by Toby Cooper

Sounder contributor

In 1973, Orcas resident Bethany Ryals — a standout college athlete in track, cross country, field hockey, and basketball — got lucky.

She fortuitously enrolled in Western Washington University in year two of the revolutionary legislative achievement known as “Title IX.” As it turns out, the energetic Ryals needed no more luck to carve a lifetime of joy and achievement.

“Title IX was intended for all academic programs, including math and science,” says Ryals, adding that to most Americans, the law has become synonymous with girls’ and women’s sports. “Anybody who took federal money was required to have equal slots.”

It began in 1972 when then-Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana noted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed discrimination in employment, but not in education. He drafted language – concise and direct at 37 words – that became the ninth section of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting discrimination based on sex in all education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. Forever known as Title IX, it changed the lives of millions.

Last month, Ryals and fellow Orcas friend Robin McCain had the honor of returning to WWU for a special event at which some 200 women from those early Title IX years were finally awarded their varsity letters.

Still, the early days of Title IX were rough. Despite the law requiring equal participation, Ryals and McCain remember that nobody had any budgets.

“The big story of our weekend was remembering how we had to sell cookies so you could buy team shirts,” said Ryals. “We stuck our names on with tape and painted our numbers on the back.”

To this day, she carries no remorse. “To me, the deal was – we didn’t care. We were just thrilled we finally got to play.”

McCain, a competitive swimmer since the age of five, entered WWU two years before Ryals. She had suffered burnout at an early age, recounting how she was “one of those kids who got up at 5:00 for morning workouts, then went to school, and swam again after school.” But later, with Title IX in effect, the WWU athletic department asked her and [Olympic swimmer] Kate Hall to start the university’s first-ever women’s team. They did so with drive and passion, and soon their young swimmers ranked 14th in the nation.

“But like Bethany,” says McCain with the same boundless joy as her friend, “We just wanted to play.”

Both Ryals and McCain recognize the huge metamorphosis Title IX has brought about. “Today, you talk to young women who have grown up on sports teams with all the uniforms and gear and transportation they need. They don’t realize that we did everything for ourselves,” she said. “These kids need to understand it’s their shoulders that will be needed next to support the future generations. It could be cookie sales and cheap motels again if we don’t stay vigilant.”

According to Ryals, just like the “more perfect union,” the reality is not there yet, and much more needs to be done. Still, McCain believes our culture has changed. For example, today’s fathers have become more involved with their daughters’ athletic careers. “They have become advocates,” she says with a smile.

Ryals spoke of once watching a sixth-grade boy shooting baskets alone at lunch. She could hear him talking to himself, checking his own form. “But rather than pretending to be [two-time MVP] Steph Curry, with each shot he would say, ‘and I’m Sue Bird,’ and I said right out loud, ‘Yes, you are.’”

At the mention of [star Seattle Storm point guard] Sue Bird, Ryals and McCain reflected on the downstream effects of Title IX at the professional level. The original law addressed parity in participation, but a conversation has emerged around much more – parity in pay, in opportunities, in everything. Bird and others, including her famous pro soccer partner Megan Rapinoe, have campaigned relentlessly for pay parity.

“Women need to know they deserve this,” McCain added. She finds some female athletes now make more money as social media influencers, where they can bypass the traditional male-dominated marketplace for product endorsements.

Early resistance came from some of the very institutions that stood to benefit the most. “The NAIA – National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics – didn’t want anything to do with women’s sports,” said Ryals. “When we won the national 2-mile relay championship, we got these pretty trophies from the AIUW – Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women – because the NAIA went to court to try to exclude athletics from Title IX.” The litigation and appeals took 10 years to play out. But the net effect was, the AIUW became the original body of “women organizing for women.”

Ryals recalls her early years with WWU. “In those days,” she says with some amusement, “the men’s PE was called ‘Physical Education and Athletics.’ The women’s PE was ‘Physical Education, Health, Recreation, and Dance!’ Women didn’t ‘do’ athletics and men didn’t ‘dance.’ I always said that was just too bad.”

Bellingham resident Terri McMahan, herself a volleyball and tennis star, also entered WWU just as Title IX passed through the US Congress. The new law afforded her a path to a career in coaching and teaching.

In 2022, McMahan approached the WWU administrators with the idea of awarding hundreds of much-deserved varsity letters at a 50th anniversary celebration. “It took off from there,” she said of her first meeting. But first, she had to locate all WWU’s female athletic participants from 1968 to 1981 – daunting, to say the least, in a society where name changes and multiple moves are commonplace.

“I first located 15 women in Bellingham,” she said. “Each of them was assigned 15 more” in ever-widening search strategies leveraged off the internet, friendships, rumors, partners, ex-husbands, “whatever it took.” Eventually they located over 350 women.

“It was an emotional weekend for all of us. The women were being applauded for something that the men had been routinely recognized for decades,” she says.

But the richness of the Title IX legacy lives on. McMahan believes that this unambiguous, straight-talking law has changed the nation to the point where we now have had multiple generations of boys and girls growing up, playing side-by-side, thinking nothing of it.

“Kids today don’t know any different. It has enabled women to find a voice that they never had before,” she said.