By Jacob Richman and Alexandra Gopin

Title IX was designed in part to balance the scales for girls and boys in school-based athletics. Some day, maybe it will.

But nearly 50 years after Congress passed the sweeping law that guarantees equity in “any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” including high school athletics, girls are stuck in an imperfect system that continues to favor boys in many ways.

Girls’ participation in school sports has increased dramatically since 1972. But Title IX advocates say that boys still get better treatment. Often, they say, boys teams are provided nicer uniforms, play on better fields, are led by more experienced coaches, have their practices scheduled at more desirable times (relegating girls teams to early mornings and late nights), play with newer equipment and dress in better-equipped locker rooms. All are potential violations of Title IX.

“We still estimate that the majority of schools are likely out of compliance with the law,” said Sarah Axelson, vice president of advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation.

When girls see that they’re getting worse treatment, their options include challenging their coach or principal, filing a lawsuit and lodging a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education — all daunting for a teenager. When parents step forward to report these situations, they’re often at the center of disputes that can roil their child’s high school. Not surprisingly, only a small percentage of likely violations end up being reported.

A four-month investigation by The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland raises serious questions about the effectiveness of Title IX in the 23,882 public high schools across the U.S. It raises concerns about how many of the 3.4 million girls playing high school sports have experienced violations of Title IX that went unaddressed.

Among the findings:

• Title IX isn’t aggressively policed by state or federal government officials. It’s mostly up to teenagers and their parents to report violations.
• Most parents and students aren’t well informed about the law. The federal government doesn’t require schools to offer education about Title IX and athletics.
• Reporting Title IX violations often means standing up to school officials like coaches and principals. That’s a lot to ask of high school students and their parents.
• Title IX enforcement protocols are cumbersome and slow-moving. A review of 39 complaints to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights by the Povich and Howard centers showed that the average time from filing to resolution was nearly two years. That means girls who suffered unequal treatment often graduated before they saw results.

Violations reach girls across the country:

• In Union City, New Jersey, a highly publicized athletics field that sits on the roof of a $180 million high school building was mostly used by boys teams. For nearly 10 years, access for girls was limited.
• In Ewa Beach, Hawaii, girls on the water polo team argued that they had to practice on dry land or in the open ocean before their season because they couldn’t get funding for a pool.
• In Ventura, California, girls on the softball team suffered injuries on a field that was poorly maintained, while the boys baseball team had a field that was better tended at a higher quality stadium.

“Most of these athletes just presume that there must be a reason that they’re getting second-class treatment,” three-time Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar said. “It’s everywhere they look. They see that men are getting more than women everywhere. In high school, in junior high school, in college, men are getting more.”

There’s no doubt that Title IX has had a positive impact on girls and opportunities for them to play sports. Consider Title IX’s impact on participation in high school sports. During the 1971-72 school year, girls made up about 7% of high school athletes in the country. For every girl playing on a high school team, there were more than 12 boys.

Most of these athletes just presume that there must be a reason that they’re getting second-class treatment. It’s everywhere they look.

Through the years, the participation gap steadily has narrowed. In a National Federation of State High School Associations survey of athletics participation in the 2018-19 school year, girls accounted for almost 43% of all high school players.

But the promise of Title IX has yet to be achieved.

Education is lacking

The greatest challenge may be education. Teenagers and their parents first have to understand the law before they challenge school authorities.

Interviews with dozens of parents and their children across the country by the Povich Center and Howard Center revealed a range of understanding of Title IX. Many high school athletes and their parents don’t know that the law exists. Others said they’d heard of the law but didn’t know that protections applied to them.

In the late 1970s, Ellen Zavian — the first female agent licensed by the National Football League Players Association and a Title IX advocate — wanted to play soccer in high school. But she was told she wouldn’t be able to because there was only a boys team.

So Zavian ran track, played volleyball and cheered.

“If I had known about Title IX, I definitely would have filed a suit against my school when I didn’t have the opportunity to play soccer,” Zavian said. “But, I didn’t know about it.”

That information gap still exists. Grace Saad, a former softball player at Buena High School in Ventura, California, didn’t realize she could do anything when her teammates threw around the term “Title IX” after noticing a clear disparity in how they were treated compared to their counterparts on the baseball team.

