Tag Archives: TitleIX50

A lil’ history for you

Did Title IX spring up out of nowhere?

Of course not! It was part of a growing awareness of the inequities women faced in society. Today, I’ll share a smattering of the events, laws, books and movements that fueled changing societal attitudes about women.

Here we go!

The Equal Rights Amendment. Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman introduced the ERA as the Lucretia Mott Amendment in 1923. They worked for the gender equality law for the rest of their lives, although as of today, the amendment has not passed.

Equal pay laws. In 1945, Congress introduced the Women’s Equal Pay Act. It didn’t pass, but in 1955, Rep. Edith Green (D-OR) introduced the Equal Pay Act. The law passed in 1963, and Rep. Green went on to help write Title IX.

Civil rights movement. Women played a crucial role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, especially at the grass roots level. For example, Septima Clark designed programs to teach African American citizens how to read and write. Her idea for “citizen education” became the cornerstone of the movement. From women like Clark and suffragists like Mary Church Terrell, who lived into the mid-1950s, women learned how to mobilize for a cause.

The President’s Commission on the Status of Women. President John F. Kennedy established this commission in 1961 to address discrimination against women in education, the work force, and federal benefits programs like Social Security. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt headed the organization.

The Feminine Mystique. Betty Friedan’s book, published by W.W. Norton in 1963, examined the lives of her Smith College classmates, finding that women weren’t totally fulfilled as wives, mothers and household managers. “There was no activism in that cause when I wrote it,” she said. “But I realized that it was not enough just to write a book. There had to be social change.”*

NOW. The National Organization of Women was founded in 1966 by 28 women, including Friedan and Shirley Chisholm, who became the first Black congresswoman two years later. NOW addresses both gender and racial inequality. Today it has about 500,000 members around the country.

The bra burners. In 1968, a group of women staged a protest at the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They threw bras, lipsticks, pots, pans, mops and high heels into a “Freedom Trash Can.” (The can wasn’t actually burning, as police put the kibosh on fires.) The protest drew in women who had been on the fence about feminism. “We were young radicals, just discovering feminism because we were tired of making coffee but not policy,” said organizer Robin Morgan.**

The Women’s Equity Action League. Elizabeth Boyer and members of NOW founded WEAL in 1968 to raise women’s status through legal action and legislative change. WEAL officer Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, the “Godmother of Title IX,” discovered the loophole in Executive Order 11246, signed by President Johnson in 1965, that barred discrimination by federal contractors based on sex. Because almost all colleges and universities had federal contracts, she thought the order could apply to them. It was the foundation for Title IX.

Our Bodies, Ourselves. This 1970 book, self published by a group of women in Boston, celebrated women’s bodies, health and sexuality. It encouraged women to view themselves as independent, whole persons rather than as passive partners for men. By 1972, publisher Simon & Schuster came calling, and today the book has sold more than 4 million copies.

Ms. magazine. Journalist and activist Gloria Steinem started Ms. magazine in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine. It quickly eclipsed the day’s women’s magazines, which focused on fashion, food, husband hunting and child raising. By 1972, it was a stand-alone magazine. BTW, civil rights activist Sheila Michaels invented the “Ms” title in 1961, when she wanted to complete forms without including a marital status. “There was no place for me [as a single woman]. I didn’t belong to my father and I didn’t want to belong to a husband,” she said.***

So there you have it… a brief course in the birth of the women’s movement!

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* Ben Wattenberg. Interview of Betty Friedan for The First Measured Century. (weekly PBS program). https://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/friedan.htm

** “100 Women: The truth behind the ‘bra-burning’ feminists,” BBC News (September 7, 2018). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45303069 Morgan later said she regretted targeting the contestants. “After all, they were mostly working-class women trying to get a free scholarship.”

*** Eve Kay,“Call Me Ms.” The Guardian (June 29, 2007).

NOTE: Image shows Septima Clark (left) and a Miss America protester (right).

What a difference a decade makes

Kaitlin Calogera traipses around Washington, DC, for a living. Her company, A Tour of Her Own, offers tours of historical sites and events that highlight women and their achievements.

