March 5, 1973
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by Carol Wilson
Sports Writer
What was the final score of the last basketball game the Tar
Heels played with UNC-G? When was the last time you saw the
UNC field hockey team in action? Or the volleyball team?
If you have difficulty answering these questions, it may be
because you have been, like most UNC students, ignoring an
entire branch of Carolina athletics that played by the
"weaker" sex.
These are the people thought to lack the strength, stamina
and coordination to play "real" sports. The UNC women's
athletics program is proving just how wrong these
misconceptions are.
There are currently seven intercollegiate sports for women
and an eighth is in the planning stages. The Association for
Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) has
established rules and standards for girls' athletics and has also
organized national competition. In swimming, girls qualify for
the nationals exactly as boys do, on the basis of their best
times during the season. In other sports, which include
gymnastics, fencing, field hockey, volleyball, tennis and golf,
there are similarly corresponding structures set up to give
women the chance to compete on a national level. .
That women should want to compete nationally is an
indication of how seriously they take athletics. Until recently,
when the women's program came under the auspices of the
Athletic Department, it was often hard to find the money to
finance traveling schedules.
Even now, with all its recent growth and improvement,
many problems exist in the system. One of the most serious,
for example, is the fact that none of the women coaches are in
any way compensated for coaching.
Scheduling has also been a source of complaints. The UNC
girls' basketball team practices for a month and a half to get
ready for an eleven game schedule because neither UNC nor
the opponents' school can put up the traveling money so that
the teams any reasonable distance apart can play on a home
and home basis. As a result the girls play one game a year with
teams like UNC-G, East Carolina and Winthrop College. This
year, the ECU and UNC-G games were played away on
consecutive ni;hts, with the girls traveling in station wagons to
and from eac: game, and having to go to classes in between.
However, one player admitted she would be willing to
endure these conditions if she felt the girls' team got the kind
of recognition they deserve or any kind of recognition at all.
Few people are even aware of the existence of a women's
.intercollegiati program at all due to the lack of publicity
about it. W'ien Marsha Mann made the World University
Games basketball team, it went virtually unnoticed for four
months and the first newspaper to pick it up was the Raleigh
News and Observer. Over the last four years, the UNC team
with the best overall record has been the women's tennis team,
which has dropped only one scheduled match during that
time, but rarely are scores even reported. Four women
swimmers from the Carolina team have qualified to compote in
the nationals, yet have been virtually ignored.
Hopefully, the inclusion of the women's program in the
Athletic Department will improve the conditions under which
the women must play. Better organization has led to much
growth and expansion as women are beginning to be offered
more of a chance to compete in a greater variety of sports.
Individuals like Marsha Mann and Laura DuPont, the 1970
national singles champion who is now ranked 14th nationally,
help bring women's intercollegiate athletics the attention it
' needs and deserves.
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Chapel Hill soccer booms
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by Elliott Warnock
Sports Writer
It was born in a bath tub at the aae of 23 and has already given birth to 5.000
offspring. It is known by many different names to many different people.
One of its sons who says he is 554 months old calls it sheer poetry, and magic, and
beauty, and ballet, and togetherness, and laughter, and pride, and accomplishment,
and striving, and cleansing, and fiin.
Last year it only had two names; Canf ield and Perry.
This year it calls itself Wisely, and Teenly, and goes by other names.
It has several brothers and sisters like Anson, and Abe and Vickey, and Charlie, and
Danny and Kip.
Its catalyst for creation was a soccer ball, its media love, an intangible thing on
which it still thrives as does any child who recognizes its true mother. .
It's just a little over a year old and still has no real home. r
Sitting in a bath tub in December, 1971, Kip Ward was trying to think of something
that even he did not quite fully understand. And then it came to him.
It was only a day-dream, a bath tub dream, so naturally when he told his wife
Vicky of his idea, she told him it was made of the stuff of dreams. And of course she
was right.
But as we all know, it is simple to fly in dreams, so as Kip says, "We flew."
It flew short distances at first, from house to house in Chapel Hill, shop to shop,
businessman to businessman. Somewhat of a running start had been achieved by a
group of high school students and a man named Charlie Dorr who had kicked a soccer
ball all the way to the state high school tournament in Louisburg, and a third place
finish their first year as a varsity team.
- If Rainbow Soccer was born in a bath tub, it was conceived on a grassy field.
Starting in the spring of 1972, people began appearing on fields everywhere in
Chapel Hill, wearing shirts in the colors of the rainbow.
There were in all sizes and shapes but with a common desire: to play soccer.
People like Mel Rashkis, Gordon Fisher, and Jane Sharp; people who didn't play
helped with the cost of the shirts.
The program began to grow. With each passing week more children, some as old as
554 months, were born into the family.
By the end of the spring it had become one of the most well known families in
town. Its reunion held at the end of the season was attended by throngs of
well-wishers and by members.
Trophies were awarded to the best of the family. One went to the Canfield division,
one to the Perrys.
And then the family grew some more.
Part of the Rainbow spread over into Durham this year. Hank Minor, a former
captain of the Duke varsity soccer team, headed up the growing group.
Meanwhile, in Chapel Hill, the place where Carolina coach Marvin Allen had started
a varsity program in 1946 (at that time the only in the South), the founders of
Rainbow were not idle.
People like Tim Morse and Abe Baggins, who had spent great amounts of time
trying to brighten up the rainbow, turned to the purpose of widening the scope of
what had begun in a bath tub.
The divisions were divided again and expanded. Going forth and multiplying, so to
speak.
Anson Dorrance became the leader of the Wisely League, the league of the
university students and silver-maned professors alike.
A separate league for those still in high school was started with Danny Ariail
appointed as the commissioner. For the folks in junior high, Abe Baggins became the
man to see about playing soccer. -
The Teenly League, for those young at heart and in age, was begun for elementary
school students, led by the very highly-esteemed Charlie Dorr, the man who had
started the varsity soccer program at Chapel Hill High School. -
Also on the list of things to be done is the task of finding a home for the program.
This fall the Chapel Hill Recreation Department and the Rainbow program made a
clean break between each other and now soccer players that want to wear a color of
the sky must find new pastures in which to play.
If scheduling by the UNC athletic department permits, some of the games might be
played on university intramural fields.
The new season of the family's activities began in January with various soccer
clinics in Durham and Chapel Hill. Now the regular season has begun, it started on
March 3, and a place must be found where the children of the family can play.
It is within the power of the university to help keep the dream from going down
the drain.
Simply by giving the children of the Rainbow a place to play.
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Little ones learn how to be Rainbow stars