THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220665
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: WIRE,, STAFF REPORT
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The score in the women's round of 16 is 8-8: Half the teams prefer to be called ladies, the rest would rather not.
Four teams in the regional semifinals - Alabama, Auburn, Kansas and Vanderbilt - have done away with ``Lady'' in front of their team names. Four others - Iowa, Connecticut, Stanford and Virginia - never used the prefix.
The emergence of athletically correct names seems to date to 1987, when Becky Hopf was hired as the women's athletic contact at Alabama. She thought it was unfair and demeaning to call the women's basketball team the Lady Tide, so she started calling it the Crimson Tide in all her news releases.
Many teams have followed suit, arguing that a different name for women's teams suggests that they're not as good as the men.
``The men weren't the Gentlemen Jayhawks, so we didn't think the women should be the Lady Jayhawks,'' said Doug Vance, assistant athletic director at Kansas. ``Both teams should be the same.''
Schools such as Old Dominion that decided to stick with ``Lady'' say it gives the women's teams their own identity. ODU athletic director Jim Jarrett said the team went back and forth from Monarchs to Lady Monarchs in the early '70s. His belief: ``A woman can be a Monarch,'' but ODU decided to add the ``Lady'' for a couple of reasons.
``We had two teams playing at the same time, so it helped differentiate in marketing and in news stories,'' he said. ``Plus it caught on with the fans early.''
Others, like Tennessee, feel bound by tradition and resist the change.
``I can't imagine the Lady Vols going back to the Vols,'' said Paula Jantz, associate athletic director at Iowa. ``It's something you just say.''
The name-changing is in step with the gender equity movement, which requires women's and men's sports to be funded equally. But it can also cause linguistic nightmares.
At the University of Missouri at St. Louis, where the athletic nickname is the Rivermen, women's teams are called the Riverwomen. Female athletes at Massachusetts are called - that's right - Minutewomen.
One team in the round of 16 stands alone in its stance on women's nicknames. The Texas Tech women changed their name from the Red Raiders to the Lady Raiders in 1990.
``It's just something that flows off the tongue and we use it,'' assistant coach Roger Reding said. ``It tells our public which team we're talking about. We don't think of it as demeaning.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Jim Jarrett
by CNB