On June 23, 1972, the Education Amendments of 1972 became law, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives money from the federal government. Although it was originally designed to ensure equal opportunities for women in higher education, the discrimination ban encompasses participation in athletics. Since the inception of Title IX, opportunities for women to participate in sports at the high school and college levels have increased dramatically. We spoke with 10 top female Lehigh Valley athletes and coaches of the past and present to learn what having a chance to play has meant to them.

‘What if these opportunities didn’t exist for me?’

At some level, sports are about mechanics: learning movements and honing technical skills within the constraints of a game. For the women who shared their views with us, though, what began with the love of a game became a journey to discovering their own unique strengths and talents, most of which transcend the physical.

For Jen Wescoe, a 1,000-point scorer in basketball at Liberty HS in the early 1990s, Title IX was a key enabler not only of her amateur athletic career, but also of her two-decade career as an English teacher and drama coach. Thinking about the chances she had to be a trailblazer for others-like being the first girl to play on Messiah Lutheran Church’s basketball team-Wescoe says, “It’s very much because I benefited from Title IX, so the people and the support I had were already in place. What if these opportunities didn’t exist for me?”

Although it may seem like another world, Wescoe’s career directing high school theater and teaching English-including drama electives-was a natural fit for someone who spent hours in the public eye as an athlete. When Wescoe, citing burnout, decided not to play basketball at Lehigh after being recruited, the world of drama opened up.

“It fed what I was looking for: camaraderie, teamwork, the flow that’s there when you’re all in sync,” she says. And drama has also brought the thrill of success. The Oprah Winfrey Network profiled the Wescoe-coached Freedom theater company, along with teams from Emmaus HS and Parkland HS, in its 2010 documentary about the Freddy Awards, Most Valuable Players.

After nearly 20 years at Freedom, Wescoe is now teaching English on her home turf at Liberty.

“Being at Liberty is probably one of the biggest gifts of my life,” she muses, “and what an honor to be in this English department, that offers drama electives and values drama. If I hadn’t had this experience of people being supportive of me through something like Title IX, I would never be able to do this in my professional life as a coach for theater.”

‘That translates into every area of your life’

Other athletes told us about the lifelong mindset of self-improvement and confidence that competitive sports gave them, on the field and off.

Debbie Utesch is the head coach of Lehigh University’s women’s cross-country team and the assistant coach of the track and field team. She is the recruiting coordinator for both programs, and has guided them through many successful seasons. While earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Rhode Island, Utesch ran both cross-country and track. During her senior year at Altoona HS, she caught a glimpse of her future career when she won the state cross-country championship-on Lehigh’s course.

Utesch sees women thriving on the opportunity to improve their athletic performance through their own efforts.

“The great thing with our sport [cross-country and track],” she explains, “is that you can really track and follow yourself from competition to competition […] I think there’s a beauty for women in being able to track their own progress and gain confidence in seeing, I put effort into this, and I’m getting results, and that translates into every area of your life.”

Equal respect for female athletes was so ingrained in Altoona culture that, as a young runner, Utesch didn’t realize that the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) didn’t sponsor women’s sporting events. It wasn’t until she noticed a poster for the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) outside her college coach’s office that she saw that college men and women weren’t part of the same national programs. This changed in the 1980s, when the NCAA began sponsoring women’s collegiate programs, gradually adding them over the years.

The pole vault, for example, was recognized as a women’s sport by the Patriot League for the first time in 1998.

Tara Santoroski excelled at the 100-meter hurdles, the 300-meter hurdles, and the four-by-400-meter relay when she attended Northampton HS. At Lehigh University, she typically ran the 100-meter hurdles, the 400-meter hurdles, the four-by-400-meter relay, and the four-by-100-meter relay. When the team needed her to add the 400-meter sprint, she did. And when the opportunity came during her sophomore year to try the pole vault, she did, becoming the first Patriot League women’s champion.

Graduating from Lehigh with a biology degree, but finding that her work in a research lab wasn’t her true calling, she took on a new challenge: medical school. Today, she is Dr. Tara Santoroski Hood, with an obstetrics and gynecology practice in Delaware. Long hours, unexpected patient complications, and working with patients during a very important time in their lives are the kind of difficult, but rewarding work for which her background in competitive sports prepared Dr. Hood.

“Competing in sports taught me a lot about perseverance and committing to a goal,” she explains. “To be able to be successful, you have to really care, and I’ve carried that with me through the years.”

Avaline Fihlman, a standout cross-country and track athlete in her junior year at Freedom HS, as well as a competitive weightlifter through non-PIAA programs, finds both confidence and renewed willpower in improving her own performance. Fihlman says playing sports is empowering in a world where low expectations are still too often the norm.

“Girls are told we can’t do a lot of things.,” she saus. “We’re told indirectly, all the time.” Improving her performance through hard work is a way to prove the doubters wrong, as well as motivating her to chase the next success.

“When I’m setting a new PR, becoming a better version of myself, it makes my willpower improve.”