So how does Title IX figure into Kaitlin’s story? The law was well in the rearview mirror when she was born in the late 1980s.

“We were the first generation of women to benefit from Title IX,” she says. “As an athlete, I was always in female spaces and I thrived on female energy.”*

I connected with Kaitlin after she saw my post about Olympic softball player Dot Richardson. “Dr. Dot” was an early inspiration for Kaitlin.**

“Her book was the first autobiography I’d ever read by a woman,” she says. “Not only is she an athlete, but she’s a doctor. She’s such an inspiration!”

Heads up!

Growing up in Old Bridge, New Jersey, Kaitlin was an athlete through and through. She faced off against two older brothers and played on Little League, basketball and hockey teams, often with the boys. One of the only girls in her neighborhood, she had to keep up.

“It was either hit the ball or get hit with it!” she recalls.

She admits she wasn’t much of a student, although she kept up. “I needed good grades in order to play sports. That was my incentive,” she says.

For two years, she played softball at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, but she took a gap year and coached softball in Germany, traveling to other countries for tournaments. Back in the States, she coached softball at the Jenny Finch Academy at Diamond Nation in New Jersey and then at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she got a history degree.

Despite Title IX, discrimination didn’t magically disappear. While at Diamond Nation, she learned that a male coach was making twice her salary, despite their identical qualifications.

“Even then, we were still subconsciously being taught just to be grateful for what we had. We weren’t sure when to make a fuss,” she says.

Is that all there is?

Kaitlin didn’t make a fuss. She left for Washington, DC, where she volunteered as an assistant coach at Georgetown University. But she realized it would take years to make a life as a college coach — years that she didn’t want slipping by.

She took a corporate job arranging travel, hotels and restaurants for visiting groups. But she envied the guides who took people around the city.

“I wanted to know — Who were these people who got to go to the Lincoln Memorial every day?” she says.

Kaitlin’s envy led to certification as a tour guide and her own rounds of the city. It was eye-opening.

“It was all about presidents and wars,” she says. “I started to wonder, Is that all there is? Is this really me?”

It wasn’t her. She was curious about women’s lives and appreciated the female role models in her life. But start a tour company centered around women? She wasn’t sure.

“Is it a thing?” she asked a friend. “I think this needs to be a thing.”

On the road again

So was born A Tour of Her Own. Kaitlin and her guides love sharing the hidden lives of women. And she sees a natural connection between Kaitlin the athlete and Kaitlin the entrepreneur.

“The skills I learned as an athlete serve me well now,” she says. “I was used to always being on the road. My mother would be driving and I’d be navigating with the map. I know how to be loud and take up space. I gained discipline, commitment and a tough skin.”

All good skills for her, but she also loves what she’s created for others.

“I love having a team of women who are as close knit as my sports teams were,” she says. “As an athlete, I always wanted to be with my teammates, and that’s how my business is. It’s like going to the World Series every day!”

If you aren’t lucky enough to catch a TOHO tour, you can read Kaitlin’s book. In 2021, she co-authored with Rebecca Grawl 111 Places in Women’s History in Washington, DC, That You Must Not Miss.*** But I’m close to DC, so I think I’ll book a tour soon!

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* Kaitlin’s quotes come from my interview with her on May 31, 2022.

** Find Dot Richardson’s story at https://www.nancybkennedy.com/cut-my-hair-and-call-me-bob/ . She is an orthopedic surgeon and currently is head coach of Liberty University’s softball program. Her book is Living the Dream (Kensington, 1998). https://amzn.to/3NKlEEA

*** 111 Places in Women’s History in Washington, DC, That You Must Not Miss (Emons Publishers, 2021). https://amzn.to/3x61bU2

Saved by the game

High school is a memorable time for many of us, but for Melissa Isaacson, it was more than nostalgia that made her write about the girls basketball team that won the 1979 Illinois state championship.

Melissa’s book, State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation, is about a team of girls who beat not only their opponent, but a society that only recently had let them be athletes.

