News Page
Iran rejects holding women wrestling world championships
Deutsche Presse-Agentur 9/27/2001
Iran has rejected a demand by the world wrestling federation FILA for
holding the women's wrestling world championships si multaneously with the
men's competition in the case it was awarded the right to host the event,
the news network Khabar reported on Thursday.
Iran had earlier declared its readiness to host the world championships, but
rejected the women's event due to Irans strict rules for womens dressing
codes. Women in Iran must wear a gown and headscarf to hide body contours
and hair. Women's sports are only allowed to be watched by a female crowd,
with the exception of shooting, chess and show jumping where the dressing
code is not violated.
The wrestling world championships were originally due to be held in New York
later this month, but cancelled after the terrorist attacks two weeks ago on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Fila have rescheduled the competition for late November and are looking for
a new host. Iran are one of several interested countries. dpa fm jb
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(I remember back in
1988 when they had the first woman's world that the wrestles from Iran
refused to wrestle because the men and woman were combined at that time.
This was in Sw. Somebody told me this in 1988. This was to be expected. GAB)
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Bakersfield wrestlers' Title IX suit is tossed
By Jerry Bier
The Fresno Bee
September, 26, 2001
A federal judge Tuesday ruled in favor of California State University, Bakersfield, in its decision to cap the number of men allowed to participate on the school's wrestling team.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Coyle granted motions by lawyers for Cal State Bakersfield and the California State University board of trustees to dismiss the lawsuit, filed in 1997 on behalf of champion wrestler Stephen Neal and other male and female members of the wrestling team.
The team members challenged the decision to cap the number of men on the team. The university had set the quota to comply with the provisions of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that requires schools to provide athletic opportunities to men and women in numbers proportionate to undergraduate enrollment.
Coyle had granted a preliminary injunction two years ago in favor of the team members, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.
In his ruling Tuesday, the judge dismissed arguments by the team members' lawyer, Mark Martel of Palo Alto, to grant a ruling in their favor.
Coyle concluded "plaintiffs are merely recycling arguments made to the 9th Circuit and rejected by the 9th Circuit."
San Francisco lawyer Tim Emert, who represented the university and board of trustees, had argued that "every court ... has held that a university may bring itself into Title IX compliance by increasing the athletic opportunities for the underrepresented gender [women in this case] or by decreasing the opportunities for the overrepresented gender [men in this case]."
Bakersfield officials had ordered the cap in an attempt to keep the number of male athletes proportional to the number of male undergraduate students at the school.
Martel and Emert could not be reached to comment Tuesday.
Neal is now an assistant coach at Cal State Bakersfield after completing the most successful career in the school's wrestling history.
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CSUB wrestlers lose court case
By JEFF EVANS, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jevans@bakersfield.com
Wednesday September 26, 2001, 10:21:26 PM
T.J. Kerr let out a sigh. He then gazed down at his desk and took a few seconds to compile his thoughts.
"I think he can still appeal," said Kerr, the Cal State Bakersfield wrestling coach. "The strategy all along was that we weren't going to win this round."
Kerr was reacting to Tuesday's ruling by a federal judge in Fresno that threw out a 1997 lawsuit filed by 35 CSUB wrestlers and three other organizations. The lawsuit challenged the right of the university to place a cap on the number of male athletes allowed to participate on the CSUB wrestling team.
In the mid-1990s, Cal State Bakersfield Athletic Director Rudy Carvajal implemented squad size limits for all CSUB men's sports programs as the school reduced the number of male athletes because of gender equity requirements.
The 35 men and women wrestlers, including two-time undefeated national champion Stephen Neal, responded by filing the lawsuit.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Coyle granted a motion by lawyers representing CSUB and the CSU board of directors to dismiss the lawsuit, according to The Fresno Bee.
Kerr, unaware of Tuesday's decision when contacted by The Californian, telephoned attorney Mark Martel of Palo Alto, the attorney for the wrestlers. Kerr was more upbeat after talking with Martel for about 15 minutes.
"If the judge ruled in our favor, the 9th Circuit Court would've chopped us down," Kerr said. "He's (Martel's) caught right now working on another appeal. He said he needs to read the decision to see how much ground we lost. There's ways to interpret how he (Coyle) wrote his decision -- even with the 9th Circuit's handcuffs."
Kerr said any decision to pursue a further appeal will be made in a few days, once Martel has reviewed Coyle's latest decision.
Martel could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed Jan. 10, 1997, after Carvajal capped the wrestling team's squad size at 27 for the 1995-96 season and 25 for 1996-97.
Coyle originally ruled in the wrestlers' favor, granting a temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction that forbade CSUB from implementing the roster size limits on the wrestling team, the university's only Division I program.
The Roadrunners' wrestling roster listed as many as 34 team members before Coyle's original decision was reversed.
That occurred Dec. 15, 1999, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 in favor of CSUB and the CSU system.
The appeals court ruled that dropping men's athletic teams or reducing male participants to make way for women's teams or athletes is constitutional when it is done to equalize sports opportunities.
Carvajal capped last season's wrestling squad at 27. On Wednesday, Carvajal said the squad size is again capped at 27 for this season.
"We've been trying to follow the law," Carvajal said. "It was our understanding that using squad size management is a legal vehicle for achieving gender equity."
CSUB, along with other schools in the CSU system, had agreed to reduce the number of male athletes or men's teams beginning in the mid-1990s while encouraging the expansion of women's teams and athletes to settle a lawsuit filed by the California chapter of the National Organization of Women.
Known as the "consent decree," CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz signed an agreement with the organization in 1993. It instructed CSU campuses to have a proportion of female athletes within 5 percentage points of the proportion of female undergraduate students at that school. It also required that athletic scholarship money also come within the 5 percentage points.
Kerr has argued that a forced reduction of the number of male athletes is a violation of Title IX of the federal Education Act of 1972, which was designed to balance the amount of money spent on men's and women's sports.
"When you sit down and look at it, Title IX covers males as well as females," Kerr said. "It doesn't say that there should be a quota system that considers only women."
Kerr said he and assistant wrestling coach Tom Caspari went to Fresno when Coyle heard arguments from both sides July 2.
"He (Coyle) must have asked us five different ways: 'Give me some evidence to support your claims,'" Kerr said Martel was told.
"Martel said, 'Yeah.' Not in his words, but he said, 'I've got your decision.'"
Kerr said he is frustrated that collegiate "sports male leadership" hasn't been more supportive of the CSUB wrestlers' case.
"Squad limits limit opportunities," Kerr said. "Every sport has been hit.
"If this is about money, how is it that squad caps save money?"
Pointing to the CSUB wrestling room, Kerr added, "Every kid in that room brings in $10,000 a year, with tuition and state funding."