As a young woman growing up decades after the passage of Title IX, Fihlman almost can’t imagine a world without competitive women’s sports. When she does imagine it, though, she sees it as a world she would change. If she couldn’t play, “I don’t know what I would do,” she says. “I would organize something.”

‘Representation matters’

Thinking about her historic pole vault win, Dr. Hood reflects, “I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant. Pole vaulting was new and exciting, and it was fun to be involved in it from the beginning, to be a part of this first group of women to compete in the event.” However, she says, “Looking back now with a young daughter just starting athletics, I’ve come to understand the importance of not only the opportunities but the representation.”

Another top athlete-turned-medical-professional who believes in the importance of visible opportunities for women in sports is Julie Amato. At Notre Dame HS (Green Pond) in the 1990s, Amato scored more than 2,000 points, had more than 1,000 rebounds, and led her team to four district titles. She played collegiate basketball at Brown University, where she earned a B.A. in psychology, and went on to earn a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. Today, Dr. Amato is a licensed clinical and sports psychologist with a practice serving individual athletes and teams, including Lafayette College, Princeton University and UC-Berkeley.

For Dr. Amato, playing competitive sports from her childhood through college led to her vocation.

“Sports is my first language” she says. “It’s a love; it’s a passion, not just something I did. Having played a sport at a high level gives me instant credibility with student athletes, so they know right away that I get it. They have different challenges, but they understand that I understand.”

Dr. Amato is passionate about Title IX and equal opportunity in sports. At Brown, she says, Title IX was taken seriously, not just providing equal opportunities for women athletes, but also ensuring equal access to resources like strength coaches. At Lafayette, she points out, both male and female athletes are on full athletic scholarships.

Dr. Amato is an advocate in her own home-she has a son and a daughter-for equal athletic opportunities, too.

“Representation matters,” she says. “I’m watching the NCAA tournament with my kids, and we watch both the men’s games and the women’s games.”

She acknowledges that there is still work to be done to achieve true equality, pointing out the recent exposés of NCAA disparities by law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, but says, “I’m grateful for the pioneers in women’s sports, especially Billie Jean King, who continue to fight those battles and push women’s sports forward.”

Diana Hammerstone, a graduate student and volunteer assistant coach at Lehigh University, echoes Dr. Amato’s comments about the importance of strong female role models and the disparities that plague some women’s sports teams even today. Hammerstone was a top performer in cross-country and track at Easton HS and also at Lehigh as an undergraduate.

“I had the privilege of competing under amazing, strong, and dedicated female coaches-Bobbi Jo Powell at Easton and Deb Utesch at Lehigh-who were (and still are) amazing role models to me,” she says.

“In terms of the ‘ability’ to be a competitive athlete,” Hammerstone notes, “I feel extremely fortunate that […] I never had to worry about or consider the fact that I might not be able to compete at the same level or have the same opportunities as the men’s teams. At the same time, I think that it is unfortunate that even 50 years after Title IX, this is still considered a privilege. While I always had positive experiences as a woman in sports, we know that this is not true for every female athlete across all sports.”

Seven years ago, one Allentown high school recognized the importance of women’s athletics in a permanent way. In January 2015, Dieruff HS renamed its basketball court Linda Repp Cruttenden Court in honor of the woman who coached Dieruff’s girls to state championships and led the boys’ volleyball team to two conference titles and three district titles in the 1970s.

Cruttenden’s memories of playing basketball in the pre-Title IX era are an important history lesson.

“The female version of basketball was not even close to the real game,” she recalls. “There were six girls on each team: […] two forwards, two guards, and two rovers. The forwards and guards were restricted to half-court play-they could not go over the half-court line. The two rovers were allowed full-court play. […] We were considered an ‘honor team,’ unlike the boys, who had a full schedule of games and were ‘varsity’ athletes.”

Cruttenden played field hockey and the limited version of girls’ basketball at Dieruff, as well as volleyball through a City of Allentown recreation league. After high school, she says, “My love of sports and competition was the driving force that led me into a health and physical education program at Lock Haven State College.”

Hired to teach physical education and health at Dieruff upon her graduation from Lock Haven, she took on head coach positions for girls’ basketball and majorettes, as well as assistant coaching duties for girls’ swimming. But it was 1971, and the game had changed.

“The girls’ game had gone from a six- to five-player game. I had so much to learn-offenses, defenses, presses, etc.-before I could do a decent job,” she says.

Other changes were taking place as the Title IX era dawned.

“We now were able to leave the kilt and work shirt attire behind and got real basketball uniforms: shorts,” Crittenden explains. “We now had a full schedule of games to play. The rules were alike for boys and girls. The possibility to advance into [league and district] playoffs now existed for girls.”

Coach Cruttenden took on the challenge of learning to coach a version of the game she had not played, and in 1975, brought her girls to the third-ever PIAA girls’ state championship for basketball, which they won.

“Unlike the boys’ division, which had several classifications and therefore several champions, the girls champion was the one and only champion,” she notes. (The PIAA had its first boys state championship in 1920, when Harrisburg Tech took the title.) In 1976, with girls’ teams now classified by high school enrollment, Dieruff’s girls were once again state champions, this time in classification AAA.

