TURLOCK -- For one day in September, the California State University, Stanislaus, women's cross country team boasted 43 runners, but only 12 were full-time members of the team.
The other 31 were Warrior softball and women's basketball players instructed by their coaches to participate in one cross country meet for the purpose of enhancing the school's female sports participation numbers.

That creative method of adding 31 athletes to the women's sports ledger allowed the school to add seven roster spots during the 2003-04 academic year to its men's basketball, baseball and soccer teams. All were male athletic slots previously cut during the school's process of meeting gender equity guidelines.

"The women's coaches came up with this idea of double-counting athletes as a way to help the men's teams," Stanislaus State Athletic Director Milt

Richards said. "We went through all the rules to figure out what we could and could not do. This was something we could do."

The practice is allowed by the rules of the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, the federal Department of Education's method of tracking Title IX gender-equity compliance.

However, an NCAA spokesman believes the practice usurps the spirit of Title IX, which is to provide meaningful participation opportunities for all student-athletes.

"If student-athletes are on the roster for two sports but are participating in only one contest in one of those sports simply to inflate participation numbers, that is contrary to both the spirit of Title IX and the intended purpose of the EADA Report," Judy Sweet, NCAA vice president for championships and education services said in a statement.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has programs to help member schools meet gender equity guidelines, but no jurisdiction to enforce them.

Stanislaus had been in full compliance with regulations of Title IX and CAL-NOW, the state gender equity guidelines, since the 2001-02 school year, so when it began the practice in September, it was not doing so as a way to meet gender equity requirements.

Joe Lang, assistant commissioner of the California Collegiate Athletic Association, said the CCAA regularly discusses the methods its schools use to count athletes for EADA purposes.

By rule, track athletes are double-counted if they compete in cross country and outdoor track. At Stanislaus and at many other schools that have indoor track teams, those athletes can be counted as a participant in three sports. There has been discussion at the national level as to whether a single athlete should be allowed to be counted as a participant in more than two sports, but no rule change has been implemented.

Lang said double-counting of athletes is common throughout the NCAA, but he never had heard of the practice being used for the purpose cited by Stanislaus.

"There can be loopholes and ways to circumvent things like this," Lang said. "You do have to ask yourself about the intent of the requirements.

"With Title IX and the current imbalance of enrollments, the desire to compete in all sports may be an incentive to look at creative ways of counting. This is within the rules, but there always has been the question of whether ethics can be written into rules. There's a fine line to everything."

Stanislaus battles a lopsided student body (66 percent female) in its effort to meet equity mandates. According to the NCAA, women make up 56 percent of college undergraduate enrollment nationally.

This is the second year the school has used the cross country meet to pad its female participation numbers.

Because they ran the six-kilometer (3.7-mile) course, the 31 female athletes will be counted as intercollegiate cross country athletes when the 2003-04 EADA reporting form is filed before Oct. 15. They also will be counted a second time as members of the softball and basketball teams.

According to the EADA rules, a student-athlete must be re- ported if, upon the first day of competition, the athlete is on the team roster, or receives athletic aid in that sport, or practices with the team and receives coaching. The Stanislaus Open is the first official competition for the Warrior cross country team.

The increase in female participation has allowed the men's basketball roster to expand from 12 players to 15.

The baseball team has added one roster spot in each of the past two years, growing from 24 to 26. The men's soccer team has added two roster spots and stands at 20.

"It means being able to keep another kid who deserves to be on the team," baseball coach Kenny Leonesio said. "He may not play every day, but he's come out and done everything you asked, and he's pushing the guy ahead of him."

Leonesio said he would like to be able to maintain a roster of 28 as a way to keep the team fully stocked in case of injury. In Division II, teams are allowed to travel with 25 players. Last year, the baseball team lost two players to injury in the opening weeks and played nearly the entire season with 23 players.

"It still disappoints me that we have to cap men's rosters," Richards said. "It's unfortunate we have to limit those opportunities."

Stanislaus believes it has come across a creative way to help men's sports; when informed of Sweet's statement, Richards restated his belief that the school is doing nothing wrong.

"I would say there is no ethical issue here," Richards said. "We are committed to following the rules of our conference and the NCAA and to follow the commitments of CAL-NOW. The issue of ethics has never been raised because we're following the rules."

The sticking point, per Sweet's statement, is the definition of meaningful participation.

In the 2003 Stanislaus Open, a group of six women basketball players completed the course as a group. All were clocked over the 3.7-mile course within four seconds of 44 minutes, 26 seconds. That's roughly a 12-minute mile pace, a light jog that put them 23 minutes behind the medalist.

"It was explained to us that in order for us to keep the numbers we have in men's sports, we need to have a lot of girls run in this one race," said softball player Monica Mendez, who completed the course in September in 44:01.7.

"It's tough coming from the summer if you haven't been conditioning, but it's also a good bonding thing. Afterward we have a barbecue. Some girls groan about it, but afterward we all feel better for running the course."

Mendez, who has run in two Stanislaus Open meets, also twice has taken advantage of the opportunity to receive a letter grade for being a member of the cross country team.

"To get that letter grade, they have to run in the meet and do so much additional conditioning within their sport," said cross country coach Kim Duyst, who added that while roughly half the softball players register for the class, no basketball player has done so.

Women's basketball coach Sharon Turner-Dean sends her athletes to the meet to help the men's programs and to ease the drudgery of fall conditioning.

"The way it was explained to me when I got here, it sounded like it was something to help the department," Turner-Dean said. "Because our (student body) numbers are so out of whack, if we don't help, the men would get penalized. They needed the numbers and it helps balance things out."