Competitive cheerleading is not an official sport that colleges can use to meet gender-equity requirements, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in ordering a Connecticut school to keep its women’s volleyball team.
The volleyball players had sued Quinnipiac University after it announced last year that it would eliminate the team for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad.
The school contended the cheer squad keeps it in compliance with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that mandates equal opportunities for men and women in athletics.
“Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX,” U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill wrote in his decision. “Today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”
Quinnipiac has 60 days to come up with a plan to keep the volleyball team and comply with gender rules.
An activity can be considered a sport under Title IX if it meets specific criteria. It must have coaches, practices, competitions during a defined season and a governing organization. The activity also must have competition as its primary goal — not merely the support of other athletic teams.
Quinnipiac and seven other schools recently formed a governing body, the National Competitive Stunts and Tumbling Association, to govern and develop competitive cheer as a sport.
Previously, competitive cheerleading championships were decided by two organizations — the National Cheerleaders Association and the Universal Cheerleading Association. Both are tied to Varsity Brands Inc., which makes cheerleading apparel and runs camps.
Quinnipiac had argued that if it could not count competitive cheerleading as a sport it might be forced to shut that program down, eliminating 36 positions on the squad.
School officials responded to the ruling by saying they would start a women’s rugby team, but they refused to answer any questions, discuss the future of other athletic teams or say whether they would continue offering scholarships to competitive cheerleaders.
“We will continue to press for competitive cheer to become an officially recognized varsity sport in the future,” Quinnipiac spokeswoman Lynn Bushnell said in a statement. “Consistent with our long-standing plans to expand opportunities in women’s athletics, the university intends to add women’s rugby as a varsity sport beginning in the 2011-2012 academic year.”
Attorneys for the volleyball players did not immediately return calls for comment.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which assisted the volleyball players in bringing the lawsuit, said the decision gives force to Title IX.
“Today’s ruling directs Quinnipiac University to stop playing games with the important principle of equal opportunity for women,” the organization said in a statement.
The cheerleading issue was one of several Underhill was asked to decide as he considered whether the school had improperly manipulated it rosters.
He also found the school was underreporting the participation opportunities for its male athletes and overstating the opportunities for women.
Evidence showed the men’s baseball and lacrosse teams, for example, would drop players before reporting data to the Department of Education and reinstate them after the reports were submitted. Conversely, the women’s softball team would add players before the reporting date, knowing the additional players would not be on the team in the spring.
School officials have said any improper manipulation of the rosters has stopped.
Underhill also agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that female runners who participate on school’s indoor, outdoor and cross country track teams should be counted just once for Title IX purposes. The men have just a cross country team.
“Quinnipiac’s practice of requiring women cross-country runners to participate on the indoor and outdoor track teams, and its treatment of the indoor and outdoor track teams as, in essence, an adjunct of the cross-country team, are sufficient to show that some cross-country runners who participate on the indoor and outdoor track teams should not be counted under Title IX,” he wrote.
The NCAA has accused the storied men’s basketball program at the University of Connecticut of eight major rules violations.
The school released the notice of allegation letter Friday following a 15-month investigation into the recruiting of former player Nate Miles. The eight alleged violations include improper phone calls and text messages to recruits, giving recruits improper benefits and improperly distributing free tickets to high school coaches and others. Coach Jim Calhoun was cited for failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance.
“It’s not exactly, certainly anywhere near the high point of my career, as a matter of fact it’s certainly one of the lowest points at any time that you are accused of doing something,” said Calhoun, who has led the Huskies since 1986 and twice guided them to national championships. “It’s a very serious matter.”
UConn is to appear before the governing body on Oct. 15 to respond. Attorney Rick Evrard, an outside counsel who advises UConn on NCAA-related matters, said the school likely will spend the next three months reviewing the allegations. He said if the school confirms them, it is obligated to impose its own sanctions. Penalties could vary widely, depending on what UConn finds in its review.
Among the allegations, is that assistants Beau Archibald and Patrick Sellers provided false and misleading information to NCAA investigators. Sellers and Archibald, who served as director of basketball have both resigned. Jeff Hathaway, the school’s athletic director says Archibald resigned last Thursday, and Sellers quit on Sunday.
Both released statements Friday saying they needed to devote their full attention to the allegations against them.
“Coaching is my passion and something I have spent many years of enjoyment doing,” Sellers said. “I want the record to reflect this and for the people to see the respect and integrity that I will show toward the process in the months ahead.”
The 68-year-old Calhoun recently signed a five-year, $13 million contract, though UConn was 18-16 last season and Calhoun took a medical leave of absence in January, missing seven games with an undisclosed medial condition.
UConn as an institution was cited for not adequately monitoring “the conduct and administration of the men’s basketball staff in the areas of: telephone records, representatives of the institution’s athletics interests; and, complimentary admissions or discretionary tickets.”
