The meet held at Saint Michael’s College on a Saturday in late September looked like a fairly typical college cross country race. Runners in purple and yellow ran as fast as they could, winding through campus and the trails of Winooski’s Gilbrook Natural Area as spectators cheered.
One important part of the race, however, was different. Normally, women’s collegiate teams race two kilometers fewer than men’s teams, as NCAA rules dictate. At the third annual Equality Invitational, all athletes ran the same distance — eight kilometers.
Molly Peters, head coach of the men’s and women’s cross country programs at Saint Michael’s College, is the organizer of the invitational and an outspoken advocate for implementing equal-distance races at all college cross country meets.
“I just can’t fathom that women aren’t being affected by it, whether it’s an obvious discrimination and they can, like, see it and feel it and talk about it or if it’s just like this subtle message that we’re sending when you line up and you’re doing half the distance,” Peters said. “To me, it’s just sort of another thing that is putting women down and making them feel less capable.”
Peters, along with a group of athletes and coaches, has been petitioning the NCAA for universal equal-distance cross country races since the fall of 2021. Equal-distance races are already the norm for professional and high school running.
It’s not the first time she’s made such a push — over the past two years, the Federation of International Skiing and NCAA equalized Nordic race distances for all athletes due to an advocacy effort spearheaded by Peters during the Covid-19 pandemic.
So far, Peters has had less success in her latest pursuit. In August 2022, Peters received a rejection letter from all three NCAA divisions unanimously opposing her cross country proposal, stating that making race distances equal for all athletes could be detrimental and “result in reduced participation” on the women’s teams and that there are also gendered differences in the weight of implements and height of hurdles in track and field, among other reasons.
Peters, 49, grew up in Vermont and attended Middlebury College, where she competed in Nordic skiing, cross country running, and track and field. There, she said, is where her frustration and advocacy for equal-distance racing began. Even then, in the early ‘90s, her Middlebury coach was trying to equalize Nordic races; at the time, most distances for women’s teams were exactly half of what men’s teams raced.
“Coaches were just kind of like, ‘No, sorry; we like it the way we like it, women can’t handle the longer distances,” Peters recalled.
After graduating, Peters began working as a coach herself, first at her alma mater and then at Saint Michael’s College, where she’s been for almost two decades. In 2012, she said, she became the college’s Nordic coach at which point she began formally advocating for equal-distance racing within the sport.
Peters started bringing up the issue every year at the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Conference, where she said she was “inevitably shot down by someone” who wanted to keep the tradition. But little by little, other coaches got on board with Peters’ effort.
“(The athletes) absolutely notice it,” she said. “You show up to a race and you’re skiing half the distance, or running like two-thirds of the distance that the men are … No wonder people don’t have the same interest in women’s sports as they do in men’s sports.”
When the pandemic hit, Peters used her extra time to go all in, forming an advocacy group with other coaches called the “Equal Distance Team.” Together they wrote proposals to the ski world’s governing bodies, hosted equal-distance Nordic races and recruited other coaches and athletes to their cause.
After two years of work, the Federation of International Skiing voted to equalize race distances for the World Cup, a ruling that eventually trickled down to all levels of skiing. In 2023, the longest Nordic race distance of 50 kilometers was made equal. Before, women’s teams only raced 30 kilometers.
“2023 was absolutely amazing,” Peters said. “The U.S. women made a big deal out of it; there were social media posts like crazy touting the fact that they were finally able to do the 50k, so that was pretty cool.”
This past March, the NCAA followed suit, equalizing Nordic race distances.
Resistance remains, however, when it comes to cross country. Since the 2022 rejection letter, several committees within the NCAA have recommended that the governing body survey athletes and further evaluate the issue — but that has not yet happened.
A year ago, Peters was at the NCAA cross country championships to support one of her runners and went out to run the course herself.
“I saw all the little directional signs that were like ‘10k this way,’ ‘6k this way,’ and I just got so mad,” she recalled.
That night in her hotel room she wrote up a survey and sent it to all NCAA coaches, receiving responses from over 900 current and former collegiate runners. While Peters admits her survey wasn’t very scientific, 86% of respondents said women should be given a chance to run an eight or 10 kilometer race, and 90% of respondents want the NCAA to do a formal survey of athletes on the issue.
Peters’ current efforts center around recruiting professional athletes and brands to support the equal-distance cause.
“No matter what, I always go back to: what kind of message are we sending to these young women in college, where they have to race half the distance that the men do?” she said.
Peters created the Equality Invitational at Saint Michael’s College to demonstrate what, in her view, should be the norm. This year, the head coach of Berry College in Georgia — a perennial league championship contender — also hosted a women’s eight kilometer race.
“We need to let women try it,” Peters said. “It’s unbelievable how nervous they are going in, and then when they finish they walk away more courageous and just so proud of themselves and what they’ve accomplished. It’s amazing to see.”
“Give women the opportunity and they always rise to the occasion,” she said. “So that’s what we need: to provide more opportunity for women in cross country but then also in other athletics in general.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Saint Michael’s coach pushes for equal-distance cross country races.