Sue Durrant helped transform women’s athletics at Washington State University and across the country.
The longtime women’s volleyball and basketball coach at WSU was one of the lead plaintiffs in a landmark women’s rights case that set a precedent for public four-year colleges and universities nationwide. Women athletes and coaches at WSU sued the university in 1979, seven years after federal Title IX law required equity in education and sports for women in higher education.
“We assumed the University would do the right thing. Wrong,” Durrant has said. “They drug their feet and drug their feet.”
The suit, Blair vs. Washington State University, took nearly a decade to reach a final decision in the women’s favor at the Washington Supreme Court.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Durrant served on WSU committees that helped implement the provisions of Title IX across the university. For instance, “some of the residence halls would have athletic equipment and others would have ironing boards and sewing machines,” she said in a 2010 interview.
The university later contemplated eliminating the sport management program that employed Durrant and another faculty member actively involved in the Blair case. That move was floated as a means to retaliate against the two, a professor said. The program survived, however, and has since expanded greatly.
Durrant acknowledged in 2010 that her career suffered because of her involvement in the lawsuit. She never had pay parity with male faculty, for example, and never made full professor.
But, “My personal feeling was we had this option, and if we don’t use it… we’re saying discrimination is fine, the costs are too great to do anything about it. Enough of us felt that just was not an option we could live with.”
Durrant also was instrumental in establishing governing bodies for women’s sports. When she arrived at WSU to teach physical education in the early 1960s, most sports only had informal women’s leagues. Durrant was part of the development of the Northwest College Women’s Sports Association. Later, she represented the region in the development of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, bringing national tournaments and more attention to women’s athletics.
She was among the founding members of the Association of Faculty Women at WSU, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. She was the first recipient of the organization’s Samuel H. Smith Leadership Award.
To her, the association’s 50-year milestone means the need remains. “I think its longevity indicates that there’s still a need to address issues that affect women in the university system,” Durrant said recently. “You can’t just discuss what’s wrong but you need to identify what you can do to make it better.”
