Blanche Trilling and the Evils of Competition (continued)

The NAAF committee drew up a list of recommendations that became prevailing wisdom for women's collegiate athletics for at least the next thirty years. The report stressed enjoyment over winning, athletics for all versus training for few, and the role of educator as protector from exploitation. They recommended female coaches and directors to serve the specific needs of female athletes, defined the proper motivation for all competition as "play for play's sake," and discouraged valuable prizes, emphasis on individual achievement, and, most emphatically, inter-institutional play. The ethos of this movement is summed up tidily in the slogan: "A sport for every girl and every girl in a sport."

From today's vantage point, long after women's intercollegiate sports have become an accepted fact of life, it is startling and disconcerting to encounter some of the opinions offered by Trilling on the subject. "I am delighted to know that you have wiped out future state tournaments for girls' basketball in your state," she writes in a letter. "I feel that you have made a great stride forward."²⁹ Perplexingly, she also at times claimed not to be an enemy of competition; in another letter, she claims (perhaps a trifle disingenuously), "Personally, I have found no interest displayed here in intercollegiates. There has been no formal disapproval on my part, so far as the girls are concerned and if I felt that there was strong interest, I am not at all sure but what I should have let them go ahead and try it out."³⁰

Trilling's judgment was certainly not flawless—she claimed that the general population was losing interest in intercollegiate sports and predicted that "colleges will, within a very short time, rue the day that they spent so much time and money on large stadia and field houses for a special group of super-athletes."³¹ She did have reason to be wary, however. The only extent example of an intercollegiate program was the men's version, which had been plagued by improprieties (and downright illegalities) from the very beginning.

To those who attributed these attendant "evils" to an emphasis on winning and financial gain, the solution was simple: eliminate dramatic competition and focus on a program of inclusion, geared toward the benefit and enjoyment of the masses, without the unhealthy focus on winning or the exploitation of young players. While their motives were understandable, and perhaps even admirable, their lack of willingness to try other approaches seems stubborn and short-sighted. With the appropriate safeguards in place, there is no reason a democratic intramural program could not coexist alongside a more rigorous varsity program. Unfortunately, no such compromise ever seems to have been seriously considered. The option of competitive sports was merely eliminated, fostering an atmosphere of structural and institutional inequality, and virtually shackling the development of women's athletics for decades.