The following is reprinted from Row As One's Newsletter, Reach.

The Challenge of the Pre-Title IX Competitive Woman Rower
“No person in the United States will, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.”
Education Act, Title IX, 1972.

An area not addressed in the many articles I have read on Title IX is how these results are affecting women who were educated prior to its passage in 1972; those women educated in the 1950’s and 60’s. This topic is of special interest to me because I grew up at a time when athletic opportunities were not readily accessible to females and then when the occasion presented itself, I found myself drawn to a sport that is considered elitist by many and the ultimate team sport by most. For someone like myself who grew up at a time when girls and women were actually discouraged from participating in team sports, the process of becoming a member of a competitive rowing team became an inner challenge and at times even caused an inner conflict for me. It has been a learning process that has been fraught with as many painful experiences as joyful ones. I have been reflecting on some of the reasons for this ever since I started competing. What draws so many pre-Title IX women to rowing? What makes a boat of older masters’ women so volatile at times, even though individually each woman is doing her best? What is the most appropriate coaching approach for a team of older women? What is the most effective training environment for women who have had few or no athletic opportunities open to them when they were young? What are some of the strengths of pre-Title IX women that can form the basis of a dynamic training and coaching approach? In this article I would like to address these questions.

The points I would like to make are based on my own experience as an older woman entering the competitive arena for the first time and on my own personal experience of growing up female before the enactment of Title IX. My points are also garnered from my many conversations with women like myself -- my teammates, my friends, my peers, my colleagues, my schoolmates and my sisters.

I would like to begin with three general statements:
1. How we as older female athletes function when rowing is mired in our relationship to sport when we were young; that relationship, in turn, is embedded in the parochialism of the period of time in which we grew up.

2. Women my age will train most successfully in a pedagogic environment that honors our life experiences, that incorporates the skills and attributes we have acquired along the way and that supports the direction we are moving into the future.

3. The reasons many women my age are choosing to become active in sport has much to do with maintaining our health and integrating the mind/body/spiritual components of our beings.

I am one member of a large group of women now entering middle age who did not have the benefits of Title IX during my school years. The very fact that the 1972 Education Act needed to be passed in the US implied that sexual discrimination in many areas of education was rampant. Competitive athletic sports programs for girls and women ranked high on the discriminatory list. Before Title IX, programs for women and girls in competitive sports existed in some schools, but not much attention was given to the general masses. For many of us who grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, there was little opportunity to play at the competitive sports level. By the time I finished college in 1970, the passage of Title IX was still two years in the future. Therefore, I believe that many of us who are now in our mid forties and older have certain experiences in common as it relates to competitive sports that are different from the younger women rowers and even younger masters women rowers.

Before Title IX, most women were not taught how to compete, how to be very disciplined in physical training, how to push physical limits, how to win, and most important, how to lose gracefully and how to use the loss as a skill sharpener for the next race. We don’t know what it is like to be considered an athlete, to have an athlete’s body, to be strong, aggressive, competitive and proud of ourselves. Not having had the experience of participating in a team sport, we did not learn the real meaning of teamwork. It was not that we did not possess the urge to compete, to play on a team, to be tough, strong and confident. As a little girl and then as a young woman I was competitive, I was out to excel, I did pride myself on outwitting my competition, I was strong and playful, I was physical and sensual, but I was taught to deny those attributes or at least to keep them under control for fear that they might dare to escape into the open. Athletic prowess was not one of the admired attributes when I was growing up.

During my college years I pushed for reevaluation of the social structure of the times, for curriculum reform in the university, for the end of the Vietnam war, for women’s liberation, and for equal opportunity for blacks and women. I was also of the generation of women who pushed for Title IX. I learned as part of living and being educated in that era to question and to always ask “why.” As the generations after mine were given more freedom and opportunity in sport and other areas, the 50’s and 60’s generation of women had moved on to make inroads in yet another area, that of professional careers. Again we pushed and are still pushing to shatter or raise the level of the glass ceiling in professional areas.

Many of us have succeeded in pursuing careers and jobs where we are one of the policy and decision makers. We are considered experts in our fields and we function in that capacity. We are responsible for planning projects, managing staff, preparing budgets, giving presentations, etc. While many of us yearn to become physically fit and even compete, we are not easily swayed into regressing back to an earlier stage of life when we did what we were told without questioning. Asking questions, evaluating, critiquing, analyzing, preparing, philosophizing and buying into positive attitudes is what my generation is all about. It is how I have learned to operate in the world.

Now I find myself again in transition as a member of the group of front line “baby boomers” approaching the half century mark. The time is right to become involved in sport; there are more opportunities as a result of Title IX and as a woman in mid-life I am facing the risk of developing one or more of the devastating diseases of my time: breast cancer, ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease. Exercise is one ingredient in the mix for prevention of these diseases and I believe it will help ensure a higher quality life as I age. I don’t know what the physical limits of the female body are as one gets older but I am again of the generation who is going to “push” those limits beyond what is possible today. I envision “life-experienced women” living on their own, healthy and active. The limits of healthy and active in later years are not yet well delineated, but I am certain it can be more than living on the past and maintaining body function by keeping the pharmaceutical companies obese with profit. Being physically fit keeps me mentally involved in life; competition is the blade sharpener for mental and physical activity. The position of the recreational rower and sideline cheerleader is no longer acceptable to me today as it was when I was growing up.

