By James Sutherland on SwimSwam
Advocacy groups formed to save the California Baptist University men’s swimming & diving and wrestling programs have come together to file a petition calling for Title IX reform.
Keep CBU Swim & Dive and Keep CBU Wrestling announced Tuesday that they’re partnering with the American Sports Council and the Pacific Legal Foundation to petition to repeal the 1979 Policy Interpretation of Title IX and get it back to what was intended when it was initially passed in 1972.
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Title IX was passed in 1972 to prohibit sex-based discrimination in education programs, but the Department of Education issued a “Policy Interpretation” in 1979 that allows schools to be compliant by meeting one of three criteria.
“The Interpretation allows schools to demonstrate compliance with Title IX in athletics by, among other options, showing that athletic participation is ‘substantially proportionate’ to the student body’s male-female enrollment ratio,” Pacific Legal and the American Sports Council said in a joint release.
“In practice, this proportionality requirement functions as a sex-based quota. Rather than investing in new women’s programs, many schools have found it easier—and cheaper—to cut men’s teams or cap roster sizes to hit the numbers.”
In early January, Cal Baptist announced it was cutting its men’s swimming & diving, men’s golf and wrestling teams, citing “ever evolving intercollegiate athletic landscape.”
“While we had hoped to continue offering our full slate of athletic programs in this new environment, it has become clear that changes are required to realize the university’s goal of achieving greater competitive excellence that the new Division I era demands,” Vice President of Athletics Micah Parker said at the time.
The Lancers became official NCAA Division I members in the 2022-23 season after beginning the transition in 2018, and last March, announced their move to the Big West Conference beginning in 2026-27.
American Sports Council Chairman Eric Pearson said the petition is asking the Trump administration directly for a change to the way Title IX is applied, with hopes of no longer allowing schools to simply eliminate men’s teams to reach compliance.
“Today we are at California Baptist University, standing with athletes who recently learned that their wrestling, swimming, and golf programs are being eliminated. Title IX’s proportionality standard has operated as a quota system for over thirty years, and these three teams are its latest victims,” Pearson said.
“We are asking the Trump administration directly: you have the power to change these Title IX regulations and to save these three teams. Offering a more fair and reasonable way to comply with Title IX will open the door to reinstating hundreds of men’s collegiate teams in sports like wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, track and field, and other Olympic sports.”
The Pacific Legal Foundation and the American Sports Council outlined some troubling facts about men’s athletics teams since the early 1980s, including gymnastics programs dropping from over 100 to 12, and wrestling teams dropping from 150 to 79.
“Schools facing pressure to meet proportionality targets have eliminated smaller men’s sports like swimming, tennis, and track, rather than invest in new women’s programs,” the organizations said.
“But singling out members of one sex and limiting their opportunities does nothing to remedy discrimination against members of the opposite sex. This approach gets Title IX backward. The landscape has changed dramatically since 1972. Women’s participation in high school and college athletics grew from roughly 300,000 in 1972 to over 3 million 40 years later. In the 2019-20 school year, women represented 44% of college athletes in the U.S. That progress is worth celebrating—and it does not depend on sex-based quotas to sustain itself.
“Pacific Legal Foundation, alongside the American Sports Council, has filed a petition to repeal the 1979 Policy Interpretation. The Interpretation has distorted Title IX beyond its text and intent, replacing the pursuit of equal opportunity with an arbitrary numbers-driven compliance game that eliminates opportunities in the name of equity. Repealing it would not weaken Title IX; it would restore the original principle it was built on: that every student deserves an equal opportunity, regardless of sex.”
You can read the full petition document here.
The Cal Baptist athletic administration has instructed its campus media to “put a hold on any publicity” for the men’s swim & dive, wrestling and men’s golf teams after they were cut just over two months ago.
The Lancers men’s swim & dive team is sending three athletes, swimmer Mark Kovacsics and divers Mario Del Valle Jr. and Gael Jimenez, to next week’s Men’s NCAA Championships.
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