In the past two years, MCPS added two varsity sports to its roster — girls wrestling and flag football. The expansion of girls’ sports in the county and nation has led to a rapid and sustained rise in high school girls’ athletic participation. In 1971, only four percent of female high schoolers played a sport, according to data from History.com and the Census Bureau. Today, around 40% or 3.42 million girls play high school sports, compared to the 4.2 million boys on a high school team. 

Neena Chaudry, the vice president and general counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said the drastic shift in female participation can be partly attributed to the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment of the Civil Rights Act in 1972. 

“The intent behind it was to sort of break down the barriers for women and girls in education,” Chaudhry said. “It prohibits all kinds of sex discrimination, including sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, discrimination in athletics, and just any kind of discrimination on the basis of sex.” 

Courts and the Executive Branch have since interpreted the law to prevent discrimination in school sports as well as academics. Advocates for female athletes have invoked the law numerous times to fight against the unfair allocation of resources between the sexes in the classroom and the sports field.

Chaudhry, whose work at the National Women’s Law Center has often been focused on Title IX and its protections, says that the law covers many different forms of prejudice and discrimination. 

However, an estimate from the Government Accountability Office showed that around 90% of schools do not abide by Title IX. Since federal investigators don’t have the resources to investigate the budgets and rosters of every school in the country, some schools’ sports programs avoid paying the extra costs that could come with administrating female sports teams. 

Chaudhry said it’s up to everyone in the school to check their administration using a three-part test that Chaudhry’s organization and the federal government use to verify a Title IX complaint. 

“First is participation,” she said. “Generally, if your student body is 50/50 male and female, then ideally you should see 50% of all the spots on teams going to girls.” 

This benchmark is not met on a national level — girls make up roughly 50% of the U.S. high school population, yet only 42% of athletes on high school sports teams.

The second part of the test is scholarships. While this doesn’t apply to public schools, it is an issue at colleges and private schools. The test requires schools to distribute scholarships equally between genders. 

The third part of the test is equal distribution of resources given to athletes, Chaudhry said. This includes equipment, coaching support, medical support and access to practice facilities. 

At Whitman, there are 29 varsity sports throughout the fall, winter and spring seasons. Of those, 18 feature single-gender teams —  11 for female-identifying students and seven for male-identifying students. The gap is due to teams like field hockey, poms, cheerleading and gymnastics that don’t have male counterpart teams. 

Between those single-sex teams, there are around 200 varsity spots on female-identifying teams and around 180 varsity spots on male-identifying teams. With Whitman featuring a 53% male student body, this number appears to violate Title IX by reserving a disproportionate number of spots for girls. However, this difference is recovered by JV teams, where boys have the same number of teams as girls and more roster spots per team. 

Considering these numbers and the generally high number of girls and boys that play in co-ed sports such as swimming and diving, track, and cross country, Whitman passes the first test of Title IX. 

Since Whitman doesn’t give scholarships, it automatically passes the second test. 

For the third test, there are three subcategories: personnel support, monetary support and access to fields. 

Personnel support checks whether teams have the coaches and adult support they need to thrive. Every team at Whitman has at least one head coach. The school hires one athletic trainer for all sports, who splits her time evenly between girls’ and boys’ sporting events.

As for monetary support, The Black & White was unable to obtain exact numbers for Whitman sports spending. However, girls’ varsity basketball Head Coach Peter Kenah, girls’ varsity soccer Head Coach Gregory Herbert, and girls’ varsity softball Head Coach Anne-Marie O’Donoghue all agreed that Whitman and MCPS officials gave their teams the same amount of funding as their male counterparts. 

The last criterion in Chaudhry’s test is whether the genders have equal access to sports facilities. To pass, girls’ and boys’ teams must have the same access to practice facilities like the basketball courts and the stadium field. The surveyed coaches all said they were given equal access to practice facilities. 

Teams of both genders play roughly the same number of games during their regular season. In addition, during the regular seasons of boys’ and girls’ soccer and basketball, there were 12 days where the teams of both genders had a game at the same location. Of those 12, six featured the guys at the 7 p.m. start time while the other half had the girls taking the evening time slot. 

Whitman’s parity is much better than the average school, Chaudhry said. Most girls’ teams across the country tend to get fewer fans due to their earlier game times. 

“It’s unfortunate because the girls don’t get the prime-time spot,” Chaudhry said. “If you don’t get the prime-time spot, you don’t really ever get a chance to have those crowds that might come for those later games.” 

While field usage appears to be equal for in-season games, there are different procedures during playoff games. In the 2024 soccer playoffs, the boys were given a 7 p.m. start time twice while the girls were given a 5 p.m. start time on both home doubleheaders, which (whether directly or not) led to lower attendance at the girls’ games.

In addition, boys’ football was able to play all of their games this season on Thursday and Friday nights, drawing hundreds of spectators for each game. In contrast, girls’ flag football played all their games in the early afternoon on Wednesdays, never having more than 20 fans in the student section.

Despite minor concerns and room for improvement from Whitman, the school mainly passes the three-point test, indicating that Whitman appears to be successful in executing Title IX. 

“It’s equal,” Kenah said. “We’re very lucky.”