Former Iowa swimmer Vickie Nauman gives thought on reinstatement of women’s swimming and diving
Editor’s note: Former Iowa swimmer Vickie Nauman shared with HawkFanatic her perspective on the reinstatement of Iowa women’s swimming and diving.
- Congrats to the four brave women who filed the Title IX lawsuit — they took a chance, led with passion as well as facts, and made an incredibly strong case that was ruled in December in favor of the swimmers. I am thrilled as a women’s swimming alum to know that this is now official.
- I am pleased that the UI made the formal announcement today — this is really just a follow up to the December ruling and it at least gives Coach Marc Long and the women’s swimmers some semblance of a sport for next year.
- However, if you read the announcement you will see that the UI is still fighting the December ruling and wants to cut women’s swimming and diving in the future. This does not help the team sustain over the long haul — a permanent reinstatement and a withdrawal of the TitleIX appeal would have been more appropriate if they want to “do the right thing”
- The Save Hawkeye Sports team has gotten 700 donors to pledge just under $3,000,000 to offset the costs of these sports. Unfortunately the UI has not taken our offer seriously.
- You will see in the attached letters the offers we made to the UI — first we offered $6M ($3M now plus a commitment to $3M in the next few years) — then they said they would not consider any future monies. So we revised to $3M – $2.5M for men’s swimming.
- We have had an excellent advocate within the JPEC organization – but it has felt that the people designated for these discussions were unresponsive to the idea of a reinvented way to support Olympic Sports and equally unresponsive to the fundamental idea of investing in future leaders who are developed through college athletics.
- Very little of this makes sense to me! In some ways it feels that Universities are more like real estate companies than educators who invest in the future.
- The stakes are really high for UI to keep fighting Title IX — $500M in federal funds if they are found to be in violation. Wouldn’t it be better for all involved for Gary Barta to admit he made a mistake in judgement, reinstate the program permanently, and engage with passionate alums?