ELItorial

Can girls play with boys?

Heather Sue Mercer says she just wanted to play football. She just happened to want to play at Duke University, one of the biggest, most prestigious athletic powerhouses. Somehow—by luck or by talent—Mercer got her chance. From her championship high school football team in Yorkstown Heights, NY, she walked onto the Duke football team as a placekicker.

V. STEPHANIE CARENDI/YH

At first, when Mercer tried out in as a freshman in 1994, the coaches told her she wasn't ready to play on the team. She attended practices, and in the spring of 1995, during the Blue-White game, she kicked a 28-yard field goal that won the intrasquad game. When she returned in the fall of 1995, Mercer was told that she couldn't sit with the team on the sidelines and was not issued a uniform. She continued to practice until 1997 and was officially cut from the team that fall.

And that's when things got a little messy; Mercer filed a lawsuit with a U.S. District Court contending that Duke violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs receiving federal funds. Mercer originally named her former coach, Fred Goldsmith, as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, claiming that he saw her as a threat and "worked to get rid of her and in the most humiliating way possible." A jury in Greensboro deliberated for two hours before awarding Mercer $2 million in punitive damages on Thurs., Oct. 12.

So what exactly was this case about? Was it about Duke discriminating on the basis of gender? "Heather Sue had a dream and she had talent. She worked incredibly hard to fulfill that dream. She didn't ask for any special treatment, just a fair chance to participate. Duke didn't give her that chance," Burton Craige, her attorney, said. After all, Mercer did make the team. She must have shown skills that led the coaches to consider her a possible asset to the Blue Devils. She stayed with the team for three years, showing the necessary dedication and improvement to go from just practicing with the boys to eventually taking them on and doing it well. Her attorney pointed to her glory in the '95 Blue-White game, telling the jury of five women and three men, "She showed she could kick well and accurately."

So the case must be about how well Mercer really can kick. Mercer's only available stat is the 28-yard winning field goal from five years ago, which is not tremendously telling evidence. So I guess the thing to do would be to get Mercer and all the placekickers from 1997 squad out on a football field and make them kick a few balls. (The jury actually did compare practice tapes from the 1997 season.) Then, just to be on the safe side of justice, make current kicker Brett Morton and redshirted freshman Brent Garber come out for comparison. But Mercer could raise issues of being out of shape, or the current coach could object to the waste of practice time.

Was the case, then, about how Mercer was treated while on the team? She says she was humiliated. She says the coaching staff tried to make her quit. That may be well and true, but if every non-starting athlete sued his coaches for humiliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, Division I would not have a single athletic program free from litigation. Duke's attorney, John Simpson, did concede that Goldsmith made errors in judgment when he dealt with Mercer. "He did not approach the situation as the coach of a Division I football team," Simpson said. "He approached it as the father of two daughters, including one who had tried to play Little League baseball with the boys. He gave her an opportunity he would not have given a man with the same skills she had."

Wait a minute—so Duke overcompensated for Title IX? Could the university in fact be guilty of reverse discrimination? And what's this about Little League? Did Goldsmith, coming from the tender experiences of fatherhood, decide to go gentle on Mercer and let her find out for herself that she wasn't up to the challenge? Or did he think that it would be easier on Mercer's gentle, feminine character if, instead of cutting her when he saw that she wasn't helping the program, he'd humiliate her into quitting? In either case, Mercer defied expectations and for whatever reason, stuck with the team.

This case may have been settled in court, but it will not have an easy or satisfying answer in practice. Whatever else Mercer accomplished, she has set a precedent. I don't know enough about the justice system to predict the legal ramifications of this lawsuit, but the uproar it has caused will shake coaches quite a bit. In theory, allowing qualified women to compete on men's teams is egalitarian and moral and (under current social standards) should not be questionable at all. In practice, Title IX issues constitute a huge gray area that coaches and administration officials are loath to deal with. It's difficult enough to judge objectively if a woman is as capable as her male competitor of playing a male sport; even experienced coaches are subject to predisposition and social conditioning that will veer the issue away from pure skill. But deciding whether to keep a player—an everyday consideration—has become entangled with questions of gender, discrimination and liability. And who wants that headache? After all, Duke will always have enough willing males to play. But how many Heather Sue Mercers will there be to turn the system upside down?

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