Celebrating Title IX at 45: Pac-12 women’s sports by the numbers – Pac-12.com

Today, June 23, 2017, marks the 45th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the U.S. federal law that mandates equal opportunities on college campuses for men and women. It is thanks to this law and the determination of decades of committed coaches and administrators that women’s sports have been able to flourish in the Pac-12 for the past 45 years. 

Take a look at a small snapshot of what women in the Pac-12 have been able to accomplish thanks to Title IX:

• Of the Pac-12’s 501 total NCAA Championships, women’s teams have won 174 of them, even though they have only been eligible for NCAA Championships since 1982. Some of the men’s championships go back to the 1920s.
   
• During the 2016-17 school year alone, Pac-12 women’s teams won 10 NCAA Championships: Oregon women’s cross country, USC women’s soccer, Stanford volleyball, Stanford women’s swimming, Oregon women’s indoor track & field, USC beach volleyball, Stanford women’s water polo, Arizona State women’s golf, Washington women’s rowing, and Oregon women’s outdoor track & field.
   
• The Pac-12 Conference sponsors 13 women’s sports and hosts 10 women’s championships annually. Pac-12 schools also on average sponsor 13 women’s sports at the varsity level. Stanford sponsors 20 varsity women’s sports teams.
   
• The Pac-12 leads the nation in NCAA titles in 9 different women’s sports: beach volleyball (2), women’s cross country (12), women’s golf (18), women’s rowing (8), softball (23), women’s swimming (15), women’s tennis (22), volleyball (15), and women’s water polo (17). The Pac-12 has never lost an NCAA Championship in beach volleyball or women’s water polo.
   
• Pac-12 has won an average of 5.87 NCAA women’s titles since 1999-2000, including the league-record 10 in 2016-17. No other conference has claimed double-digit NCAA titles in an academic year.
   
• 143 Pac-12-affiliated female athletes participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics, representing 32 countries and taking home 34 medals. Of the 117 Pac-12 athletes on Team USA, 68 were women.
   
• In the five years since Pac-12 Networks’ launch, the networks have aired 2,015 total women’s sports events, including 442 in 2016-17. In each of Pac-12 Networks’ five years on the air, more than 50% of live events broadcasted have been women’s sports events. 

These facts represent a small sample of all that has been accomplished on Pac-12 campuses since the passage of Title IX. Progress in women’s sports has been consistently forged on the West Coast and Pac-12 programs continue to march forward toward equality by consistently winning, developing incredible young women, and demanding the attention and respect of everyone around them.