Calhoun and Hathaway declined to comment on the allegations, citing the ongoing investigation, but Calhoun said he won’t be defeated by the charges.
“I’m going to be educated by certain matters, if in fact we did make mistakes, which I think I said 15 months ago,” Calhoun said. “We’ll finalize some of that over the next 90 days and we will go forward.”
The NCAA and the school have been investigating the program since shortly after a report by Yahoo! Sports in March 2009 that former team manager Josh Nochimson helped guide basketball recruit Nate Miles to Connecticut, giving him lodging, transportation, meals and representation.
As a former team manager, Nochimson is considered a representative of UConn’s athletic interests by the NCAA and prohibited from having contact with Miles or giving him anything of value.
“The men’s basketball staff knew or should have known about the benefits provided by Nochimson due to their knowledge of Nochimson’s status as a professional basketball agent and his relationship and contact with (blacked out)….,” the NCAA wrote to UConn. The alleged infractions occurred between June 2005 and February 2009.
Documents released by the school showed pages and pages of phone and text message correspondence between Nochimson and UConn coaches Calhoun, Tom Moore, who is now head coach at Quinnipiac, and Sellers.
Messages seeking comment were left at Quinnipiac for Moore.
Miles was expelled from UConn in October 2008 without ever playing a game for the Huskies after he was charged with violating a restraining order in a case involving a woman who claimed he assaulted her. He played during the 2008-09 season for the College of Southern Idaho, and was cut last November by the NBA Development League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce.
The investigation of the men’s basketball program has no impact on UConn’s other sports programs, including its national champion women’s basketball team.
A power plant explosion that killed at least five people left a section of the building too unstable for rescue crews to determine whether everyone was accounted for, a fire official said Monday.
Piles of rubble were 10 feet tall in some parts of the plant, and mounds of rubble and debris were everywhere, said Middletown Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano. On Sunday night, he had said no one was missing but by Monday morning, he said, the extent of the damage was clearer and officials realized there was a section of building that could not be searched.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Monday morning that officials still haven’t received rosters of workers who were at the Kleen Energy Systems plant Sunday, and Santostefano said he didn’t know when emergency crews would be able to search the unstable area.
“There are a number of contractors who do the work at the building,” Rell told WTNH-TV. “Until we actually have a roster of the names of those individuals that are in each of those groups and who was working on Sunday, we need that before we can do anything else. … We’re still confirming the number of people.”
Santostefano added, “There’s still uncertainly about who came in and who didn’t come in yesterday.”
Local fire investigators and federal authorities on Monday were expected to begin their investigation into what caused Sunday morning’s explosion at the plant in Middletown, about 20 miles south of Hartford.
A dozen or more others were hurt in the blast, which happened as gas lines were being tested. The explosion was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away.
The blast left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing at the site, which is near Wesleyan University on a wooded and hilly 137-acre parcel of land overlooking the Connecticut River.
Rescue crews combed through the debris until about 2:30 a.m. Monday.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, was mobilizing a team of workers from Colorado and hoped to have them on the scene by midday Monday, spokesman Daniel Horowitz said.
The nearly completed 620-megawatt plant is being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the nation’s electricity. Workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging a gas line, clearing it of air, when the explosion occurred around 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Santostefano said.
About 50 to 60 people were in the area at the time, he said.
One of those killed was Raymond Dobratz, a 58-year-old plumber from Old Saybrook, said his son Erik Dobratz, who called the elder man “a great dad.”
Lynn Hawley, of Hartland, Conn., said her 36-year-old son, Brian Hawley, is a pipefitter at the plant and broke his leg. She said he called her from his cell phone to say he was being rushed to a hospital.
“He really couldn’t say what happened to him,” she said. “He was in a lot of pain, and they got him into surgery as quickly as possible.”
Hospital officials didn’t immediately release the conditions of the other injured people, whose wounds ranged from minor to very serious.
The thundering blast shook houses for miles.
“I felt the house shake,” Middletown resident Steve Clark said. “I thought a tree fell on the house.”
Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said he heard it as he was leaving church.
“It felt almost like a sonic boom,” he said.
Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on the plant in February 2008. It had signed a deal with Connecticut Light and Power for the electricity produced by the plant, which was scheduled to be completed by mid-2010 and would be one of the biggest built in New England in the last few years.
The company is run by former City Councilman William Corvo. A message left at Corvo’s home was not returned. Calls to Gordon Holk, general manager of Power Plant Management Services, which has a contract to manage the plant, also weren’t returned.
Energy Investors Funds, a private equity fund that indirectly owns a majority share in the power plant, said it was cooperating with authorities investigating the explosion. In a written statement, the company offered sympathy and concern and said it would release more information on the explosion as it becomes available.
Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They’ve identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Middletown; Stephanie Reitz in Glastonbury, Conn.; Mark Williams in Columbus, Ohio; Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C.; and Anne D’Innocenzio in New York.
