Reinstating Eastern Michigan University women's sports hits big snag

David Jesse | Detroit Free Press

Women's softball and tennis athletes will have to wait at least another month to know when they will be back to playing at Eastern Michigan University.

The reason for the delay? The Mid-American Conference has said it won't add the sports back into conference schedules this year.

A federal judge has ordered Eastern to reinstate the teams it cut last year as part of a budget-saving plan. Female athletes sued Eastern and a federal judge ruled the university had violated federal Title IX law in cutting the sports.

The two sides met with the judge Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Detroit.

"Unfortunately the MAC has stated it is refusing to put women’s tennis and softball back on the conference schedule this season," attorney Jill Zwagerman told the Free Press after Tuesday's court session. "This is concerning and disheartening to the plaintiffs, and something we consider to be an unnecessary barrier."

Eastern Michigan University issued a statement through spokesman Geoff Larcom that said the two sides had a productive meeting and looked forward to working together before the next court status conference on Nov. 27.

A spokesman for the MAC couldn't be reached Tuesday.

More: Eastern Michigan must reinstate 2 women's sports teams, court rules

More: Eastern Michigan still plans to cut sports despite growing outrage

The suit was filed after Eastern cut a number of sports programs in an ongoing effort to trim its budget. Eastern argued its budget difficulties meant it had to make the cuts, an argument the judge didn't buy in his ruling a month ago. The moves affected 58 male student-athletes and 25 female student-athletes.

"The court finds that the financial burden on EMU is outweighed by the harm to plaintiffs if the teams are not reinstated," U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh wrote in his ruling. "Indeed, financial hardship is not a defense to a Title IX violation."

Steeh also took a careful look at the percentage of athletes who were female and the percentage of EMU students overall who are female and was critical of Eastern's talk about changing those percentages.

According to forms submitted to the NCAA for the 2017 fiscal year, EMU had 10,417 female undergraduate students, making up 59.4 percent of the student population, with 7,124 male students, or 40 percent. However, in sports, 56.1 percent of its athletes are male, compared with 43.9 percent female. Title IX requires opportunities for male and female athletes to match student body demographics.

The suit was filed by a female softball player and a female tennis player.

The softball player, Ariana Chretien, played two seasons of softball at Eastern. It was the combination of a scholarship offer and the chance to study aviation at the school that brought her to Ypsilanti, she told the Free Press when the suit was filed.

Chretien, who went to high school at Walled Lake Northern, said she had looked at other schools for a transfer.

"I got offers from schools that had money for scholarships, but not aviation," she said then. "I've also found places that had aviation but didn't have money for scholarships."

The other player to file the suit was Marie Mayerovo, a tennis player, who said if she wanted to transfer, she would have to go back to her home country of the Czech Republic and apply for a new student visa.

This case wasn't the only legal action taken to try to stop the cuts. A group of citizens sued Eastern alleging the Board of Regents had violated the Open Meetings Act in making the cuts. A Washtenaw County judge dismissed that suit.

A complaint also was filed with the federal Office of Civil Rights. The OCR didn't rule on the merits of the case, but dismissed it because the federal lawsuit was pending.

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj