By Catherine Laroche

Jen Heup was shocked.
Two weeks before the season started for Ohio University’s women’s lacrosse team, Heup and her teammates discovered their program was being cut.
The reason?
Ohio had to comply with Title IX, a law passed to ensure women’s collegiate sports received as much funding (and thus participation) as men’s sports.
“We were all pretty upset with how the [Athletic Director] went about telling us the situation,” said Heup, who is currently a goalie for the University of Louisville’s lacrosse team. “A couple weeks before he gave us the news, he met with us as a team to sign compliance papers just to update information and wished us luck on our upcoming season.”
Heup said that after they heard the decision, it was hard to get questions answered about the situation from within the athletic department, and many of the answers were repetitive.
“The whole time we were in that meeting he knew exactly what was going to happen and that we weren’t going to even have a season,” Heup said.
The fallout included four sports being cut from the school’s budget. Heup and three of her teammates, sophomore Kendra Burawski and juniors Danielle Hale and Colleen Nevin, decided to continue their careers at U of L.
Looking at statistics, it appears Title IX is, in some places, having an opposite effect than it was intended to. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, female participation has increased 456-percent since its enactment.
Every year, colleges across the country are required to send in an Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report that determines whether or not the school is in compliance with Title IX.
However, U of L is not an exception to the rule. According to U of L’s 2007-2008 EADA report, the Cardinals were equal in participants with 320 athletes in both genders.
“(Title IX) is something we pay a lot of attention to,” said Tom Jurich, U of L’s athletic director. “For me, it’s just not being able to fit with prescribed numbers. Make sure we go above and beyond what we’re supposed to do.”
Jurich’s work is gaining notice among professionals in the field.
“I think U of L is doing a fabulous job, especially in terms of number of women who are employed as administrators,” said Anita Moorman, a sport administration professor who helped lead a discussion on Title IX last week.
Moorman said that U of L excels in several areas regarding Title IX.
“Look at participation opportunities, money and other program areas,” Moorman said.  “They have been very good about not building facilities that were reserved for one gender.”
According to sports administration professor Mary Hums, the U of L athletic program didn’t always fare so well concerning equal participation among genders.
Hums recalled coming to U of L in 1997 at the same time USA Today reported on the amount per dollar being spent on men’s and women’s sports at different schools. U of L was last on the list.
“In 1997, we were spending seven cents on the dollar on women’s sports,” she said. “It’s certainly much different now with the leadership of Mr. Jurich and Julie Hermann (Senior Associate AD/Senior Woman Administrator), and all the changes in the facilities.”
Schools such as Ohio haven’t had as much luck as U of L when it comes to staying in compliance with Title IX.
According to Nevin and Heup, in order to comply, Ohio’s athletic department needed to add one more women’s athletic team, which was supposed to be rowing.
However, due to a large financial deficit, they were unable to afford the addition and decided to terminate the women’s lacrosse team, men’s swimming and diving team and men’s indoor and outdoor track and field to be in compliance with Title IX.
Nevin said the athletes were given the option to play a final season at Ohio or transfer to a different lacrosse program.
“They were going to wait until we had completed our season and used our eligibility to tell us,” Nevin said. “We had individual meetings and there were enough of us that decided we wanted to try to play elsewhere so we did not play the season.”
Nevin said it was a tough process finding another school.
“The NCAA gave us eligibility back for that year,” Nevin said. “Our coach was the only one who helped us look at other schools, and she was trying to find another job as well.”
Jurich is confident that a similar situation won’t occur at U of L.
“We’re always looking for new doors to open for us,” Jurich said.  “I want to make sure they can succeed athletically and academically. Everything they do, I want them to do the right way.”