Kudos to MSU athletics officials for doing the footwork required to honor more than 300 female athletes with long-overdue varsity letters.

After nearly a year of searching via e-mail, word of mouth, print advertisements and a special university Web page, athletics officials have found hundreds of Spartan women who played at MSU before 1980.

Female athletes from as far back as the 1930s were found and will be honored Saturday during halftime at the women’s basketball game against Illinois and at a special ceremony Sunday at Kellogg Center.

Although not all of the athletes tracked down will be in attendance, more than 200 will be on hand to receive their individualized plaques with the trademark Spartan “S” in the middle.

MSU began recognizing women varsity athletic participants in 1975 - three years after the gender equity legislation Title IX was enacted. But it wasn’t until 1980 that women finally began receiving varsity letter awards.

The weekend honor for the former Spartan athletes will run in conjunction with National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Saturday.

We commend MSU’s effort to award these women with letters that are nearly three quarters of a century overdue (in some cases).

Athletics officials did an amazing job searching less than a year among poorly kept records for these women - some of whom have been spread across the country.

While this weekend’s honors make a step in the right direction toward gender equity in sports, it doesn’t solve the problem.

We should be aware there is still a lot of work to be done.

And we should remember, not every step is in the right direction. MSU’s last attempt at solving this problem was cutting the men’s gymnastics team.

MSU is the third university in the state and the first Big Ten institution to honor its pre-Title IX women athletes following a national search.

Northern Michigan University did it in 1997 and Central Michigan University in October.

It’s admirable MSU put so much effort into recognizing the women who played sports for the school prior to Title IX.

Anything the university can do to promote equity in terms of gender and sport should be supported.

As a society we’ve come a long way in terms of recognizing the value of our women athletes, but the road ahead is still lengthy.

We encourage MSU athletics officials to fight the good fight.