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发帖数: 29846 | 1 政治正确发飙，美国马萨诸塞州中学游泳比赛不断破记录，因为男生参加女生比赛。
November 18, 2011
Boys Swimming on Girls Teams Find Success, Then Draw Jeers
By KAREN CROUSE
During his first-period broadcast Monday, the Norwood High athletic director
Brian McDonough congratulated Will Higgins for breaking the meet record in
the 50-yard freestyle the previous day at the Massachusetts South Division
fall swimming and diving championships.
McDonough chose not to mention that it was a girls swimming championship.
“I didn’t want to get into that,” he said.
Anthony Rodriguez, another boy on the Norwood girls team, heard a grace note
in McDonough’s omission.
“If people hear that you set a record, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s
awesome,’ ” Rodriguez said. “But if they knew you were competing against
girls, they wouldn’t have as much respect for you.”
Higgins, a senior, and Rodriguez, a sophomore, are among roughly two dozen
boys competing on girls teams in Massachusetts because their schools do not
have boys swimming programs. They are able to do so because of the open
access amendment to the state constitution, which was voted into law in the
1970s and mandates that boys and girls must be afforded equal access to
athletics.
Boys have been members of girls swim teams since the 1980s, but until
recently they were mostly a sideshow. It has only been in the last year or
two that boys have swum well enough to draw attention — and people’s ire.
The epicenter of the debate is the 50-yard freestyle, an event in which
strength can trump talent or technique.
At the Division I state championships on Saturday at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, there are eight boys in the 28-swimmer field in the 50
freestyle. Although Norwood’s Higgins was ruled academically ineligible
Friday and will not compete at the state meet, two of the top four seeds in
the 50 freestyle are boys, giving rise to the possibility that a boy could
be the girls state champion.
Sarah Hooper, a senior at Needham High who is the fourth-fastest female
entrant, finds the situation difficult to swallow.
“It’s really frustrating to see how athletic directors and school
administrators aren’t doing anything,” she said. “They really aren’t
advocating for us. I understand there isn’t an opportunity for these boys,
but it infuriates me that they can’t combine two schools’ boys to create
one team or have them compete in separate heats. The way it is now, the boys
are taking recognition away from girls who have worked hard and deserve it.”
In addition to the 50 freestyle, many of the boys also compete in the 200-
yard freestyle relay. At the state meet, the top-seeded relay team, from
Walpole, includes two boys, Bobby Gay and Christian Kelley. Although people
have been fixated on the boys, Jessica Suave turned in the fastest split
during one of the relay team’s recent victories.
With every stroke they take, the boys are displacing more than water. They
could knock girls off the awards podium and make it harder for girls to
qualify for All-Star honors and the postseason. Perhaps predictably, they
also are altering the dynamic on the pool deck, with swimmers lining up to
cheer not just for their teams but for their gender.
“Absolutely, it has changed the atmosphere on the pool deck,” said Marilyn
Fitzgerald, the longtime swim coach at Andover High, a perennial powerhouse
. At her sectional meet last week, she added, “Coaches on the pool deck
last weekend were going bloody out of their minds.”
Cooler heads are not found in the bleachers. At the Bay State conference
meet earlier this month, Hooper’s father, Eric, lost his composure after
watching her get beaten by boys. While waiting for her after the race, he
said to her male competitors, “Good job for beating the girls.”
Eric Hooper was reprimanded by Needham High administrators, who told him not
to attend the sectional meet. But he will be in the stands at the Zesiger
Sports and Fitness Center on M.I.T’s campus to watch his daughter compete
in the 50 and 100 freestyle events.
“It was wrong of me to say what I did,” Hooper said. “I was just
frustrated, basically, because I feel it is totally inappropriate for boys
who are bigger and stronger to be competing against girls.”
Boys swimming is held in the winter, when pool space is limited and
expensive to rent, which is a deterrent for many schools. Athletic directors
say the sport is not as popular among boys as it is girls, making it hard
to field full squads. Some schools in the winter offer coed swimming, where
boys and girls compete side-by-side in the dual meets and then separately in
the postseason.
Over the years, there have been girls wrestling on boys teams or playing
football or ice hockey. Boys have been on field hockey teams and girls have
competed alongside boys in golf.
But in wrestling, boys and girls of the same weight compete against each
other. And in field hockey and other team sports, a boy on a girls team
achieves success through cooperation and collaboration with his teammates.
When Higgins won the 50 freestyle at the South Division sectional meet, he
did so at the expense of Kate Vanasse of Westwood High, who was second.
Kim Goodwin, the Norwood coach, said she was an opponent of boys competing
with girls before she had boys on her team. Then her opinion changed. She
saw the boys, who did not participate in other sports, develop self-
confidence and mature.
“They work so incredibly hard in the pool, and they seem really grateful to
be on the team,” she said.
Higgins’s winning time of 23.96 was a personal best by one second. He broke
the girls’ sectional record, set in 1985 by Cynthia Kangos of Wellesley,
by 14-hundredths of a second. (The boys’ sectional record is 21.40.)
Goodwin said an uncomfortable silence settled over the pool deck when the
results flashed on the scoreboard.
“I was torn,” she said in an e-mail. “I was so happy for Will that he
went a best time, but I was worrying about the reaction when he received his
award. I told him, ‘If you hear any boos, just ignore them and be happy
with what you accomplished.’ ”
The next day, Kangos, now Cynthia Baker, received a phone call from a
Wellesley administrator who told her about her record being broken. “Wow,”
she said. “That’s great.” Then she was told the new record holder was a
boy, and she grew angry.
“I’ll be upset if they give him the record,” said Baker, who earned a
swimming scholarship to Alabama.
She added: “There’s a reason these records are girls’ records. If there
was no difference in boys’ strength, then it would be a unisex record. It’
s really not fair. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t believe
it.”
Paul Wetzel, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic
Association, said the state’s swimming committee would meet after the
season, and among the topics on the table would be Higgins’s record swim.
“They are going to look for ways to deal with a boy holding a record in a
girl’s sport,” he said, “Because sooner or later, I guess, some boy is
going to come along and be the fastest swimmer.”
Rachel Moore of Andover is the top female swimmer in the state. At the North
Division sectional meet, Moore, who plans to swim at Virginia on a swimming
scholarship, was timed in a state-best 23.42 in the 50 freestyle.
But she will not swim the event at the state meet. Instead she will race in
the 100 backstroke and 100 butterfly.
“I was not going to put her in the 50 free just to satisfy everyone who
wants to see Rachel beat the boys,” Fitzgerald, Moore’s coach, said.
Fitzgerald said she hoped a girl prevailed in the race, but saw a silver
lining in a boy triumphing.
“At least the M.I.A.A. will have to take action,” she said. “They can’t
have a boy be the girls state champion.” |
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