“This story is about one group of girls sitting innocently at a monumental place in our nation’s history,” Melissa wrote. “It’s about the sheer joy of getting our first uniforms, packing the same school gym where we were once not allowed to practice, and gaining access to life lessons previously only available to boys.”*

The girls of the Niles West team of Skokie, Illinois, made their way onto the court in the early years of Title IX. They came from varied, and sometimes neglectful and even violent, families. They believe to this day that playing basketball not only changed them, but saved them.

They had strong backers and role models. Nicholas Mannos, the principal who fought for girls to have the same opportunities as boys. Their first coach, Arlene Mulder, who’d never coached basketball but who mastered the game and pushed the girls to be their best selves. Billy Schnurr, the boys basketball coach who secretly mentored Mulder and helped mold the girls into fierce competitors. Gene Earl, their second coach, who delighted in the girls’ spirit and took them to the championships.

Who’s that I see?

When the team arrived at the championship game in 1979, they found they’d be facing East St. Louis, a powerhouse of a team with a secret weapon — Jackie Joyner, the extraordinary athlete who went on to win six Olympic gold medals. That didn’t faze Melissa or her teammates.

“After 25 games, and for most of us, two or more years of running stairs and scrimmaging at five in the morning behind us, we could say with confidence that no team in Illinois was better conditioned or more in sync,” she said.**

It was a hard fought battle, but when the final buzzer sounded, they had won the game 63-47. Melissa, who had suffered an injury that year, only came in for the final minute. Holding the ball at the buzzer, she flung it skyward as the stands rocked to the chant, “We are! State champs!”

Years later, at a team reunion, Holly Andersen Blanchette shared what sports meant to her.

“People accuse me of being competitive sometimes,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m a sore loser; it means that sports has empowered me. It gives you self-confidence and makes you more determined.”

A scandal spurs a career

Melissa played club basketball at the University of Iowa, where she earned her B.A. in journalism. Her interest in the profession arose from the seminal political event of the 1970s, the Watergate scandal.***

“Journalism was suddenly a glamorous profession. Reporters were celebrities,” she says. “And it was a natural interest for me, as I loved writing and lived in Chicago, a town that had three daily papers.”

For 30 years, Melissa was a sportswriter, working for the Chicago Tribune and USA Today among other newspapers. In the ‘90s, she covered the Michael-Jordan-led Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Bears, the first woman in those reporting roles. She worked for ESPN, covering everything up to and including the Olympics.

A woman sportswriter — in choosing her career path, Melissa opened up an avenue previously unavailable to women. Today she is a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Melissa once had the opportunity to interview Birch Bayh, the Indiana senator who co-wrote Title IX with Reps. Edith Green and Patsy Mink. She ended the call on a personal note.

“Thank you,” I told him. “What you did changed our lives…. it gave me and my teammates an identity and self-esteem that girls just a few years older didn’t have the same chance of having.”

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* Quotes in the present tense (says) are from my telephone interview with Melissa Isaacson on April 19, 2022. Quotes in the past tense (said) are from her book, State: A Team, A Triumph, A Transformation (Chicago: Agate Midway, 2019). https://amzn.to/3yBR0cf

** When the team suffered a rare loss that season, Coach Earl comforted the girls with this memorable thought: “Trust me,” he said. “You are not going to remember this when you’re giving birth to your first child.”

*** So I wasn’t the only one! I went into journalism because of Watergate, too.

Hear them roar

For girls, Title IX brought about more than just the opportunity to play. It disrupted many ways of thinking that had harmed girls for centuries.

For my blog last week, journalist and sportscaster Melissa Isaacson talked about her childhood, one that straddled Title IX. Girls sports teams began to sprout up while she was in junior high school. The change was not only on the field, but in people’s minds.

“Before Title IX, people wrote off athletic girls as tomboys, even as lesbians, because of their interest,” Melissa says. “Girls who were interested in sports were considered manly. Society said, ‘Oh, you must be gay,’ and it wasn’t a compliment.”*

I’ve heard this idea about girls and sports from everyone I’ve interviewed. Girls dropped out of athletics in droves — or never even gave sports a try — for fear of being called gay.

And the fear of being stigmatized only grew stronger the older a girl got.

