“You need to get off this court, because nobody gives a damn about women’s basketball.” Carol Hutchins details the moment that ignited her passion for combating the ongoing gender disparities in college sports
By her senior year at Michigan State, Hutchins and her teammates were fed up. First, in a formal complaint letter, and later, in a 1979 lawsuit, they protested the school’s “gross violations” of Title IX, citing not only the clear lack of funding for women’s sports compared to men’s, but the discriminatory differences in facilities, travel arrangements and more.
After graduating as a two-sport athlete in 1979, Hutchins earned her master’s degree in physical education at Indiana and began her softball coaching career. She was an assistant coach for the Hoosiers and spent a year as head coach at Ferris State , before finally landing at Michigan as an assistant .
She also served as the grounds crew. While the men’s baseball team had multiple full-time coaches, practice uniforms and a manicured field, Hutchins had to pull weeds, paint lines and maintain the subpar softball facility. Now, more than four decades after that first complaint, “Hutch” boasts the most wins of any coach in Michigan history, 22 Big Ten titles as well as an NCAA championship—and she’s as impassioned as ever about the fight for women’s equality. She’s adamant that the gender disparities in college athletics remain rampant, “getting alarmingly bigger, not smaller.”
“It’s really in recent years that I’ve realized that it is my duty to speak out,” Hutchins says. “In all my salary disputes, when I spoke out, it was not because I needed more money to live. I don’t need much. It’s all about the women that come after me.”
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