“I was so lucky to coach the Dieruff girls’ basketball team,” Cruttenden reminisces. “I had a group of girls who were hard-working and skilled, but the most noticeable characteristic was their joy in playing. Athletics teaches so many fine qualities... confidence, teamwork, loyalty, humility, cooperation, and perseverance, to name a few.”

“Physical skills were honed but, more important, grace and poise in victory and defeat were traits learned through participation in sport,” she says. “These qualities will carry individuals through the ups and downs of life.”

A lifelong athlete, Cruttenden embodies these qualities when she talks about Dieruff’s cross-town rival, William Allen HS.

“William Allen […] had a most amazing girls’ team in the early 1970s,” she recalls. “At that time, a girls’ team could advance only to District XI championships. The William Allen girls were such an awesome group of athletes that, I believe they would have made a good run for a state title if afforded the chance.”

‘Team mentality’

Freedom HS softball coach Michele Laubach notes that employers value competitive athletic experience when considering new hires.

“Athletes have demonstrated that team mentality,” she says. “Where else do you get that?”

Julia Roman, the first 100-hitter in Freedom softball, remembers that her team celebrated her 100th hit before she did.

“I got my 100th hit in April of 2018, during my senior year […] Going into that game, I had no idea I was that close to 100, so when I saw my team gathering around home plate and celebrating, I was relatively confused because I had hit another home run earlier in the game and they hadn’t been as excited as they were this time around. The best part about this moment was that I got my 100th hit on a home run against our rival, Liberty, on our home field. To this day, this is one of my favorite softball moments.”

Growing up, Roman recognized that sports made her stronger, as well as giving her the opportunity to be a better person.

“Being part of a team,” she explains, “exposes you to more types of people both on your team and in athletics in general. It makes you more well-rounded, more empathetic, and better at communicating with both peers and adults.” And as her mother-who was also her high school volleyball coach-told her, it helps level the playing field for women who “go pro” in something other than sports.

“Something she stressed to us year after year was the overwhelming advantage athletics gives women,” Roman says. “She told us that 94 percent of C-suite women were former athletes […] It proves that the skills women gain on and off the field/court are invaluable as we compete with our male counterparts in the classroom, interview room, and in the workforce.”

Jen “Kishey” Kish-Russ, who was a star basketball player at Bethlehem Catholic HS and at DeSales University (then known as Allentown College) in the 1990s, talks about the importance of “we” when she reflects on what she learned from sports as a player, and continues to bring to her coaching.

Kish-Russ became known for her “no-look” three-pointer in high school, excelled as a shooting guard at DeSales, and has been both a counselor at the Career Institute of Technology (CIT) and an assistant women’s basketball coach at DeSales for 20 years. Thinking back on her playing days, Kish-Russ says, “Each teammate, no matter their role or playing time, came to practice every day knowing that playing together and supporting each other was the common goal.”

In both of her current jobs, Kish-Russ operates from a team mentality.

“We before me has always been a huge part of both of my careers,” she reflects. “Teamwork, communication, decision-making, having fun, accountability, conflict management, and shared values have always been instilled in me in both [Bethlehem Catholic and DeSales] programs.”

‘Correcting those not-so-good choices’

Part of the team mentality Kish-Russ describes is a commitment to building skills in the next generation.

“Three major positives that DeSales women’s basketball student-athletes gain,” Kish-Russ says, “are the ability to self-assess/self-correct, [demonstrate] responsible concern, and [put] we before me [to focus on] collective success.”

Self-assessment and self-correction are skills that demand work and practice to become habits-habits that enable success in sports and in life, she explains.

“Correcting those not-so-good choices leads to self-improvement as a human,” she says. “When I teach, I share with the ladies how to assess their good shots versus their missed shots and how to self-correct those missed.” She describes the confidence that comes from choosing to experience uncomfortable thoughts and emotions by taking a hard look at missteps, then using the self-evaluation to focus improvement efforts.

Kish-Russ uses the self-assessment and self-correction techniques she learned through basketball in her own work, too: debriefing with a colleague after a session with a student or family at CIT, or doing a post-game breakdown with Coach Fred Richter. And it’s working-both male and female colleagues come to her for advice on taking their programs to the next level.

“It’s a real honor to be so highly respected,” she says.

Lehigh’s Hammerstone is also working to give the next generation of players the skills she herself gained from sports-skills that are important across all disciplines: “Being a student-athlete teaches hard work, dedication, integrity, leadership, communication, and time management-just to name a few!”

For Dr. Amato, there’s no substitute for participating in competitive athletics.

“I have my kids in sports […] because it’s how I met the vast majority of my friends, where I learned discipline, where I learned to work hard and achieve things, and gain confidence from that.”

Imagining a world without Title IX, she worries, “If women didn’t have those opportunities, it would be depriving them of this experience that I don’t know that you can get in other ways at a young age. I just don’t think there’s anything like it.”