Gina Biascoechea understands the benefits of Title IX. But the sophomore Syracuse women’s rower doesn’t understand why her sport has to be split by sex.

‘Our team (the SU women’s rowing team) gets an earlier season, more team gear and more scholarships,’ Biascoechea said.

The NCAA has never been affiliated with the country’s oldest intercollegiate sport, men’s rowing. But women’s rowing is a different story.

When the SU women’s rowing team raced on May 1, on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J., it finished fourth in the Big East championship, in an NCAA-affiliated meet. Women’s rowing is an official NCAA sport with recognized conferences and an official NCAA championship in three divisions. Men’s rowing is not.

The Intercollegiate Rowing Association is the men’s answer to NCAA rowing exclusion. But SU men’s rowing head coach Dave Reischman said winning a Big East championship would be more glamorous than winning the IRA.

‘It’d be great for the men’s team to be able to say we were the best in the Big East,’ Reischman said. ‘People get that, and name recognition would come easily because of the Big East conference. ‘

The reason for the divide in collegiate rowing between genders is simple. It comes down to Title IX. The 1972 Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act stipulates that all federally funded programs must offer equal opportunities and dedicate equal resources to men and women.

Women’s rowing became an NCAA-affiliated sport in 1996, in part to help the scholarship inequities addressed by Title IX legislation.

The size of a Division I college football roster makes resources less available for other men’s teams. Syracuse football has 85 permitted scholarship athletes.

Women’s rowing teams help offset the gender disparity created by football. Reischman said teams can have up to 60 participants and 20 full scholarships.

‘I don’t find it fair that the women’s crew team has more advantages than the men’s team because of the football team,’ said Biascoechea, the SU women’s rower.

Adding an entire men’s rowing team — and the scholarships, trips, meals, housing and other services that come with NCAA athletes — would further scramble the gender participation balance Title IX strives to achieve, regardless of how long colleges have been racing.

But to Craig Amerkhanian, Stanford’s director of rowing, excluding deserving student-athletes isn’t fair, regardless of gender.

‘Men’s rowing would enhance the image and mission of the NCAA,’ Amerkhanian said. ‘They would perform at the highest level in the classroom and on the water, just like any other student-athlete.’

Amerkhanian said men’s rowing needs the major conferences associated with rowing — the Pac-10, the Big Ten and the Big East — to get behind deserving rowers and propose legislation to affiliate men’s rowing with the NCAA. But men’s crew has made no such proposal, said Cameron Schuh, the NCAA’s associate director of public and media relations.

A few schools did petition the NCAA for inclusion in 2005. But it didn’t garner enough support. Reischman said the doomed petition was the last window of opportunity for men’s crew to become NCAA-sanctioned.

If the implementation of Title IX started to close that window, the customs associated with more than 150 years of men’s rowing may slam it shut. Many rowers and coaches nationwide don’t want the NCAA to interfere with the way they’ve always operated.

Syracuse men’s team co-captain Mike Gennaro said keeping rowing traditions intact outweighs any prospect of gender equity in the sport.

‘I can’t see men’s rowing becoming an NCAA sport because of all of the tradition involved with the sport,’ Gennaro said. ‘It’s been this way for decades, and changing things now could potentially complicate things just as much as it would organize things.’

One of those traditions is shirt trading, a custom in which the winning boat of a race receives the shirts of the losing team’s rowers. Reischman said that at the IRA Championships, a rower in the winning boat will receive 16 shirts from 16 losing teams.

But shirt-trading would be viewed as gambling should men’s rowing become NCAA-affiliated and the tradition would be subject to NCAA sanctioning, Reischman said. Two more rowing rituals, freshman races and lightweight crew, would also end under NCAA rules.

Traditions aside, Amerkhanian believes a potential NCAA inclusion would benefit all of men’s rowing. The United States Olympic Rowing Team, for instance, would have a broader field of student-athletes to pick from.

‘It is absolutely time for the oldest collegiate sport to become a part of the NCAA,’ Amerkhanian said.

But if NCAA inclusion for men’s rowing becomes a question of gender impartiality, Reischman said the answer isn’t that obvious.

‘Was it fair that from 1852 — when our sport first started racing — to about 30 years ago, women had limited opportunities in sports across the board?’ Reischman said. ‘It wasn’t fair. And if staying out of the NCAA is something that helps correct that in some small way, then I’ll stay with the IRA.’

nctoney@syr.edu

Published on May 10, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Nick: nctoney@syr.edu | @nicktoneytweets