I’m sure elegant eulogies will be delivered at this morning’s Mass of Christian Burial for Monsignor Robert Newbold.

But for me, the finest tribute to the former R.I. Interscholastic League executive director, who died at the age of 87 on Sunday, was once spoken by the late Alice Sullivan.

“He had the foresight to know Title IX was coming long before it came,” Sullivan, the first director of Rhode Island high school girls sports, told me in the early 1990s.

Monsignor Newbold was a student of history who understood life is a constantly changing process and, because he did, generations of Rhode Island high school student-athletes benefited.

As Interscholastic League executive director from 1968 to 1994, Monsignor (then Father) Newbold successfully directed the league through its greatest period of growth, and did so virtually on a volunteer basis.

During his tenure, Interscholastic League competition expanded from about 6,000 athletes on approximately 300 teams in the late 1960s to slightly over 20,000 athletes on 800 teams in 1994.

His foresight enabled Rhode Island’s high school student-athletes to be at the forefront of the changing face of American sports in the 1970s and ’80s.

I’m not sure if Father Newbold totally understood the importance of girls playing sports when Sullivan came to him shortly after he became executive director and said she wanted to start girls high school sports programs in Rhode Island.

What man did understand what girls sports was all about back then?

He could have set up some early roadblock for the girls programs such as women’s sports pioneers in other states were facing. Instead, Newbold encouraged Sullivan to give girls sports a try.

He didn’t give the girls a free ride into the high school sports scene. He told Sullivan the girls program would have to “pay their own way,” but that was fine with Sullivan and her dedicated group of girls sports pioneers. They did everything they needed to do, which at times included selling candy bars and hot chocolate at sports events to provide some of the funding for the early girls programs.

All they wanted was a chance to prove sports were as important for girls as they were for boys, and Father Newbold gave them that opportunity. As a result, Rhode Island high school girls sports received an earlier start than in other states, and for decades Rhode Island had one of the highest per-capita high school girls sports participation rates in the country.

“As a result of his [Newbold’s] foresight, Rhode Island started its girls high school programs before a lot of other states,” Sullivan told me in 1994.

It was the development of those girls programs that dramatically increased high school sports competition in the state during the 1970s and ’80s. When Newbold became executive director in 1968, only 12 boys sports were being contested. When he stepped down in 1994, there were 13 Interscholastic League boys sports, 12 girls sports and a couple of coed sports.

These days, there are about 26,000 names on the rosters of the state’s high school sports teams, with both girls and boys participating in 15 sports.

Today it seems like it must have been a natural progression, but the reality is, it wasn’t. It needed people with foresight, and fortunately for a generation-plus of Rhode Island high school student-athletes they had Monsignor Robert Newbold.

“I take the greatest pride in my work in establishing the subcommittee on girls athletics, the development of the corporate sponsorship support and the fact that the league is financially sound, much sounder than it was when I first assumed the position of executive director,” Newbold wrote in his resignation letter as executive director in 1994.

He had reason to take pride in his accomplishments, and Rhode Islanders were thankful for his dedicated service.

jgillool@projo.com