COLLEGE PARK - Mike Prada was one of Maryland's most consistent runners this cross country season. Katie Purcell held that distinction on the women's side. Purcell, a prized freshman recruit, finished 27th in the Atlantic Coast Conference championships. Prada took 39th. They train and travel together, but Purcell is on scholarship while Prada walked on to what was once the premier program of its kind on the East Coast.
"It's never an issue between the guys and girls on the team," said Prada, a physiology major who got his running start at River Hill High in Columbia. "People ask me if I resent the situation. I say we're here because we love track, and we love Maryland. At the same time, we're not happy that we have to fight to avoid ninth place in the ACC team standings. You know going in that the deck's stacked against you."
Bill Goodman, who oversees the Terps' running teams, can offer as many as 18 scholarships to women and less than three to men under the formula devised by Maryland to comply with Title IX. The Terps added women's track in 1975, when Goodman was concluding his career here as a champion long jumper. He was among the legions who helped Maryland win every ACC indoor and outdoor track title from 1956 to '79.
The popularity of lacrosse in the region and the perception that the ACC is a basketball conference don't jibe with the reality that Goodman and Maryland baseball coach Terry Rupp bang up against. In 1996, both of the Olympic champion men's hurdlers came from ACC schools. At one point last spring, baseball's top 15 included five ACC teams.
Rupp currently works with 55 percent of the scholarships allowed by the NCAA. His team is the one that athletic director Debbie Yow will boost first if changes are made to Title IX accounting procedures. Last spring, the Terps won a school-record 34 games but still finished eighth in the ACC.
"I'm still confident that the administration is going to get us where we need to be," Rupp said.
Bob Nelligan has seen two of the sides of the funding issue, as the coach of the Terps' women's gymnastics team and a parent.
"We were on the chopping block several times, so Title IX had a definite impact on women's gymnastics still being here," Nelligan said. "I still see it from a unique perspective. My son Brett is a senior at Massachusetts, which dropped the sport the year after they went to the nationals. He was recruited by the diving coach, so he's got another opportunity, which a lot of kids don't get."
John McHugh is in his final year as the Terps' wrestling coach. The program won the first 20 ACC titles, but that last championship came in 1973. He has seen his scholarship budget cut in half in the past decade, but with wrestling losing nearly 40 percent of its college teams in the past two decades, he knows that things could be worse.
"At least we have a program," McHugh said.