The Impact of Title IX on High School Recruiting

As noted in the national sports news this week, controversy still surrounds the Title IX legislation that we have been living under for over 20 years. In terms of sports and high school recruiting, college recruiting and equality for men and women, this issue may never be resolved. In fact, it seems the more we do to insure equality, the more un-equal things become. The reality is that our good intentions are not going unpunished.

Originally, the Title IX legislation made no mention of sports at all. It was written to insure that equal opportunity was given to men and women when applying for jobs at institutions that received federal funding. It is included as a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972, and has been hacked at ever since to serve specific needs of specific groups and individuals.

Since the inception of Title IX, high schools and colleges have actually cut sports programs for men to create balance between men's and women's programs. In some dramatic cases, bleachers, scoreboards and playing fields have been destroyed to create this 'equality'. The mandate was that if you don't have the same facilities for the girls, you can't have it for the boys. So, down they came. How does that help?

I'm sure in many areas there are more young men involved in physical sports than women. And, many schools are limited in what they offer based on student interest. What has been popular in the past for is what is continued in the future. Introducing new sports is sometimes difficult. I know that for many schools adding soccer was a big deal a few years ago. And, it didn't need to be mandated by the government. And this has impacted high school recruiting.

Years ago when I worked in a middle school, boys and girls had separate physical education classes. This is how it was when I was in school too. I thought nothing of it. The boys played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track and wrestled. The girls played softball, basketball, field hockey, ran track, volleyball and did gymnastics. The boys progressed on to high school with a well rounded knowledge to help them succeed in the sports there. The girls, the same. A few years later came Title IX and the classes had to combine the girl and the boys. Are you kidding? None of these kids wanted to have a PE class with the opposite sex. And, when they discovered that the curriculum would be completely changed they were furious. Boys could no longer have a wrestling program because in a co-ed class girls and boys could not be grappling all over each other on the mats. There was no more football; soccer was added. Baseball was dropped and everyone played softball. Gymnastics was dropped. Basketball, track, volleyball and field hockey stayed. And, they added ping pong, badminton, archery, and other fillers like 'skills and drills' (push up, sit up, and pull up games).

In a nutshell; Title IX may seem like a solution to a problem but in fact has created a new, larger problem for all of us. Students are missing out on specific activities they need and schools are being hit with the cost of compliance with no return on their investment. Expensive equipment sits gathering dust and filler activities that are boring to our kids are in place of real physically challenging activities.

In reality, our elementary and middle school students must work harder for high school recruiting opportunities because of Title IX. Again, no good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes we need to leave well enough alone.

View the original article here

Seamanship School - One Way to Dock Down Tide on an Inside Berth

This is a hairy manoeuvre the basic seamanship schools usually avoid, but I'm describing a real live experience that we repeated daily throughout a whole Cowes Week Regatta in the 1970s.

First, let's make it clear that the boat we are talking about was a racing sailing boat 34 feet long, whose auxiliary motor drove a folding propeller. Now let's look at the potential causes of problems.

* * * *

All single screw boats suffer 'prop walk' - going ahead, they turn tighter one way than the other, and going astern the stern is kicked to one side. Normally, you do your best to take advantage of this when planning an approach to a berth.

When you switch from 'ahead' to 'astern', the boat takes some time to stop. The rudder has no effect unless the boat is actually going backwards through the water, and even then it has far less effect than when going ahead because it isn't in the fast-moving slipstream of the prop.

When switching from ahead to astern, folding props sometimes fold flat. When you go ahead, the natural screw action assists centrifugal force in opening both blades again smoothly, but occasionally only one blade will open when you go astern, causing severe vibration and possible damage to the bearing seal. The only option is to return to neutral and try again. Not a joke if you are heading for the end of the dock at the time, with a two or three knot tide helping you.

Our berth was a small pontoon with a gangway from the mid-point to the shore. On the shore side, there were two berths upstream and two downstream of the gangway. We had an upstream one, next to the gangway.

Shallow water began less than half a boat length in from the pontoon, so there was no room to approach the berth from the shore side and turn back out towards it.

We were all racing, so sometimes the berth further from the gangway was already occupied by the time we arrived.

The classic approach to this problem is to face up-tide, get into line and slow right down until the tide walks you very slowly backwards into your berth - with or without the other boat in place, a crew member hops on to the pontoon and warps you in.

Because the shallow, muddy shore was so close, this was risky. Also, on several days there was an erratic, gusty wind.

The technique we ended up using wasn't very kind to the pontoon's moorings, but it worked - just. We went in head first down tide and used a spring to help stop the boat (and once, when the prop didn't open, as the only means of stopping).

A trusted and nimble crew member (sometimes me, but we took turns because it was so scary) took the stern line and a spring, tied to the mast and led through the jib fairlead block (slid up to its foremost position for the occasion). He stood outside the lifelines ahead of the shrouds, and jumped onto the pontoon as early as he could, slipped the spring round the most uptide mooring cleat he could reach and surged the line out, braking the boat's movement as quickly as possible, then tied off the spring and pulled in the stern line.

We never quite hit the gangway, but the pontoon's moorings probably needed re-laying that winter.

Is sailing your passion? Do you like to hear about people who challenge the world's oceans, or push the limits of modern sailing technology? Perhaps you are more interested in classic sailing craft? You'll find all of these in

New Freebooters.

View the original article here