Billie Jean King Influencing The Next Generation

Billie Jean King, Drexel Students Grant Soffer, Aaron Coleman, & Shane Downey

Dear Women in Coaching Blog Readers:   Just a few days ago, twelve of my male sport management majors accompanied me to a reception prior to the Coaches v. Cancer of Philadelphia Women in Wellness: An Evening With Billie Jean King event. Standing under a pavilion with a group of other admirers, tennis enthusiasts, and members of the Philadelphia business community at the Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education Center, a wave of quiet approaching reverence fell over the crowd when Ms. King entered. And in the quiet, slowly, one by one she greeted every person there.

     Over the years, I have had several opportunities to watch my students meet Billie Jean King. Without fail, something important happens for them. Standing before the woman who played such a profound role in shaping their mothers’ lives is sometimes so powerful that unexpected tears of gratitude come without warning. For others, the encounter serves as a spark to ignite a deeply personal and previously unexpressed vision of the good they wish to do in the world.

     Prompted by the audience to talk about Title IX, she spoke about the essence of the law, its intention to fulfill equal treatment for male and female students. She went on to reflect on her own vision for World Team Tennis, the professional co-educational tennis league she founded in 1974 that provides one of the only places in sport where men and women compete alongside of one another as equal partners.

     The next day, Frank Perri, one of the students who had heard Ms. King the night before, arrived in my office motivated to find a way to bring her to campus so that more of our students could benefit from her presence and message. As Frank put it, when it came to Title IX, Ms. King had “credibility” because she had advocated for the rights of men and women all of these years. He felt her voice was important in helping students whose views on Title IX trend toward the negative, influenced by the fear factor spawned from headlines suggesting that Title IX harms men, appreciate more fully what Title IX really means.

     In listening to Frank talk with such enthusiasm, it occurred to me that he and Ms. King really are on the same frequency in terms of the future of Title IX. In an editorial that Ms. King wrote for the Huffington Post a year ago on the anniversary of Title IX she observed, “I know firsthand the life lessons that sports teaches from an early age and I often hear stories from other men and women of all ages about how playing sports and being active has helped them build confidence, self-esteem, leadership skills and long-lasting friendships. You don’t build these on the world stage or at the Olympics – they are forged at an early age and in the grind of daily training and discipline. So as I celebrate these anniversaries, I am not interested in looking back as much as I am interested in looking forward. How do we build on the momentum and make sure this generation and the next generation of youth are provided equal opportunities in sports and in life?”

     For this generation of college students, being encouraged to look forward and to consider their role in carrying on the work of generations before them is important. In his 2012 inauguration address, Ursinus College President Bobby Fong spoke of this as one of the greatest obligations that educators have to their students, “to remind them that the work they do will make a difference for good, not just for themselves, but for us all. For this reason, our final gift to our students must be to teach them hope”. As she has done for over four decades, Billie Jean King offered a sense of purpose and a message of hope the other night to my students. Based on my conversations with them, they have every intention of honoring her legacy and making their own contributions in service to bettering sport and society.

Kindest regards – Ellen

Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D., Professor, Department of Sport Management, Drexel University, ejs95@drexel.edu

Billie Jean King Receives Medal Of Freedom From President Barack Obama In 2009