Some IM sports at UCSD ban women from being goalies; double points for goals by women

Under the current rules by UCSD Recreation, co-ed intramural (IM) sports allow men and women to play on the same teams, but several of the sports also require that “GOALIES MUST BE MEN” and give women double points for scoring.

Rules such as “a goal scored by a female will be worth 2 points” while “a goal scored by a male will be worth 1 point” are explicitly written into the rules of co-ed IM sports, such as waterpolo, soccer, and flag football. “These rules were created to garner interest in the IM leagues, promote involvement in the co-ed teams, and to address some safety issues,” said Intramural Sports Director Allison Lane.

The IM sports program receives funding under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex for any programs receiving federal funds, but UCSD Communications and Public Affairs Manager Christine Clark says the current rules do not violate Title IX.

“The campus looked at the rules [and] regulations for UC San Diego’s intramural co-ed waterpolo team and found them to not be in violation of Title IX,” Clark said in an email. “We found these regulations for this particular club sport to be consistent with other college campuses.”

However, this discrepancy in IM rules is not standard for other universities. At UCLA, the IM rulebook for co-ed waterpolo outlines that “the goalie can be of either gender” and at UCSB, no specific rule limits certain positions to gender, although women do receive two points for goals.

According to Lane, there have been some complaints throughout the years about these rules, which were handled on a case-by-case basis.

“Some students over the years have complained about rules such as scoring, and we have made exceptions for those students’ goals to count equal to the other males on the team,” Lane said. “The goalie rule is rarely enforced and we don’t have a problem changing it.”

The IM department has begun to test changing some of these rules in the more popular co-ed sports, such as soccer, in order to see if the leagues could function without them. However, Lane stated that there have been no serious talks in regards to changing the rules across all IM sports at UCSD.

Maggie Robak is a Senior Staff Writer for The Triton.