“Girls wouldn’t play in college because they were afraid they wouldn’t get a boyfriend,” Melissa says. “And if a girl was gay, she wasn’t talking about it. She was confused and wondering whether she just had girl crushes that would pass.”

Finally! Legit uniforms

But by the time Melissa began playing basketball, the idea of athletic females was evolving.

“We were not just okay, we were pretty good. We didn’t get picked on, although we were still kind of self conscious about our image,” Melissa says. “And, today, it’s not just okay, it’s cool for a girl to be an athlete. Athletes are the popular kids.”

Of course, part of anyone’s image is what we choose to wear. And girls wanted uniforms!

At first, as girls stepped onto the field, the court and the diamond, they had to cobble together what they could for uniforms.

“There were no shoes for girls; we had to wear boys shoes. There were no sports bras, no pinnies, no school uniforms,” Melissa says.

Girls stuffed extra socks into boys basketball shoes and baseball cleats. They wore boys tennis shorts. They ironed numbers onto t-shirts. If girls had school uniforms, they had to share them from one seasonal sport to the next — soccer to basketball to softball. In some cases, they were given cast-off boys uniforms.

And, of course, there was the added complication of a woman’s menses.

“There were no such things as ultra-thin maxi pads or super-plus tampons,” Melissa recalled. “There were tampons and there were sanitary pads, which were roughly the width and thickness of your average hand towel and which did not fit inconspicuously in our teeny-tiny uniform shorts.”

Even so, Melissa was overjoyed when at Niles West High School in suburban Chicago, her basketball team finally got uniforms. The shirts weren’t cut for a girl’s shape, and she and her teammates struggled to pull on and move in the stiff, badly cut polyester shorts. But none of that mattered to Melissa.

“To be important enough to represent our school was staggering to me,” Melissa says. “It was as exciting as if I had Team USA written across my shirt.”

Words to play by

As Melissa entered high school, an invigorating and growing women’s movement was rocking the nation. Women were finding their voice and reveling in it. Melissa’s basketball team adopted a hit song from 1972 for their walk-up music, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”**

I am woman, hear me roar

In numbers too big to ignore….

I am strong

I am invincible

I am woman!

Those lyrics came back instantly to me when I read about the song in Melissa’s book, State. Even though I wasn’t athletic, I’m a product of that time, too!

Those words took Melissa’s team to the state championships in 1979. In that memorable championship, Melissa’s team faced East St. Louis, a team with a 32-1 record and a big-name player — Jackie Joyner. You know, Jackie Joyner (Kersee), who went on to win six Olympic track and field medals.

They had their work cut out for them! More anon.

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** Helen Reddy wrote the lyrics to “I Am Woman,” with composer Ray Burton, who actually had the idea for the song. He said to Reddy: “After watching and listening to you and your lady friends’ views on equality for all women, I believe this issue is a going to be huge, don’t you agree? Helen said, ‘Of course it is, because it’s bloody well right!’” Robert McKnight, “’Insulted’: Co-writer of I AM WOMAN angry at rewriting of history in new film.” TV Blackbox (August 9, 2020). https://bit.ly/3PNNdPs

Aquasprites anyone?

Recently, I talked with veteran journalist, Medill lecturer and former ESPN sportscaster Melissa Isaacson about her athletic experiences on and off the field.

Melissa’s life is interesting because it straddled Title IX. She began to see changes while she was still young.

“By junior high school, we suddenly saw girls teams starting up,” she says. “We were peripherally aware of Title IX. We followed Billie Jean King’s career and knew she was part of a national dialog. We realized we were the first generation of girls to get to compete.”*

But old ideas die hard. In 1907, the state of Illinois (where Melissa grew up) had banned girls’ interscholastic competition. Overall, the only approved sports for girls at the time were those considered ladylike.

“Girls could play the genteel sports like tennis, badminton and golf,” she says. “Anything that wasn’t bumping boys out of the gym.”

Melissa and her friends hung out at the Little League fields, peering through the chain link fences, wanting desperately to be on those fields, but knowing that they couldn’t be.

