Oregon Ducks beach volleyball players detail disparate treatment that experts say could violate Title IX

The team practices and plays home games in a city park. The players, who do not receive athletic scholarships, have had to use a public restroom with no doors on the stalls.

At times, they’ve driven hundreds of miles for games and stayed three or four to a room and had to share beds.

This isn’t a ragtag club sport but rather the varsity women’s beach volleyball team for the Oregon Ducks, in an athletic department with more than $153 million in annual revenue and some of the best sports facilities in the country.

The Oregonian/OregonLive interviewed more than a dozen former players and coaches, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and contacted experts in Title IX, the federal law that requires women and men be provided equitable opportunities to participate in sports. According to legal experts, Oregon’s treatment of the team puts it perilously close, if not over the line, into violation of Title IX.

The Oregonian/OregonLive found issues related to at least five of nine areas in which equal treatment is required: athletic scholarship funding; locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities; travel and daily allowances; equipment and supplies; and recruiting.

“If the women’s beach volleyball team is being treated that much worse than all the other athletes, male and female, then, unless there is a proportionate number of male athletes being treated horribly, the school is likely in violation of Title IX. Period,” said Arthur H. Bryant of Bailey & Glasser, LLP, one of the country’s leading attorneys specializing in Title IX.

NO SCHOLARSHIPS

Title IX requires women and men “be provided equitable opportunities to participate in sports,” that male and female athletes “receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation” and that they receive equal treatment in nine other areas, according to the NCAA.

The beach volleyball team is one of 20 varsity sports at the University of Oregon. It is the only team that receives no athletic scholarship funding.

No other public university team among the nation’s largest athletic conferences, the Power Five, spends zero on athletic scholarships, The Oregonian/OregonLive determined after reviewing financial records obtained after nearly 100 public records requests.

The Oregonian/OregonLive first requested to speak with Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens on June 27, but he declined via a spokesperson. On July 2, The Oregonian/OregonLive sent 127 questions, many yes or no in nature, to an athletic department spokesperson regarding the beach volleyball program. The athletic department responded on July 14 with a statement that did not directly address many of the questions posed or refute The Oregonian/OregonLive’s core findings related to Title IX.

Athletic departments can claim compliance with Title IX by relying on any of three prongs: that the gender ratio of a school’s athlete population to be “substantially proportionate” to the undergraduate population, that there is a history of increasing athletic opportunities for the underrepresented gender and that the athletic interests of the underrepresented gender are met.

“We place a high priority on our women’s athletics programs at the University of Oregon, and we are proud of so many incredible and unique success stories and accomplishments in recent years by our female student-athletes,” the department’s statement reads. “The University regularly reviews its compliance with Title IX with regard to equal athletic opportunities. We strive to comply with all prongs of the three-part test, and as with many universities, rely most heavily on prong three, that the institution is fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.”

Lisa Peterson served as Oregon’s deputy athletics director, senior woman administrator and deputy Title IX coordinator until leaving last fall to join the Pac-12 as senior associate commissioner for sports management.

The Oregonian/OregonLive emailed 86 questions to Peterson on July 5. She responded on July 14 with a statement that did not address a single question directly nor deny a single claim regarding her actions while also serving as the sports administrator for the UO beach volleyball team from 2014-21.

“I am proud of all that has been accomplished by Oregon women’s athletics during my tenure there, including unprecedented success and support for our programs,” Peterson said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I know plans are in motion to continue to elevate the Oregon beach volleyball program and I look forward to seeing those plans come to fruition. The program has a bright future and great success ahead.”

Interviews with more than a dozen former players and coaches and analysis of financial records detail how extreme an outlier Oregon’s beach volleyball program is compared to UO’s other teams, as well as its peers in the Pac-12 Conference.

The total operating expenses for the Oregon beach volleyball program in 2021-22 totaled $296,607, according to its NCAA revenue and expense report. The next lowest at UO was $834,754 for the men’s tennis team, with every other Oregon team topping $1 million.

The beach volleyball team received 1.45% of the $20.47 million Oregon spent that year on its 10 women’s programs (indoor and outdoor track and cross country are combined for budgetary purposes).

UO has persistently awarded more athletic scholarships to men over women beyond the threshold permitted by Title IX, public records show.

