The best female swimmers in the Niagara-Orleans League this winter will never have an opportunity to compete on the state or sectional level, like their male counterparts at school or female league counterparts can.

It isn’t that they’re not good or fast enough. They simply swim at a time of the year that makes them ineligible to compete on those levels.

Former long-time Barker athletics director Bill Stedman said when N-O swimming was created more than four decades ago, girls swam in the fall. For many reasons — many out of the league’s control — it was decided by the N-O to swim both the boys and girls in the winter months, like Buffalo city schools.

That works out well for the N-O boys, who can qualify for the state’s winter-run boys meet, but the problem is, the N-O girls can’t qualify for the state meet, because that’s run annually in the fall.

Local large schools, including Lockport, North Tonawanda and Niagara Falls from the Niagara Frontier League and Starpoint and Tonawanda from the Erie County Interscholastic Conference, swim their girls in the fall and boys in the winter and thus, both genders can compete at sectionals and states.

However, like they are in Buffalo City League schools, in N-O-chartered waters, only the boys can qualify for sectionals and states. The girls are ineligible — at least for now.



The numbers crunch

Stedman said they knew within the N-O that if they swam the girls in the winter that they would not be eligible for sectionals.

“The problem was — and still is — that we don’t have enough girls in our school. Something would suffer,” Stedman said.

“We already run field hockey, girls soccer, girls volleyball and girls cross country in the fall. We have so many sports in the fall for the girls, it would just stretch the small schools like Barker and the other N-O schools too thin. So we weighed all the facts and there was so much interest in girls swimming that we decided to go ahead and swim the girls in the winter with the boys and run separate boys and girls heats at the meets, which we still do,” Stedman said.

Stedman said if the N-O moved girls swimming back into the fall, most schools would lose either swimming or another sport.

“One of the sports would ultimately fail — it could be swimming, it could be soccer — you just can’t host them all. We’ve had parents at Barker investigate the possibility of moving N-O girls swimming back into the fall, but after I talk to them, like I’m talking to you, they understand we just don’t have the numbers.”



Strong-armed

One of the most obvious hard-luck cases in the N-O this past season was Newfane senior Shannon Strong, who was only beaten twice in a remarkable six-year varsity career under head coach Nancy Phillips and her husband, assistant coach Paul.

Strong hold school records in the 50 freestyle (26.52 seconds), the 100 free (56.68) and as a member of three relays (200 medley, 200 free 400 free). She also holds three school and Niagara-Orleans League records in the 200 free (2:00.94), 200 individual medley (2:20.80) and 100 butterfly (1:01.47).

Together with her sisters, Brianne Strong and Jen Diel, the trio currently hold every Lady Panthers swim record in existence.

But Strong, arguably the greatest individual swimmer in the history of Newfane’s nine-year-old program, nor her talented siblings, have ever been afforded an opportunity to swim sectionals or states.

Long-time Newfane coach and former athletics director Jim Conley said girls sports programs, including girls swimming in the N-O, began before the beginning of his teaching career (1968).

N-O swimming first took place at schools that had pools, which in the beginning were Albion, Barker, Akron, Roy-Hart and Medina (YMCA), Conley said.

Some of those pools built long ago do not meet today’s state requirements for diving — not deep enough, Conley said — which is why that event is missing presently from the N-O. Newfane’s most recently-constructed N-O pool does meet state requirements for diving and the school does have a diving coach and program, Conley added.

Title IX ultimately resulted in changes in N-O girls swimming in the early 1980s, Conley said.

“It had to do with girls soccer which ran in the spring when we started it,” Conley said.

“Once it got moved back to the fall because of the Title IX program, that hurt a lot of our girls sports programs in the Niagara-Orleans League. We have all kinds of girls sports in the fall — volleyball, soccer, field hockey. Our schools just don’t have the size in terms of numbers to have a girls swim program in the fall — like Lockport and other of the larger schools can — so we moved girls swimming to the winter, so we could at least offer it to them.

“Creating a girls fall swim program at schools like Barker, Wilson and Newfane would spread our athletes too thin and might even hurt some of the programs,” Conley said.



Starpoint disillusioned

Starpoint athletics director Tom Sarkovics said one of the reasons Starpoint left the N-O two years ago and joined the ECIC was girls swimming.

“But that was one of many reasons,” explained Sarkovics, the Spartans athletics director for the past 3 1/2 years and a former long-time coach. “There were plenty of things we didn’t have that we wanted to get. We wanted to get more modified programs going here. By the start of the school year next fall, we’ll have a modified team for every sport we offer.”

Today’s boys swim coach at Starpoint, Tim Menges, coached both the Spartans boys and girls varsity teams when they were part of the N-O’s combined winter season. Menges said he pitched moving N-O girls swimming to the fall at a coach’s meeting several years ago.

“I said, ‘Is there something we can look into to get the girls swimming in the fall so they can compete at sectionals and states?’ The way it was explained to me at that time was that because there are smaller schools in the N-O, there would be a conflict with other sports. I knew we would lose some girls and gain others, but my opinion was, ‘Then they had to chose. That’s the fair way of doing it.’ ”

Menges said he only lost two girls when Starpoint jumped to the ECIC in 2005. Since that year, the Lady Spartans have qualified for almost 30 sectional events and one Starpoint female swimmer, Jessica Perrone (50 free), made history as the first Starpoint female swimmer to qualify and compete at the prestigious state meet.

If Starpoint had remained in the N-O?

“I think everything would have stayed the way it was and those girls would never have gotten that opportunity. It would be status quo,” Menges said. “I had coached for five years in the N-O league and always felt real bad for the girls we had who made qualifying times, but couldn’t go to sectionals. When we made the move to the ECIC, I was very excited that our girls could have that opportunity. It felt great and I’m glad we did it.”



Potential solutions

Conley said there’s always hope for the future in regard to N-O swimming and he offered a number of possible solutions.

The idea he likes best is rearranging the state swimming championships to run both the boys and girls programs in the winter.

It’s a suggestion that’s been turned down by the state in the past, but makes the most sense with respect to Title IX.

“That’s the best solution, because to me, it gives athletes at the bigger schools the option of choosing a sport,” Conley said.

“Right now, what do girls pick in the winter? Basketball, cheerleading or indoor track. Lockport has more girls to pick from and certainly has enough girls to field a girls swim team in the winter.”

Another solution is being sought by a group of people in the Batavia area, who are petitioning the state to move all girls small-school swimming to the winter, like it is in the N-O.

“We could keep the large-school swimming states in the fall and move the small-school girls in the winter,” Conley said.

“It’s a great idea, but one of the problems is how do you decide who the state champion is?”

Another idea, though highly unlikely, is combining N-O schools to give them the numbers to field teams in the fall.

Another request that has been made in the past is having extremely talented small-school girls swimmers who can qualify to compete with the boys in the winter sectionals. However, state laws prohibit both male and female swimmers in the pool at the same time.

“Combining our schools would make for higher enrollment, but then you have to compete against the bigger schools,” Conley said.

“These ideas are a start, but there’s many pros and cons to everything we do. You have to look at both sides of the issue. People on the outside looking in don’t always realize that.”

Newfane assistant swim coach Paul Phillips said it’s basically an accepted fact within the league by coaches and swimmers today that — at least for now — N-O girls swimmers can advance only so far.

Contact John D’Onofrio at 439-9222, Ext. 6247.