As the season approaches, Division I teams all across the country are getting ready with a wide variety of hopes and expectations. Outside of college, you will also see high school teams and clubs playing the game we love. Fields filled to capacity with teams trying to get some practice in and young girls who have dreams to get a scholarship at a D1 school. That wasn't the case 25 years ago when Mia Hamm was going into her final season at UNC What most people don't realize is that 500 miles away from Chapel Hill down I-85, there was a group of young women fighting for gender equality in the SEC...and they won At that time, there were only three soccer teams in the SEC (Arkansas, Kentucky and Vanderbilt). That changed in the summer of '93 "Kiechel v. Auburn University. Susan Bradbury Kiechel, a 1992 graduate, pushed the Alabama campus to add women's soccer as a varsity sport. After unsuccessful requests and petition drives, she and 17 other students filed a class-action lawsuit in April 1993. Six weeks later, the university agreed to create a varsity women's soccer team, to phase in a full complement of scholarships, to dedicate $400,000 in resources over a two-year span to soccer and women's athletics, and to pay $60,000 in damages and $80,000 in attorneys fees and costs to the plaintiffs. The case was settled before the class was certified." AUBURN QUICKLY SETTLES GENDER SUIT AUBURN QUICKLY SETTLES GENDER SUIT Because of their courage, Susan Bradbury Kiechel and the Auburn club team helped pave the way for more Title IX funding and more opportunities for all women's collegiate athletics across the board. Today's club scene for young girls playing soccer, softball, basketball, volleyball etc probably wouldn't be the same either These "Pioneers on the Plains", the unsung heroines of women's college soccer, just wanted to play Division I and now young girls throughout the land and literally around the world will get that chance too "SEC women’s soccer will begin its 25th season in 2017 deeply rooted in the national scene of collegiate soccer. Since the SEC initiated women’s soccer as a varsity sport in 1993, the sport’s popularity has grown through the country and especially in the Southeast" http://a.espncdn.com/sec/soccer/cwsoc/stats/2017/2017 SEC Soccer Record Book.pdf
The following month, possibly (probably?) influenced by the Auburn decision, the University of Texas settled a Title IX lawsuit "In a Title IX lawsuit settled in 1993, three club teams — rowing, soccer and gymnastics — and softball, a popular intramural sport, had sued the University of Texas. Three of those sports (soccer, softball and rowing) were rewarded with varsity status." https://www.hookem.com/story/twenty-five-years-later-texas-still-shining-light-title-ix/
I'm not sure if this is allowed, but I stumbled upon this when googling up some other stuff. Since Susan was brought up, I thought it would be ok to share her current story. A few years after her victory at Auburn, Susan fell ill with an autoimmune disease. She has fought this disease for the last 18 years, when doctors said she would only live 3. She now needs help funding the life-saving treatment that could stop her disease completely. Her story can be found here: https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2018/11/an-auburn-family-calls-for-help GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/life-saving-treatment-for-susan