Even after Title IX passed, team sports like basketball — Melissa’s favorite sport — were still considered unladylike. For girls just a few grades ahead of Melissa, only one sport available to them, a synchronized swimming sport called Aquasprites. The team had no trouble attracting members.

“Girls were desperate for the opportunity to play any sport at all,” Melissa says.

Competition, that dirty word

Melissa remembers “play days,” organized one-off events in which girls from different schools were brought together and randomly assigned to teams. The emphasis wasn’t competition — the girls were just supposed to play for fun. By not being allowed to play consistently with the same team members, the element of competition was muted.**

She also remembers after-school “postal tournaments.” In these events, sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, schools gave girls an occasional chance after school to compete in sports like swimming, bowling and “basket-shooting.”

But still, competition wasn’t really the point. After the event concluded, girls’ individual times were written on postcards and mailed to the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), the governing body for state sports.

“If the participants were lucky, they’d find out the results, or who ‘won,’ a month or two later,” Melissa says. “It really cut down on the drama of competition.”

Still, Melissa persevered. She had an inner drive to compete that was all consuming.

“I would endure anything, any pain, to play. I was always thinking, ‘What more can I do? Where can I find more opportunity?’” she says. “I could have played all day, all night. I would have gone to the gym in my pajamas at midnight to practice if I had to.”

Finally… basketball!

By the time she got to high school in 1975, change was in the air. Despite Title IX, her high school, Niles West in suburban Chicago, had been resisting adding girls sports. The principal had repeatedly petitioned the state to allow girls sports like swimming, volleyball and softball. Basketball was out of the question — there was no way girls would be allowed to take up boys’ valuable gym space.

“I can’t reason with those crew cuts,” he complained about the IHSA.

But in the winter of 1974, his efforts paid off. Melissa’s school was allowed to add a girls basketball team, and a PE teacher, Arlene Mulder, stepped up to coach girls sports.

Once basketball became the focus of her world, Melissa found ways to take advantage of any opening. She and some of her teammates, along with members of the boys team, would head for the gym at 4 a.m. to practice together, but she had to keep that to herself.

“It was all a big secret. I was considered weird, too much like a boy. I felt like I was walking a tightrope all the time,” she recalls. “My mother wasn’t against it, and the boys kept the secret, but society was still against it.”

To Melissa, Arlene Mulder became more than a coach; she was a mentor. She and the girls on Melissa’s basketball team became the subject of her book, State: A Team, A Triumph, A Transformation. It’s the story of the team’s 1979 state championship title. We’ll pick up Melissa’s story next time.

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** In my March 26 blog post, Debbie Millbern Powers also talks about play days. She chafed against the regulated play that kept girls from developing their skills and teamwork in the way boys could. https://www.nancybkennedy.com/cookies-and-punch-with-the-enemy/

Dropping the ball at Ball State

The women whose lives straddled Title IX lost out on opportunities, but created them for the women who came after them.

We’ve been following the life of Debbie Millbern Powers, a basketball player who had no path to professional play after college. She chose the closest thing possible — teaching physical education and coaching.

Although she mourned her the end of her playing days, Debbie was passionate about teaching and coaching. As we saw in the last post, she coached a high school woman’s volleyball team to a state championship — beating a girls team that had two boys on it!

But despite her value to the high school (Northside in Muncie, Indiana), Debbie got a rude awakening. She’d gotten engaged to Jim Powers, another teacher at the school. Happy news! But the principal burst her bubble: Married couples can’t teach at the same school, he said.

““It’s the 1970s! But it’s like ‘Little House on the Prairie!’” she exclaims.*

Fortunately, two colleges recognized Debbie’s worth. Indiana University asked her to coach volleyball, and Ball State wanted her to coach basketball. She chose Ball State.

But lest you think all was fair and equitable from then on, let’s look at the reality.

Title IX didn’t change everything

On her first day at Ball State, Debbie walked into the equipment room to see what she had. Not much, it turned out!

“I had a bag of balls and two boxes with uniforms. That was it,” she says. “The home uniforms were Ball State’s red and white, but the away uniforms were blue. They were closeouts from a sporting goods store.”

