Women’s Sports

By Rod Howe First Published February 5, 1982The University of Nebraska at Omaha women's basketball team, ranked No. 7 in the nation (NCAA Division H), squeezed past Midland Lutheran College, ranked No. 7 in NAIA, 88-80 in three overtimes Wednesday.Sounds like one of the most thrilling, dramatic contests on the college basketball slate this season, doesn't it? Maybe you wondered as I did why neither of the state’s major dailies covered the game, at all. You would think the Omaha World-Herald would have given their hometown Lady Mays some publicity. And the Midland women played in Fremont, only about 35 miles away from our great metropolis. The omission reads like a classic case of sex discrimination.When are the sports pages going to catch up with the times? If I hadn't been looking through the small-type scoreboard in the Lincoln Journal-Star, I would never have known the game existed. Maybe that's what the World-Herald is hoping. With magical editorial flair, the World-Herald says the magic words “we shall write no summary of women's games,” and Poof!, women's college basketball does not exist.Vicki Harlan, a former Class D All-Stater who per-formed at Odell last year, is one of the freshman starters on the young, but talented Midland squad. As an Odell senior, the 6-1 Harlan was an offensive machine who led the entire state in scoring, 27.3 points per game, and re-bounds, 19.1 per outing.Harlan told me over Christmas break she has been asked to give Midland defensive and rebounding help. Midland apparently has enough scoring ability. Still, Harlan is averaging about 10 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.In a telephone interview this morning, Friday, Harlan said, “When it (the Midland-UNO game) wasn't in yesterday's paper (Omaha World-Herald), we wondered if they thought it was bad for UNO to nearly get beat by some podunk college in Fremont.”“They haven't covered us all year, so we're kind of used to it by now,” she added. “But we didn't appreciate it much that they didn't cover this game. It shows where their priorities are.”Harlan noted Midland was ahead by three in the first overtime before its leading scorer, Kari Kramme fouled out (Kramme averages about 15 per game; Midland hits 80 points per game as a team). The former Odell star fouled out in the second overtime period, and by the third overtime, Midland had only one starter in the lineup.“We should have won,” Harlan said. “We shot poorly from the field. We did the same thing in a one-point loss to William Penn (Iowa), the NCAA H champion last year. They shot 43 percent, and we only hit about 38 percent.”According to Harlan, an already potent Midland lineup should be even stronger next year. The starting five is usually composed of two freshmen, a sophomore, a junior and one senior. However, the senior did not start against UNO. Harlan's replacement is a freshman who, “Makes me work hard in practice and keeps me on my toes.”Midland's head coach “really believes in using the bench,” and Diller's Pam Schmidt is one of the first to make an entrance off the pines, Harlan said.With two players from the area playing key roles in Midland's 19-4 season, maybe Odell and Diller fans should write to one of the major dailies and express their disappointment with the coverage. Newspapers aren't required to comply by any Title IX standards, but it is about time to recognize women's contribution to the world of sports.

Willard L. Engelman

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