I knew that things weren’t equal, but I just thought that’s the way it was.

While the Buena High baseball team has a stadium, dugouts and a permanent outfield fence with a scoreboard, the softball team often didn’t have enough softballs to hold batting and fielding practice at the same time.

“I knew that things weren’t equal, but I just thought that’s the way it was,” said Saad, who graduated in 2020.

Courses and webinars in public schools could help inform students, coaches and administrators. But a federal education mandate like the one for parts of Title IX that refer to sexual assault doesn’t apply to sports.

Difficult choices for student, parents

At the beginning, someone notices a problem. It might fit into one of the two baskets of Title IX compliance — “participation” or “treatment and benefits.”

Participation applies to opportunities for girls to play sports as compared to the percentage of girls in a given high school, the proportionality test. If 60% of students in a high school are girls, approximately 60% of athletic opportunities should be for girls, according to Title IX.

Treatment and benefits refers to where girls play and what they play with, among other things. Title IX doesn’t mandate that boys and girls teams have exactly the same of everything. It does require that they receive equal treatment in locker rooms, practice and game venues, scheduling of games and practices, publicity and coaching experience.

At Pentucket Regional High School in West Newbury, Massachusetts, the issue was Twitter. When the school tweeted live updates from its athletics account, 60% focused on boys teams compared to only 32% for girls teams. The Office of Civil Rights determined that the school would be required to monitor publicity efforts to ensure that any inequalities are corrected.

A person with a concern about any of these issues can report them to their high school. A meeting with a principal or athletics director might quickly settle the issue.

When diplomacy fails, there are options in the courts and with the Office for Civil Rights.

Under Title IX, the the office investigates complaints about sexual violence, treatment of pregnant students and treatment of LGBTQ students, as well as school-based sex discrimination in sports. When a person files a complaint, investigators contact the school, check out allegations and decide if violations have occurred. If they have, the civil rights office issues a resolution letter with steps the school must take to come into compliance.

A Title IX lawsuit can be costly and time-consuming. Plaintiffs, even when they prevail, often emerge feeling bruised and exhausted.

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, a group of softball parents filed a Title IX lawsuit against the local school district in August 2020. Ten months later, the parties reached a settlement that addressed many of the parents’ concerns.

“It’s been quite an emotional toll. I think we’ve all lost sleep over it,” said Angela Morgan, a plaintiff in the case and president of the softball team booster club at Stillwater High School.

Eliminating sex discrimination

Title IX is rooted in the turbulent years of the 1950s and 1960s and the passions that fueled the civil rights movement. In those years, Congress debated laws designed to end racial discrimination in public accommodations, outlawing discrimination in hotels and at lunch counters. Later, its powers were expanded to end discrimination in hiring when companies received government contracts.

Title IX’s purpose was to eliminate sex discrimination in education. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” Title IX states.

At the time, few lawmakers thought about the effect it might have on sports. The subject of sports came up only once during the Senate’s months-long debate of the legislation — and that was no more than a passing exchange. Sen. Birch Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana and the bill’s sponsor, told one of his Senate colleagues: “I do not read [Title IX] as requiring integration … of the football fields,” as recounted by author Welch Suggs in “A Place on the Team: The Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX.”

Despite the profound impact the statute has had on girls and women in sports, those original 37 words included no references to athletics.

Nearly 50 years later, Title IX and opportunity for girls in sports are nearly synonymous. The gains made by high school girls over the decades have been significant, but boys often still get better treatment.

When the state-of-the-art, rooftop athletics field was unveiled in 2009 in Union City, New Jersey, it quickly gained national attention for its innovative design. The boys football team played on it for nearly a decade; use by girls teams was restricted.

The National Women’s Law Center pointed out the problem to Union City High School, and the administration made changes.

Today, girls teams share the field with boys, using it extensively for their practices and games. In fact, Union City High School is in many ways a model for gender equity in sports.

It’s a reminder that Title IX can be monitored and aggressively enforced. But for 50 years it hasn’t been.

The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism collaborated on a four-month investigation into Title IX and high school sports. Support their work at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.