It’s hardly a controversial stand to say that we at SPORTSbyBROOKS do not in any way support prejudice or discrimination on the basis of gender, race, creed, or what-have-you, but we’ll say it anyway. While many college sports fans dislike Title IX for requiring equal scholarships and opportunities for women’s sports, we’ve generally been supportive - yes, it sucks that men’s water polo suffers at the hands of women’s field hockey, but men had it pretty good for thousands of years; the loss of a couple non-revenue sports isn’t the end of the world.
(Pic sort of related.)
But unfortunately, Title IX also gives our already litigious society just that many more opportunities to exercise their lawsuit-happy ways. It’s the gender version of the race card, and a high school coach in Indiana has decided to throw it in a big, stupid way.
Former (and we’ll get to that) Franklin County high school girls basketball coach Amber Parker smells blood in the Title IX waters of her former employer and is going in for the payday social justice, according to the PAL-ITEM.COM, which is not a website devoted to friend accessories but is in fact the website of the local newspaper in Richmond, Indiana:
Is it discrimination to schedule boys basketball games on weekend nights and make girls play half of their games on school nights?
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed this summer by former Franklin County High School girls basketball coach Amber Parker might decide that issue.
[…]
“I feel strongly that the girls suffer a huge disadvantage by playing mostly weeknights,” Parker said in the statement. “There’s the obvious issue of not being able to draw the same size crowds as the boys can having weekend nights, but the biggest injustice comes academically,” Parker said, referring to the playing games on school nights when homework is due the next day.
That’s right, folks - the fact that girls basketball is played in front of a smaller crowd than boys basketball is discrimination. And the fact that girls play on weeknights is also discrimination. No word on whether the boys’ wrestling, track and field, baseball, or soccer teams will be joining the stupid, stupid lawsuit as plaintiffs, considering THEY ALSO PLAY ON WEEKNIGHTS. It’s morons like this that give civil rights opponents ammunition.
It’s also interesting that Parker never seemed to have a problem with the basketball team play weeknights as long as she was the one getting paid to coach them. She was recently informed that she would not be brought back to coach the team this season, and suddenly — blammo, discrimination! Funny how that works, isn’t it? Can we sue this lady for gender dumbassery? Is that part of Title IX, too?
2:23 pm on September 14th, 2009
About 10 years ago, the IHSAA said boys cannot play on Friday and Saturday, while the girls play on Tuesday and Thursday, so now if Boys play Friday night, they also play Tuesday night. This lady needs to get a life.
12:46 am on September 15th, 2009
She also forgot that each school district cannot have all the buses and drivers out every all the time. With the genders split, only half the buses are out every evening. Nice.
8:12 pm on March 11th, 2010
bad reporting:
She was not rehired *after* she filed suit. She didn’t retaliate. Looks like the school did. So much for your theory.
And why shouldn’t the girls be allowed to play on the weekends too? Why don’t their parents get to watch?
Fair’s fair. Give the girls an equal chance. Why would anyone be against that?
10:01 pm on June 4th, 2010
Mrs. Parker is right. In my opinion girls and boys both have equal rights. Its not the 1800’s girls have as many rights as boys and this is one of them.
2:43 pm on July 3rd, 2010
You are stupid. It is discrimination that boys get to play on Friday and Saturday nights and girls don’t. She didn’t just bring this up because she was non renewed. She brought it up before she was fired and because she brought it up she was fired so before you put this BS on your website, get your facts straight. I am fifteen years old and if you have any other “problems” with this lawsuit please put them on here and I will be glad to prove you wrong. And you people that say that this is the way it has always been done. Well we used to hang people from trees and that changed. ASSHOLES
12:06 am on July 10th, 2010
how dare you post this bag of lies on here, shame on you.
you nurse
4:34 pm on July 24th, 2010
Mrs. Parker is doing this for the rights of women. She does want it to be fair because this rule was made years ago and its just not being enforced! go Mrs. Parker for standing up for what we all know is right !!!!!!
6:47 pm on September 19th, 2011
ok yall need to just drink a nice hot cup of shut the f**k up cuz mrs. parker is a damn good coach and a damn good teacher and if you ever had her as a teacher or coach u would understand how great of a mom and coach and teacher she is and overall a damn good woman so yall need to get over yourselves and grow up ok for yall coaches who really should grow up and follow the law on equity and equal you sure are dogging mrs. Amber Parker for what she is fighting for now let me tell you how would you as a coach or even a teacher like to be able to only play on the days when no one has time to see you cuz its during the week and on top of it u have to do homework bust your ass to get everything done to keep your studies in line along with classes just to stay on the team and work as hard as u can to fight for a team which is succeeding a hell of a lot better than the boys and u wanna cut them down because they are women well who the hell are you
so to tell you the truth yall need grow up and stop being sexist pigs
Mrs. Parker you have my full support and i agree with what your doing
and dont give up
(p.s. Mrs. Parker excuse my language and disrespect using it the rest of yall whining teachers who shouldnt even have a degree i could care less how offended you r grow up)