WOMEN TO GET SOFTBALL FIELD; COLLEGE COMPLIES IN CIVIL RIGHTS CASE.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

Antelope Valley College will build a $300,000 women's softball field on its campus as part of a settlement of a civil rights complaint of discrimination against female athletes.

The softball field, complete with built-in dugouts, seating and fencing, will be built on two acres of vacant land in the northwest part of the college and will be paid for by redevelopment funds from the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

``This is the real deal,'' Wanda Gallerson, dean of student development, said last week. ``They will have a practice field and facility all in one. They will not have to travel to another location to play softball.''

An investigation by the federal Office of Civil Rights noted a disparity in athletic facilities for the women's softball team. The team plays its games at Marie Kerr Park in Palmdale, making it the college's only team that must travel off campus for home games. The team practices on campus in what federal officials described as a poorly maintained, nonregulation field.

Gallerson said the new facility will meet all official requirements for size, layout and boundaries. Plans also call for adding additional athletic facilities later to the proposed softball field, possibly a soccer field or another type of practice field, Gallerson said.

The project will go out to bid in May. Construction is scheduled to begin in August and be completed in November, Gallerson said.

The women's softball field was part of a settlement agreement reached in August, three months after federal officials made a three-day visit to the college to investigate a complaint under Title IX, the 1972 civil rights statute that prohibits gender-based discrimination.

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

In addition to building the field, the college will establish a women's soccer team to compete this fall, the first of three women's sports to be added over the next six years.

The college also will develop a system to monitor spending on each sport. To ensure that men's and women's coaches receive the same treatment on scouting and recruiting junkets, they will be reimbursed for meals and other expenses at the same rate others on the faculty get for work-related travel.

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

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. Along with men's tennis and golf, women's tennis was dropped in 1994 for financial reasons.

The investigators found that when compared with the proportion of women in the student body, there are disproportionately few women in the intercollegiate athletics program.

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

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