If Oregon’s athletic scholarship spending for women athletes was “substantially proportionate” to their rate of participation, as defined by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, it would have needed to spend about $972,000 more, or nearly $1.6 million more to be precisely proportionate over the years 2017-22, according to an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

“It’s been a fight since I got there and every year I was there was, we need more funding,” said a former coach, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. “Beach (volleyball) has always been a problem; I told them that in my exit interview, that it needs to change. You guys are going to get in trouble.”

With the exception of Oregon’s men’s and women’s golf teams, which utilize nearby Emerald Valley Golf Club and Eugene Country Club, UO’s other sports teams all have dedicated locker rooms with personalized player lockers at their respective on-campus facilities.

The beach volleyball team has access to a locker room at Matthew Knight Arena that players say is shared by visiting basketball teams.

The team practices and plays rare home matches at Amazon Park, a public park in Eugene, where the bathroom has no doors on the stalls due to concerns about squatters, according to a city parks department official.

Since 2020, the team has traveled as far as Boise and the Bay Area in university vans driven by coaches, according to multiple former players and coaches. They said there were numerous instances of players staying three or four to a room, with players having to share beds, and in the shortened 2020 season, the team stayed at the homes of players’ families and slept on air mattresses.

Though travel accommodations improved to allow for players to have their own beds while traveling this season, the team went over budget and reverted to driving to the Pac-12 championship at Stanford.

Oregon’s beach volleyball team spent $57,670 on travel in 2021-22, according to the school’s NCAA revenue and expense report. The next lowest team travel expense at UO that year was $94,221 for the men’s tennis team, a sport with a smaller roster.

Other teams at Oregon are showered in Nike gear, a benefit of the university’s close relationship with Nike co-founder and mega-donor Phil Knight.

Oregon’s indoor volleyball players one year received four pairs of sneakers and a pair of slides, along with eight T-shirts, multiple pairs of pants, hoodies, jackets and other gear, according to a 2018 photo. They have also received more coveted sneakers, the Nike Air Huarache, Air Force 1 and Air Jordan sneakers. Other varsity teams have also received custom Nike Dunks and Air Force 1 sneakers.

Beach volleyball players from the past five years say they received just a pair of slides and two pairs of sneakers, including the Nike Pegasus, a road running shoe.

Multiple former players expressed their most disappointment in not even being recognized with Oregon’s other teams on the field at Autzen Stadium during football games in 2021 and 2022.

“At the University of Oregon, it feels like it’s raining peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but all the (beach volleyball) girls are allergic to nuts so we have to stay inside,” one former player said.

PLAYERS FEEL MISLED

The University of Oregon formed its varsity team in 2013, when sand volleyball was considered an emerging sport by the NCAA. UO’s roster was made up entirely of players from its indoor volleyball team in 2014 and 2015.

“When exploring options to provide additional opportunities for female student-athletes and continue our history of commitment to Title IX, sand volleyball made the most sense at this time,” Mullens said at the time.

But as it began to recruit players who competed exclusively in beach volleyball, several players felt misled by recruiting pitches they recalled hearing as they were choosing among universities.

Several players say they were told an on-campus facility, possibly covered, and scholarships were in the works as they were being recruited, dating back to at least 2017.

“At the time when I was doing my visit, ‘Oh, by the time you come, the courts will be right here, that patch of grass by the (Eugene Pioneer Cemetery) by the library,” said one player, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A former coach confirmed that location was under consideration for on-campus courts and that staff also mentioned possible scholarships to recruits.

One of the team’s three seniors this season, Zoë Almanza committed to Oregon in 2018 as a junior in high school. Almanza is from Los Angeles and said she was receiving interest from other programs at the time, including Saint Mary’s, Loyola Marymount and California.

She, too, said she was shown where the team’s eventual on-campus courts would be and taken to UO’s facilities, including Matthew Knight Arena and the Casanova Center. She also remembers hearing that scholarship funds were in the works.

None of those things came to fruition for Almanza, who graduated last month.

“Had I known that this would be the case, I would never have gone here, ever in a million years,” Almanza said. “Ever. If I knew 100% none of this was going to happen, no chance.”

In its statement, UO noted that the beach volleyball team’s operating budget had increased nearly 700% since the program’s inception but acknowledged challenges with facilities and scholarships.

