SOUTHEAST REVEALS WOMEN'S SOCCER PLANS

In a continuing effort to promote gender equity, the Ohio Valley Conference will make women's soccer an official conference-sanctioned sport this fall.

And Southeast Missouri State University will closely follow suit as the school plans to field an intercollegiate women's soccer team in the fall of 1999.

Southeast athletic director Carroll Williams said the school hopes to have a coach in place by the end of this year and that coach would then undergo the task of building the program.

"Our plan is to advertise for the position and try to hire a coach some time this fall, then that individual would begin serving as our soccer coach probably by Jan. 1 of 1999," said Williams. "That individual would then recruit, build a schedule, those types of things, and we would begin competition in the fall of 1999."

Five of the 10 OVC schools will field women's soccer teams this fall, which allowed the conference to consider it as a sanctioned, championship sport. It passed in a vote among the league's presidents, which was announced late last week.

Eastern Illinois, Middle Tennessee State, Morehead State, Tennessee Tech and Tennessee-Martin will have teams this fall. The addition of Southeast in 1999 will make it six and OVC assistant commissioner Rob Washburn said Murray State, Austin Peay and Tennessee State are tentatively scheduled to field teams in 2000.

"Women's soccer is really one of the growing, emerging women's sports nationally, not only collegiately, but in youth programs all around," said Washburn. "It's become a popular sport for gender equity reasons. It gives you another fall sport with good numbers of athletes."

Williams said the addition of women's soccer is simply a continuation of Southeast's efforts to promote equal opportunities for women to participate in intercollegiate athletics.

"We've discussed this for a while. It's a definite outgrowth of our gender equity program that was started five years ago," he said. "The first three years of our gender equity program, we looked into upgrading the women's programs we've had in place. That's been done, so then we looked into adding another sport.

"Several sports were discussed, but soccer seemed to be the logical choice. It's growing nationwide and locally it has really gotten big, from the youth levels all the way up to the high schools."

Williams noted that many of the area high schools -- including Cape Girardeau Central, Notre Dame, Jackson, Perryville and others -- now have girls soccer teams.

That fact, coupled with St. Louis traditionally being a hotbed for youth and high school soccer, should make for some ideal recruiting logistics.

"There should be a pretty decent talent base to recruit from in this general area," Williams said. "I think soccer is a good fit for our women's athletic program."

Women's soccer would give Southeast eight women's sports, the others being volleyball, basketball, cross country, track, softball, gymnastics and tennis.

Southeast has six men's sports: football, basketball, cross country, track, baseball and golf.

Ideally, said Williams, schools would like to have a 50-50 ratio for male and female intercollegiate athletes, but with the large numbers involved in football, that generally isn't feasible.

"Really, 60-40 is more realistic, but our target goal is 55-45 (55 percent male, 45 percent female)," he said. "We're not very far off that right now and with the addition of women's soccer we'll be getting closer and closer."

Southeast athletic programs

Women's sports

volleyball

basketball

cross country

track

softball

gymnastics

tennis

soccer (begins Fall 1999)

Men's sports

football

basketball

cross country

track

baseball

golf