys have," she says: Warmups for the girls. Access to the big gym. Lights for nighttime practices. Williams also unsuccessfully lobbied for equal pay with the football coach.

In her Title IX complaint, Williams charges that the ratio of coaches to players in the girls' and boys' programs violates the law, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. Girls comprise 54% of the 600-member student body and 51% of the athletes. But only 42% of the coaches are assigned to those girls. The other 58% of the coaches are reserved for the boys.

Williams' field hockey program, which has won six state championships, includes 86 girls, but has only 3 coaches. The football program, with 72 boys, has 7 coaches. "The sport that really bugs me is wrestling," says Williams. "They have 16 kids and 2 coaches."

The football players' annual harassment of the hockey program began in the mid-eighties. "First, they'd steal our hockey balls," reports Williams. "We'd spend hours looking for them. At the end of the year, the captain gave me a shoe box full of 35 balls. Ha ha, very funny. Next year, it was spray paint: 'We love you dykes' on the field. Then egging my house. Petty stuff. And every day, they'd walk through our practice" on the way to the football field. Williams says she would complain to the athletic director, to no avail.

Athletic director Jack Levy did not return phone calls. In 1992, the boys deposited human excrement on the hockey field. The parents protested and eight football players were suspended for one day. The next year, a firecracker taped to Williams' front window exploded, shattering glass into her house. Two football players were seen running from the scene.

Some senior girls confronted the boys. "We work our asses off," the boys reportedly explained, "and we don't win anything, and you guys win everything." "We've had a tremendous amount of success," acknowledges Williams. "I expect jealousy from 15 and 16 year olds."

Tensions also run high between Williams and Superintendent and Principal Leonard Schnappauf, who Williams says once threw a clipboard at her, angry about his daughter's playing time in a basketball game. He pledged to "get her," she says, and over the next few years harassed her in ten different ways, all of which she listed in a grievance filed in 1987 with the New Jersey Education Association. He acknowledges her grievance but denies throwing the clipboard and won't discuss it.

Williams' tenured position as a teacher seems secure. Schnappauf will not comment on the future of her field hockey job.

If this is a cautionary tale of what happens to female winners, it's a tale in which the defeated woman does not give up. In a letter to the Atlanticville on March 7, Williams thanked her supporters and pledged, "The fight for equal opportunities for women... has only just begun."

The decision about Williams' field hockey job will be announced in June. So far, the story has received only local attention. National pressure might help Superintendent Leonard Schnappauf and Board President Ina Gelfound do the right thing. They can be reached at Shore Regional High School, 908/222-9300; fax: 908/222-8849.

***

Mariah Burton Nelson is the author of The Stronger Women Get, The More Men

Love Football: Sexism and the American Culture of Sports (Avon Books, 1995).

Coach loses job after Title IX complaint.