“Our goals for an on-campus facility and adding scholarships for beach volleyball have not been realized yet,” the statement from Oregon athletics reads. “UO Athletics has been working collaboratively with Campus Planning during recent years to identify a site to build an on campus Beach Volleyball facility. While the planning process has taken longer than we had hoped, funding has been generated to allow us to begin this project once a site is identified.”

During a March 21 appearance on Duck Insider, the athletic department’s in-house radio show, Mullens acknowledged the problem.

“Obviously difficult conditions and no home facility,” Mullens said on March 21. “That is a priority for us. We have raised some money. We’ve been working both with the city of Eugene and the campus to find a site where we can get these young women a home court, which is a priority for us.”

The team spends almost nothing on recruiting. The current coach, Jason Dillard, says he works with what he has.

“I think that we’re an up-and-coming program too,” he said. “We have a good trajectory.”

Maddy Silberger-Franek, of Portland, was the first athlete who exclusively played beach volleyball to join the program as a walk-on in 2015-16. She came to UO in the PathwayOregon program, which covers tuition and fees for qualifying in-state students.

With no kind of athletic aid available, she worked to cover some of her living expenses and took out student loans.

“It definitely sucks,” Silberger-Franek said. “I think for people who don’t have financial support or are low income, it would be really challenging for them to join this program.”

None of the more than 20 beach-exclusive players at Oregon has ever received an athletic scholarship, UO records show. That includes over the past eight years, as the program increasingly recruited players who exclusively play beach volleyball, as the entire roster did this season.

Oregon’s acrobatics and tumbling team received 12.47 scholarships in 2021-22, according to UO financial records. Athletes in that women’s program have received scholarships since at least 2010, when it was known as stunts and gymnastics, and it remains an emerging sport in which the NCAA does not yet sponsor a championship.

Beach volleyball became an NCAA championship sport in 2016.

All of the other eight Pac-12 schools that sponsor beach volleyball fund at least some, if not all, of the six scholarships permitted in the sport, according to their financial records and statements from Stanford and USC.

The Title IX Athletics Investigator’s Manual says: “Where an institution chooses to limit the award of scholarship funds based on ‘reasonable professional decisions,’ and this negatively affects athletes of one sex, this justification should be carefully investigated. Institution representatives should be asked to be very specific in clarifying why the scholarships are not currently awarded and to specify when the scholarships will be awarded. If the explanation is not satisfactory, a violation is possible.”

Oregon is the only public Power Five school with a team, regardless of sport or gender, that does not receive any athletic scholarship money, according to NCAA revenue and expense reports from 54 of those schools and a statement from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I do think you could raise the idea that, if we’re the only team in this category, are we being subject to disparate treatment on the basis of gender?” said Robert Boland, an attorney at Ohio-based firm Schumaker, professor at Seton Hall and former athletics integrity officer at Penn State. “That certainly opens the door to that; if you didn’t have men’s teams in that same tier or there wasn’t an explanation of that.”

THE 1% THRESHOLD

The University of Oregon has persistently awarded more athletic scholarships to men over women beyond the threshold of 1% disparity relative to participation permitted by Title IX, public records show.

In 2021-22, women were 48.3% of UO’s athletes and received 46.2% of its athletic scholarship dollars, a gap of 2.1%.

Under Title IX, a school’s athletic scholarship spending is required to be “substantially proportionate” to the participation rates of men and women athletes, with unexplained disparities greater than that creating a “strong presumption” of violation, according to the Department of Education.

The gap between scholarships awarded to women’s athletes at UO has been over that 1% threshold in five of the last six years, according to Oregon’s NCAA revenue and expenses reports from 2017-22.

UO’s statement did not address this disparity, though it did say, “Coaches and department staff are educated and advised to consult with the designated staff who have oversight and expertise in those areas with any questions or concerns. It is expected that any noncompliant activity be reported to the Deputy Title IX Coordinator or University Title IX Coordinator for further review and any necessary action.”

Peterson, UO’s former deputy Title IX coordinator, did not address the disparity in athletic scholarship spending.

The gap raises red flags for Bryant, the Title IX legal expert.

“Based on the school’s publicly available financial reports, the University of Oregon appears to be in clear violation of Title IX’s athletic financial aid requirements,” he said. “According to its numbers, it has deprived its women athletes of hundreds of thousands of dollars of equal athletic financial aid in the last few years alone.”

Some members of the beach volleyball team also question the official participation numbers, suspecting their roster inflated the number of female athletes at UO. An Oregon athletics spokesperson said the participation numbers are reflective of each team’s roster at the start of its year.

