Former Eastern Illinois University professor and faculty athletic representative Dr. Gail Richard has watched the landscape of collegiate athletics shift in the 50 years following the passing of Title IX.

A student athlete herself before and during the transition into the Title IX era, she has seen the changes the civil rights law has created.

Richard, who was a high school tennis athlete Title IX was being made law, saw the impacts of not having equality between the sexes in sports when she had to change high schools to attend a school with a girls tennis team in hopes of receiving a scholarship at the collegiate level.

The opportunity to play in high school led her to being a state-ranked athlete at St. Augustana and later, the women's tennis coach at EIU.

Being a student athlete benefitted her not only financially, but as a person. Richard said that it helped her better manage her time and helped her with her physical and mental health, especially as someone who was often overextended.

"I found that when I was frustrated with speech pathology or theater, to go hit a tennis ball or to go out and be physical really helped me physically and mentally and I think if you can hit a balance, it's really good for you," Richard said. "It's healthy and you learn how to deal with disappointments, you learn how you have to push yourself."

Those experiences helped her find her way to being a coach at Eastern after finishing her master's degree at the university. During her time as a coach, she continued to see the disparities between men's and women's sports.

"When I came to Eastern, still in the transition to Title IX, the women's tennis team was significantly underfunded compared to the men's team and some of the other higher profile sports, we didn't even have uniforms for the team," Richard said. "I said we're going to represent the institution and so I took our budget and reallocated some things, made some requests and got at least a team uniform for the girls."

She said the uniforms were an example of how the inequality played out on even the most basic aspects of the team.

"I think just some of those real simple things like your uniform to represent the institution, the equipment that you need to be able to play that sport; those were things that the women were funding on their own because the funding wasn't there," Richard said. "The scholarships were less than the men's teams because they were much higher profile and much longer established."

After working as a coach, Richard completed her doctoral degree and became a longtime faculty athletic representative, serving as a liaison between the academic and athletic sides of students' lives.

Since then, she was the inaugural winner of the Ohio Valley Conference Thurston Banks Award for Distinguished Academic Service in 2013, inducted into Eastern's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016, served on the NCAA Division I Management Council from 2004 to 2008 and most recently was honored as one of 13 pioneers from OVC institutions during a celebration for the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

Throughout her extensive experience in higher education athletics, Richard said she has seen great improvements in the way women are treated in the athletic arena, as well as some areas she would like to see improve.

"I think at the collegiate level, we're doing better than certainly you read in the headlines with professional sports with pay and those kinds of things," Richard said.
One issue she sees is creating a false sense of equity among the sexes.

"I think now with NCAA and Title IX compliance, there are safeguards to make sure that there are enough opportunities for the women. The hardest thing, and sometimes it's not always fair, is football has such huge numbers for the men and there isn't any equivalent sport for the women. So, sometimes they have to pick up a lot of sports to say we're fairly equal in terms of the number of opportunities for men and women on campus and I think that's kind of an artificial thing and maybe it puts undue pressure, because it doesn't have any equivalent. But I think when there is an equivalent sport, like basketball or soccer or some of those other things, that as long as the opportunity is equivalent, I think we're fine. I think sometimes you really have to work to balance off the football and I don't know that that's fair and I think sometimes we see some inequality for the men," Richard said. "You might have women's soccer and field hockey and other things and you can't have men's because you've got to offset football, and I don't know that that's always right, but I do think there needs to be equitable treatment for the sports."

Overall, Richard said she believes Title IX has been successful and implemented well.

"I think there's still some room to grow and there's room for improvements but I'm very happy that people are taking time to really recognize that anniversary and to really put a little focus back on it, and to step back and really look at how far we've come in some of that in terms of those opportunities," Richard said.