WOMEN'S SOCCER TO BE ADDED TO COLLEGE PROGRAM; SPORT PART OF CIVIL RIGHTS SETTLEMENT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Antelope Valley College will establish a women's soccer team as part of a settlement of a civil rights complaint, campus officials said Thursday.

AVC will field a team next fall and is hoping for at least 15 to 20 women to join the team in its first year. A coach has yet to be assigned, and it hasn't been determined where the team will play, school officials said.

``Of all the intercollegiate sports that we don't offer, soccer will provide the largest opportunity for women to participate,'' said Jackie Fisher Sr., vice president of academic affairs.

Soccer is the first of three women's sports AVC will be adding as part of a settlement of a complaint filed under Title IX, the 1972 civil rights statute that prohibits gender-based discrimination.

Under the settlement, AVC will add two other women's sports over the next six years. The other sports to be added have not yet been named.

In selecting soccer, Fisher cited local interest in youth soccer and at area high schools.

AVC hopes to hire a soccer coach, probably part time, in the spring semester to recruit players, schedule games and gather community support. The college intends to create a community advisory group to guide the team's formation, AVC officials said.

Like AVC's other sports, it is anticipated that the women's soccer team will compete in the Foothill Conference. Citrus College's women's soccer team is planning to leave the Foothill Conference next year, creating an opening that can be filled by AVC.

As a condition of the settlement, college officials promised to build a $220,000 practice field for the women's softball team. Initial plans for that facility will be considered Feb. 1.

The college also will develop a system for monitoring how much is spent on each sport and to ensure that men's and women's coaches receive the same treatment on scouting and recruiting junkets and be reimbursed for meals and other expenses at the same rate the rest of the faculty is for work-related travel.

Steps also will be taken to ensure that men and women athletes are treated similarly in terms of trophies, awards banquets and team photographs.

The college also proposed annual surveys to assess the athletic interest and abilities of female students. The surveys would deal with sports offered in local high schools and in the Foothill Athletic Conference, and on programs conducted by the Palmdale and Lancaster recreation departments, records show.

New female students also would be surveyed during their first semester at the college.

The complaint accused the college of denying female students an equal opportunity to participate in intercollegiate athletics.

In a letter outlining their findings, civil rights investigators noted that no women's teams have been added to the athletic program in the past 10 years. Women's tennis, as well as men's tennis and golf, was dropped in 1994 for financial reasons.

The investigation found that women are underrepresented in the intercollegiate athletics program when compared to their representation in the student body.

In 1997-98, the full-time enrollment at the college was 5,082 - 39 percent were men and 61 percent were women. But men make up 67 percent of all intercollegiate athletes, the letter said.

The college offers five sports for men - baseball, basketball, cross country, football and track - and five for women - basketball, cross country, softball, track and volleyball.