Guilderland duo took up fight for equality
When Title IX was very young in the early ‘70s and enduring its first decade of growing pains, two women in Guilderland spearheaded an effort to fight for gender equality in sports. Charlotte O’donnell was a young homemaker raising five children when she became the force behind an organization formed to improve opportunities for women on the playing fields. Now 86, O’donnell got her start as an advocate for equal rights when she went to bat for her daughter, Sheila, who was determined to play baseball in the Pine Bush Babe Ruth League. “Sheila can throw and catch a ball like any 13-year-old boy,” O’donnell told reporter Steve Cheslow of the Knickerbocker News in an article published in 1973. That article was picked up nationally on the Associated Press wire service under the headline “Babe Ruth League’s
Rulebook Strikes Out Sheila’s Baseball Bid.” O’donnell continued to get frustrated hearing her daughters’ complaints about the lack of equality when it came to playing sports. Next was a showdown with the school district.
“At this point I was beginning to get irritated by the treatment of girls in sports,” Charlotte, accompanied by daughters Sheila O’donnell and Mary Grondahl, said in a video chat interview last week. She recalled another specific incident: Her daughter Ann coming home from school saying she couldn’t play volleyball in the
gym because they got kicked out by the football team coaches when it started raining on their practice. “They were kicked out of the gym,” she said. “Now that really got my nettles up.”
Sheila said there was a group of girls in school who were athletic and didn’t understand why they were not given the same opportunities as the boys. “We played with the boys growing up and all of the sudden the boys had uniforms and coaches,” she said. “We didn’t have anything. We just wanted to keep playing. After the Babe Ruth thing, I didn’t necessarily want to play with the boys, I just wanted to play with my friends.” A phone call to Charlotte from her friend and neighbor Joan Floyd set in motion an organized plan of action. Floyd told Charlotte she had read and researched a new law called Title IX, the education amendment that would slowly but dramatically change opportunities for girls and women. Knowing they had the law on their side, O’donnell and Floyd gathered up Sheila and her girlfriends who played sports and formed a group called EGOS: Encourage Girls Organized Sports.
The community activists gathered in living rooms and created a list of 10 demands they eventually took to the district’s board of education. They asked for the basics to get organized sports for girls off the ground: coaches, equipment, locker rooms, practice time, uniforms and facilities. They succeeded in getting an extra $10,000 allocated for girls’ sports. With an
$11,000 budget for 1974-75, the girls at Guilderland finally were getting a chance to play organized varsity sports.
A year later, they made history, winning a Class AA sectional title in basketball under coach Johnetta Hill. It was the first year Section II would organize a sectional championship for girls in basketball. “They were fierce,” Grondahl said of Floyd and O’donnell, best friends who also shared the same birthday. Floyd, who eventually became a librarian and is the mom of CBS-6 anchor Greg Floyd, died in 2004. “EGOS was important because it gave a structure to the fight,” Sheila said. “It was a real help. A grassroots kind of thing — it gave us legitimacy.”
But no other moms were on board. O’donnell and Floyd found themselves at odds with other parents, especially those who believed equality for girls would take away opportunities for boys. Sheila and Charlotte O’donnell became EGOS spokespersons and were featured locally on WAMC radio. Geraldo Rivera called the house for an interview when he was a rising star for WABC-TV. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, editor of Ms. Magazine, called and interviewed Sheila, who was one of a dozen girls featured in an article published in 1974 called “Baseball Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” But all the publicity and gains were not generated without some pain. “There was a very negative backlash, especially from the football and basketball programs,” Sheila said. “They were extremely negative and derogatory, it was horrible. Mostly because they thought you were taking something from them.”
“I had people telling me to go home and go in the kitchen, your place is in the
kitchen,” she said. Sheila went on to be a multi-sport student athlete at Union College. She was inducted into the college’s Sports Hall of Fame. She moved to France in 1984 and still lives there. She is admitted as a lawyer to both the New York and Paris Bars and works as the general counsel at Valeo Powertrain Systems Business Group in Paris. Charlotte, who earned her bachelor’s degree at Buffalo State while raising five children, went on to a career as the supervisor of the dietary department of the Villa Mary Immaculate Nursing Home in Albany. “I was never a feminist,” Charlotte said. “I dressed my girls in pink. I wouldn’t allow my girls to
wear pants to school, they had to wear dresses. I had a long way to go, I was truly a stay-at-home-baking-cookies mom.” “She went from a baking cookies mom and making all of our clothes to a women’s reformationist,” Grondahl said.
Next year is the 50th anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted by Congress and signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972. The law has withstood decades of efforts to limit its scope, especially in regard to athletics. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving any type of federal financial aid. The issues surrounding facilities and resources dedicated to women during the NCAA Tournament proves the NCAA still struggles with Title IX compliance. “To make up for where we were, we are still just beginning,” Charlotte said. “I guess I always want more for women after all, we only obtained the right to vote in the last century. We’ve started at such a low level we have so far still to go.”