"The role of the coach is very important, because their attitude seeps through into everything," says Shields. "You learn a lot by what you watch. If a women's coach reinforces separation, the players are going to think of their team as different. [Dewey] imbeds in the team within a week that we are one team."

"There's no reason to segregate them. They're not segregated in the classroom."

Back at Shore Regional, Williams employs a similar strategy, coaching her teams to believe that even though they are separate, the girls are no different from the boys. "No throwing like sissies!" she barks as she prepares her varsity softball players for the start of their season. When a few girls lag behind the others, she yells, "Let's go! You look like old ladies out there!" During batting practice, one girl squeals with exaggerated pain when hit by a descending ball. "Come on," Williams says dismissively, meaning, get over it.

Occasionally, deeper voices can be heard at the other end of the field where the boys practice. An increasingly normal part of school for most students, the daily routine of boys and girls sharing the playing fields remains an experience that most of their parents - or coaches, for that matter - never had. According to Williams, some coaches at Shore Regional haven't quite adjusted yet. Like Shields at Fordham, Williams thinks the respect her teams get depends greatly on the attitudes of male coaches at the school.

"The boys soccer team and the girls field hockey team gets along great," Williams says, adding that her team and the soccer team, which Donohoe coaches during the fall, cheer for each other during games and decorate each other's locker rooms. "I see that as a direct result of the maturity of their coach."

Williams says that her field hockey team runs into more trouble with other fall teams. "Some people don't like the success of field hockey," says Williams, whose field hockey team has lost a total of 45 games over a span of 30 years. "The football team's supposed to win. Girls' field hockey isn't supposed to bring home championships every year."

"I think about how the boys got nice uniforms, and better equipment," said a high school junior. "But when it comes to the season for field hockey, who does the best?"

Donohoe admits there is some friction between the boys' and girls' teams at times, but has a different interpretation of it than Williams. "I also see some tension between boys' teams," says Donohoe. "For instance, sometimes my soccer team has trouble with the football players. That has to do with healthy competition."

Mark Constantino, boys' football coach, is one of several coaches at Shore Regional who say that Williams has manufactured her own problems. "Nancy Williams creates many enemies," says Constantino, who believes that the girls' and boys' teams are all friends and have never fought over equal treatment. "We try to support the girls the best we can. I tell [my team], 'Don't let this woman separate you.' And the kids don't."

The way Williams sees it, Title IX was only the first step in a still-ongoing struggle to force Shore Regional's administration to comply with the new policies. In 1995 and also earlier this year, Williams filed Title IX complaints with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, citing gender bias. Even though the situation has gotten better, Williams says, her girls still aren't getting the same treatment as the boys.

Constantino counters that Shore Regional complied with Title IX long before 1995, and says that Williams has fabricated the stories of discrimination against her teams. "You'd think with her record of success she'd be queen of the ball," says Constantino, who suggests that Williams is stuck in the habit of demanding equal treatment even when she's getting it. "But she fights everything."

Photo copyright Allstar Photography, Inc.

The girls on Williams' softball team, many of whom also play field hockey in the fall, agree there is tension, but not of the nature Williams says. "I wouldn't say it's jealousy," says Robyn Apicelli, a petite junior who, along with practice clothes, is wearing glittery makeup left over from the school day. "It's competitive."

Apicelli, who says she has never felt like that the boys are treated better, vaguely remembers the controversy Williams stirred up in the mid-90s.

"It was about women's rights," she says. "I think about how the boys got nice uniforms, and better equipment, stuff like that. But," she adds, smiling, "when it comes to the season for field hockey, who does the best?"

Constantino says the respect for the girls' teams has always been there from the boys' teams. "The bottom line is, those are their friends and girlfriends playing out there," he says. "(The boys) want them to win. It's their school."

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