Oregon’s NCAA revenue and expense report lists 21 players who participated with the beach volleyball team in 2019-20, including 13 who were also indoor players. At least four of those players never showed up or did so only once or twice, according to multiple former players and coaches.

Alex Laita is listed on the beach team’s roster in 2020, but she told The Oregonian/OregonLive she was not on the team. Two other indoor players were listed but unable to compete for either team, according to another member of the program that season.

Officially, Oregon lists 290 participating women’s athletes and 301 male athletes in 2019-20, for a 50.9% male to 49.1% female ratio. Women who appeared on both indoor and beach volleyball rosters would be counted twice.

If you remove duplicate participants across all sports, the disparity in favor of men grows: 246 male athletes and 224 female, or 52.3% to 47.7%.

DISADVANTAGED HOME COURTS

In its 10 years of existence, the Oregon beach volleyball team has practiced and played its rare home matches at Amazon Park, a public park in Eugene.

With no locker room at the park, players say they routinely go from lifting at the Casanova Center to practice. The only locker room the team could access is at Matthew Knight Arena, two miles away from the park.

After practices and games, players have no place to wash off the sand from the courts.

“At least something to rinse your feet off with to get in your car,” a former player said. “I even had that growing up in youth volleyball. We had a place to wash our damn feet after we played. That should be a given.”

A city parks department official said the bathrooms do not have doors on stalls due to concerns about people sleeping there and drug use.

Multiple players recalled instances of having to accompany each other to the restroom or have a coach guard the open doorway.

“It was awkward and uncomfortable,” said Laita, a member of the team in 2021-22. “Going to the bathroom doesn’t have to be stressful, but it was.”

Jody Sykes, UO’s chief compliance officer and senior associate athletic director who became the team’s sports administrator following the 2021 season, had a portable toilet delivered to Amazon Park this season for the team to use.

All eight other Pac-12 schools with beach volleyball teams have on-campus courts used for practice. Washington plays its home matches at Alki Beach, also a public park. Utah uses a private indoor facility in addition to its on-campus courts.

“Oregon is dead last in that department for sure, probably across the entire sport,” said a beach volleyball coach on the West Coast, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

SLEEPING ON AIR MATTRESSES

In the truncated 2020 season, the players, multiple coaches and the athletic trainer assigned to the team drove over 550 miles and roughly nine hours to San Jose in university vans, according to multiple people who made the trip.

Once there, the players stayed at a player’s family home and slept on air mattresses, while multiple coaches stayed at another player’s family home, according to multiple people on the trip.

“We know what other athletes are getting,” a former player said. “So it’s tough … sleeping on air mattresses.”

It wasn’t a one-off occurrence. When Oregon traveled by plane to Los Angeles two weeks later for matches against Utah, Cal, Stanford and UCLA, players stayed at the family home of yet another player, according to multiple players.

“The support from the families was instrumental to the girls’ experience with the program,” a former coach said. “We couldn’t have successfully fed and housed the girls on away trips without them.”

Another college beach volleyball coach, who has worked at multiple West Coast schools, was asked by The Oregonian/OregonLive if any team they have worked with has ever stayed at a player’s family home and slept on air mattresses.

“God, no,” the coach said.

While other athletes required to remain on campus during spring break received meal money because UO’s on-campus dining facilities are closed, beach volleyball players did not receive those same funds, according to multiple players.

Oregon’s NCAA revenue and expense reports from 2014-22 show the beach volleyball team spent by far the least of UO’s teams on equipment, uniforms and supplies every year. The beach team was composed exclusively of indoor players for the first two years, thus most of the spending was allocated to that program, and the majority were indoor players from 2016-19, when UO lists a combined $1,540 spent on equipment, uniforms and supplies for the beach volleyball team.

Even with significant increases from 2020-22, the team received more than $125,000 less in equipment, uniforms and supplies than any other UO team over that period.

“The first year I was there, they gave us shorts and tank tops and we’re literally playing in 40 degrees,” a former player said. “Like, can we have a jacket? We had to beg them for this raincoat and they made some people give it back. I had to give back a pair of rain pants. We can’t even match all our shirts because we were giving the freshmen our old gear.”

Some of the gear it does receive is from other teams — golf gloves, for example. This year players received long sleeve T-shirts with the department’s Women in Flight program logo during their March 23 home match against Corban. The shirts were used, with numbers and initials of indoor players written on the tags.

