BEMIDJI — When Pat Rosenbrock was in elementary school, she was encouraged by her male classmates to try out for the baseball team. She grabbed her bat and put on her cap, but was denied the opportunity to play on the team by the coach because she was a girl.
“It was the very first time that I really experienced (discrimination based on sex),” she said. “And I was just devastated.”
Rosenbrock, professor emerita of physical education, health and sport at BSU, and Donna Palivec, a BSU professor of human performance, health and sport, shared their personal experiences in sports at the Beltrami County History Center on Saturday as part of the Beltrami County Historical Society’s Women’s History Month activities.
The two also shared the impact that Title IX, a federal law preventing discrimination based on sex in federally funded programs and activities, has had on women in sports.
Rosenbrock first came to Bemidji State in 1969. When she arrived, intercollegiate women’s athletics were just beginning at the school. Seven sports were offered: basketball, field hockey, gymnastics, track and field, swimming, volleyball and tennis.
She spent 20 seasons coaching 30 teams and three sports, all while officiating for five sports.
“It’s fortunate that I was quite a bit younger at that point,” she said with a laugh about her heavy workload.
Palivec spent her playing days at Indiana University, where she participated in basketball, volleyball, field hockey, softball and swimming. Though only on the hoops team for one year, her Hoosiers squad reached the AIAW Final Four. She then coached at the high school level for four years, followed by 22 years at the collegiate level.
Making strides
Palivec focused much of her presentation on Title IX and how it has shaped women’s sports today since enacted in 1972.
Palivec noted that before Title IX, nine out of 10 women’s sports in the NCAA were coached by men. As recently as 2014, however, women are now at the helm of six of 10 women’s programs. There were 2.5 women’s teams per school in the 70s, but that number had risen to 8.83 in 2014, due in part to Title IX.
In 1971, there was only one female athlete to every 12 male athletes on the collegiate level. By 2014, the ratio had changed to a more even one female for every 1.39 males.
Rosenbrock and Palivec stressed the importance of women’s sports — and the advancements they have made — throughout their presentation.
The duo shared their successes and challenges through a time period when women’s sports were first stepping toward becoming equal to men’s sports.
“Our women today don’t even know about our history,” said Palivec. “It’d be really cool if they did.”
The series of presentations will continue at 6 p.m. on Monday at the Bemidji Public Library when Cecelia Wattles McKeig presents “Bemidji’s First Librarians and the Ladies of the Library Association, 1904-1921.”