Fans dressed in emerald and forest green cheered as the Manhattan College basketball squad dispatched of Fairfield University 53-46 at home Thursday night, but the win wasn’t the sole cause for celebration.
Students, families and athletes young and old attended the Lady Jaspers game at Draddy Gymnasium to recognize National Girls & Women in Sports Day and the 50th anniversary of Title IX — an educational amendment that protections people from sex discrimination who participate in federally-funded educational programs or activities.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson spoke with women athletes from various Manhattan College teams before the game Thursday about the importance of breaking the glass ceiling not only in sport, but in education and career.
“It’s really important because I think about the efforts of Title IX and why we created Title IX in the first place — to make sure our women and our young ladies are not discriminated against when it comes to sports and really redefining a lot of roles that were never designed for us, and putting women and young ladies in spaces where you have typically not seen them,” she said.
Gibson made history in 2021 when she became both the first woman and the first Black person elected to the Bronx borough president post. She told the athletes Thursday that she hopes to inspire the next generation of women to continue to break institutional barriers.
According to the Sport Journal, a peer-reviewed publication addressing current issues in athletics, many pre-Title IX women’s sports have been “largely unrecognized” by historians. But scholars know that before 1870, sports for women were generally informal, without rules and less competitive by nature. But as women started forming competitive athletic clubs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, championing a literal and metaphorical equal playing field, competitive events for women increased.
The women’s suffrage movement, World War II and the Civil Rights movement were major catalysts for increased opportunities for women in their daily lives — and in athletics by extension — according to the journal.
From 1972 to 2001, participation in women’s collegiate sports increased from 15% to 43%. And women’s participation in high school sports rose more than 840% — an increase of approximately 295,000 to 2.8 million — from 1971 to the 2002-2003 academic year.
Gibson joined former and current Manhattan College female athletes to celebrate the progress made in women’s sports over the decades, and emphasized the need to continue to persevere through adversity.
“I just want to encourage all of you students at Manhattan College to not only make a difference, but set the tone, set the agenda, set the bar even higher and higher and higher,” she said. “I always say anniversaries are historic — you codify them not only in history, but you really set the tone for the next 50 years.”
Reach Camille Botello at cbotello@schnepsmedia.com. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