As a consequence of our position in the history of the time, women in my generation have been and continue to be the vanguard of change. We have lived through many transitions and have been instrumental in making change happen. A myriad of life experiences accompanies each of us as we begin to develop into athletes. There are numerous psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual changes that have occurred along the way that influence how we function today. My personal reason for wanting to become competitive have evolved and have a large part to do with my own inner quest of uniting and integrating the mind/body/spiritual connection with my external world. My reasons for competing are not those of my younger self and I do not intend my entry into a competitive team sport to be a passage backwards in time. This would be self defeating because I no longer have the agility for learning new techniques as I did when I was young. What I hear as the correct way to perform a certain action is not always what my body does, no matter how hard I try to direct it. Some attributes I still find very uncomfortable. Being openly competitive, being physically strong and confident, and being aggressive, are among those traits I am uneasy about. I am also more cautious; I can’t take the physical risks I could when I was young. Other changes however, have replaced those functions I can’t do so well anymore. I have learned to take stands on issues I feel are important, I have found my voice, I have developed detailed analytical skills through many years of schooling, I have learned to guide my competitive drive toward developing a professional career and I have learned how to use an inner focus when needed. These attributes are now an integrated part of me. They cannot be put on hold when I step into a boat. These are my mid-life tools that I now rely on to build new skills and to continue to be open to what life has to teach.

There are also other inner changes. For me, rowing has become a little microcosm of life and inner life. It is not the need to win anymore, as it was when I was younger, as much as it is the need to excel with the limitations imposed by the process of aging and the experiencing of life with its many facets. On the outside this appears to many as out to win at all costs. For myself though, there is a very great difference between needing to win and stretching my abilities to excel personally. This is my definition of competition--personal achievement graced by the vagaries of age and life experience, and accomplishment within the framework of a collective effort. I look for camaraderie, caring, communication and being part of a unified whole as we each strive toward a common goal of excelling personally and collectively as a team.

Pre-Title IX women who choose to compete are in a territory that has not been well tested. Although the ranks are beginning to swell, there are not many of us out there doing this competitive “thing.” How to mesh individual needs and personal development with team development can be a formidable challenge. This process cannot be expected to be hassle free. The task of becoming a competitive team for older women holds much opportunity for the development of training techniques based on a holistic approach taking into consideration the characteristics of women of our generation and the reasons we choose to compete. Our strengths need to be emphasized. We may not have had the opportunity to acquire the athletic skills necessary for our particular sport during our youth, but our tenacity to push and effectuate positive change is our hallmark.

The skills we have developed to create change are just the skills that need to be tapped when training in a competitive environment. We will change, we will push, we will train, we will learn the right way to row, and we will become excellent team rowers, but we need to be able to learn to do all these things through the use of our NOW tools of questioning, analyzing, being part of the decisions, etc. If these tools are considered unimportant or if we ourselves are ambivalent about who we are, why we choose to row, and what strengths we have attained, then we will default to allowing ourselves to be trained in the mode of school children or college athletes. If this happens, it will only be a matter of time before clashes occur and havoc results. No coach or trainer has any other option but to train us in the current mode of teacher/student if we ourselves do not recognize our uniqueness and pride ourselves on the strengths we have acquired through the years. Among ourselves, we must foster an environment that will allow for individual and team growth, not just individual skill development. Only in this way can trainers progress in a manner which will allow them to draw on our life attributes.

Coaches and trainers, for their part, will need to address us at the levels that highlight and utilize our strengths, understanding our background, what motivates us and how we will best perform. They will need to capitalize on those attributes which we are experts at--characteristics such as pushing our own limits, identifying our unknown physical and mental borders and then pushing beyond them. I believe older women will function best when the pedagogic methods employed honor our life experiences and move us toward becoming competitive within a framework of communication, camaraderie and nurturance. In that context, the coach should act as part of the team, discussing the technical and behavioral observations and allowing decisions to be made jointly. This will help us realize our own potential and in the process contribute to a collective goal. We will need to address each other as partners--not rivals--in the same fashion.

Some coaches have already initiated this process. I have been very fortunate in having had the opportunity to attend the Row As One camp for the past two seasons. It was at this camp that I began thinking about my position as an older woman in competitive sport. It was also at this camp that, for the first time, I experienced a training approach that encouraged participation and supported active listening to our needs-needs that sometimes we didn’t even know how to define ourselves. Implementing this type of training environment takes courage; it is not easy to draw out potential by creating an open space where change can happen. It is much easier to impart the necessary techniques in a teacher/student relationship than in a partnership relationship. An open participatory environment guides and develops personal and team skills by communicating with each individual as well as with the entire team. It is a multidimensional holistic approach that addresses the whole person and the whole team.

The Row As One camp is reaching for something new in the coaching of older women and I wholeheartedly support that effort. But we must, in turn, guide that process by helping to define our own training needs. Only then can coaches on the caliber of Holly Metcalf, hear us and direct us in our endeavor to become competitive athletes, and only then can we begin to probe the boundaries of physical strength and agility in aging. In return, women like myself can leave a legacy to the younger generations of women. We can change society’s paradigm of aging from physical degradation and dependency to a society which not only accepts but expects older women to be active, independent and ageless in mind and spirit.