UNT leads nation in sports gender equity for second straight year

From North Texas Athletics news source

For the second consecutive year, UNT has been crowned national champion of the annual Gender Equity Scorecard released by Penn State York. UNT was the only school in the nation to receive an A+ in the rankings.

"This award is a credit to the commitment that we have made to the development of top-notch women's athletic programs," Director of Athletics Rick Villarreal says. "Winning two years in a row proves that we have maintained a level of gender equity that can serve as a model for other collegiate athletic programs to follow."

The Gender Equity Scorecard is an evaluation of 115 Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) colleges on their commitment to gender equity in intercollegiate athletics for the academic-athletic year of 2006-2007. The colleges were scored, graded and ranked according to the criteria of participation, scholarships, operating expenses, recruitment budgets and coaches' salaries.

This is also the third straight year North Texas has topped the Sun Belt Conference on the scorecard.

The second highest ranked Texas school was Texas A&M, which finished in 13th place. Houston was listed at 31, Baylor at 42, SMU at 44, Texas Tech at 47 and Texas at 49. Other Texas schools listed included UT-El Paso at 71, Rice at 79, TCUU at 81.

Over the past five years, North Texas has added new facilities to accommodate soccer, volleyball, softball, tennis, golf, and swimming and diving.

The women's tennis team recorded the second best record in school history and reached the semifinals of the Sun Belt Tournament last season. The swimming and diving team broke 14 school records and had their best conference finish in school history last year. The softball team, under second-year head coach T.J. Hubbard, was just one win shy of tying the school record for wins in a season during 2009. And this past season the women's soccer team finished the regular season with a 15-4-1 record and second place in the Sun Belt Conference.

Stephen Howard with North Texas Athletics can be reached at stephen.howard@unt.edu

Read other stories in this issue:

• President's Note
• Give feedback on Insider, win a free T-shirt
• Moving Forward: UNT's new computing facility will be among the nation's premier facilities of its kind
• Mean Green leads the pack for gender equity
• New Graduate School dean
• Engineering student earns prestigious defense department scholarship
• July Mayborn Conference to feature literary luminaries
• Faculty Focus: Terrance Pohlen
• UNT Traditions: Fireworks at Fouts Field
• Featured Link: Read the new North Texan
• UNT Alumni Association