“Beach volleyball has the same (Women in Flight) team allocation as all other women’s teams to be used toward approved (Women in Flight) activities,” an athletic department spokesperson said. “The beach volleyball team received proper (Women in Flight) gear after an original oversight was corrected.”

Multiple players from this year’s team said they did not receive another Women in Flight T-shirt this year.

Even when the beach volleyball’s specifications changed prior to the 2021 season, Oregon was still using old balls, according to multiple players. A UO athletic spokesperson said the team had the new balls “by the time practice started.”

“I don’t know how many conversations (indoor volleyball coach) Matt (Ulmer) had with Lisa (Peterson) like, ‘This is going to be a problem; this is going to come back to bite you guys. This is going to be a problem. You guys need to change it,’” a former member of the coaching staff said. “They didn’t.”

Peterson did not answer whether Ulmer or any other former beach volleyball coach since 2016 expressed concerns to her about the program, its budget, facility, disparate treatment or Title IX compliance.

In winter 2021, the team sought a meeting with Peterson, who also oversaw beach volleyball during the program’s first eight years.

Multiple players said they left the meeting disappointed.

“It seemed a little bit like they were mad at us for complaining, which we didn’t want it to be like that; it’s not that we were complaining,” said Mia Lopez, then a sophomore on the team. “We were addressing that these were concerns and these are things that we were told and we wanted to make a change so we could build this program up. I remember it being very awkward and intense in that conversation.”

Players who attended the meeting who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive said they did not get any clarity about why the vision for the program they were sold on as recruits was unfulfilled. They said Peterson explained the team’s resources were subsidized by the indoor team’s budget and that team success and fan interest were among the factors that contributed to the department’s decisions on how to allocate resources to its teams.

Several players said they felt it was a circular argument.

“How are we supposed to get a fan base to come if we don’t have a space that would encourage fans to come?” a former player asked.

“HANDED A MESS”

Little has changed off the court or on in the two years since the meeting with Peterson, players say. Peterson was replaced as the team’s sports administrator following the 2021 season by Sykes, who arranged for the team’s portable toilet.

Since taking on the team’s administrative duties, Sykes has had regular meetings with the team.

“(She) adopted 16-plus very upset players that had 1,000 requests and no resources to get it done,” Almanza said. “Every meeting was her taking notes and her (sighing). She’s handed a mess.”

Until April 20, Sykes is the only Oregon athletics administrator any former player could recall attending more than one practice or home match. She traveled with the team to Hawaii in March and was the public address announcer for multiple home matches this season.

“Jody was on a mission to try to get more for the beach team,” another former player said.

Former Portland State athletic director Valerie Johnson began her tenure at Oregon in mid-January. She replaced Peterson as Oregon’s deputy athletics director, senior woman administrator and deputy Title IX coordinator. She has had minimal time to learn about the issues with the beach volleyball program, though Johnson did briefly attend the April 20 match.

Oregon hired Da’Mon Merkerson as its first senior associate athletic director for diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging in September. He too briefly attended the April 20 match.

An Oregon athletics spokesperson did not address whether Johnson or Merkerson identified any issues of inequity, disparate treatment or Title IX compliance or if they had expressed concerns related to the beach volleyball team.

As of 5 p.m. Friday, multiple university spokespeople refused to respond to three separate inquiries by The Oregonian/OregonLive as to whether Mullens has made UO president John Karl Scholz, whose term began July 1, aware of any potential Title IX violations related to the beach volleyball program.

Mullens consistently cites Oregon’s goal of “broad-based excellence” and how the “student-athlete experience” is atop the department’s priorities. The statement from UO athletics even begins, “Providing an exceptional experience for all student-athletes is the highest priority for Oregon Athletics.”

The experiences of UO’s beach volleyball players for the past 10 years differ from the ideals he espouses, several said.

“It’s frustrating when you say you want to support women’s sports, but you don’t want to support all women’s sports,” a former player said. “It’s frustrating when people don’t take your sport seriously. It’s arguably one of the harder sports physically, to move in sand in the first place.

“If we’re going to support women’s sports, let’s support them all. If you’re trying to fight for equality, what job are you doing if you’re going to make some women feel better than others and some women treated better? What does that even say? What message is that giving?”

-- James Crepea reported from Eugene.