The first time her team played an away game, the opposing coach asked about the uniforms. When Debbie explained, the coach patted her on the back and said, “I understand.” Because all the women’s teams were up against it!

Debbie’s team played in the old gym, the one with the leaky roof. She swept the floors and set up the locker room for the opposing teams.

Each year, Debbie had an assistant coach, but there was no consistency, as they were different grad students every year. And their basketball experience?

“One year, I asked the grad student whether she’d played basketball,” Debbie recalls. “She said ‘No, I’m a swimmer.’ I just had to find jobs for the assistants that didn’t involve play.”

But the most egregious form of discrimination involved her pay. Ball State had hired her as a tenure-track assistant professor, with a stipend to coach. She wrote and published a textbook, conducted classroom evaluations, did research, coached. Everything she was expected to do and more.

But when her tenure evaluation came up, she got a cruel smack down.

“They told me, ‘You’re doing a great job, Debbie,’” she says. “‘But you’re a dual-income family and the male coaches are heads of household, so the extra merit pay is going to them.’”

And, despite her love of coaching, of course she never did get to play professional basketball.**

Debbie’s definition of success

Still, Debbie counts her success in different ways. The rule about married couples being unable to teach at the same school was rescinded at Northside because of her, as was the rule about boys being able to play on girls teams in Indiana. Seven players on her Northside volleyball teams earned athletic scholarships to play at Division I colleges. She coached for five years at Ball State and earned tenure, retiring in 2006 with emeritus status after 30 years.

When she wrote her memoir, Meeting Her Match: The Story of a Female Athlete-Coach, Before and After Title IX, Debbie reflected with appreciation on her career as a player, teacher and coach.

“Reliving these memories and writing this memoir has helped me appreciate the historic time in which I grew up in regards to women and sports,” she said. “Thankfully, [in coaching] I had found my mission in life.”

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* Quotes in the present tense (says) are from my telephone interview with Debbie on April 19, 2022. Quotes in the past tense (said) are from her book, Meeting Her Match: The Story of a Female Athlete-Coach, Before and After Title IX (Leeper Publishing, 2014). https://amzn.to/37GDadG

** In fact, Debbie was recruited to play in the Women’s Basketball League, a professional league that predated the WNBA. She was tempted, but the pay was $9,000 a year — a paltry sum that she would have to supplement with outside jobs. “We can get you a factory job,” the organizers told her. She turned down the offer, and the WBL folded after three tumultuous seasons plagued by lack of funding.

Comes the reckoning

We met Debbie Millbern Powers last time, a girl who desperately wanted to play basketball. But at every turn, she was told it wasn’t possible. Couldn’t she just try out for cheerleading and be grateful for it?

For a ninth grade essay, Debbie wrote about her dream of being a professional basketball player and play on the U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team. Although she got an A- on the essay, her teacher added a note.

“There are no such teams for girls,” she wrote. “With your athletic talents, you might want to switch to cheerleading.”

Not again!

“It’s hard to explain to girls today that we couldn’t play sports back then,” Debbie says. “It’s just the way it was. We sat in the bleachers and cheered for the boys, and then we played at recess.”*

One shining moment

In fact, Debbie never got the chance to play for her schools. That is, with one exception. One day when she was in ninth grade, some of her teachers watched her shooting baskets in the gym.

A school assembly was coming up, the teachers said, and the male teachers were playing an exhibition game against the boys’ ninth-grade basketball team. Would she play for the teachers’ team?

“That would be cool!” she said. And it was. For the first time, at the age of 14, Debbie heard cheering and knew it was for her. It was a taste of heaven, she remembers.

Although Debbie knew now that she had no path to professional sports, she wasn’t deterred.

“If there’s no tomorrow,” she remembers thinking, “I want to take this at least as far as I can.”

While still in high school,Debbie finally found an outlet playing for a women’s league on a team sponsored by a local business. And when she went off to Indiana University, she finally had her basketball tryout and easily made the team.

The ungrateful wretches

Even there, it was an old, old story. The girls didn’t have official uniforms. They pressed numbers onto white shirts and added their own red shorts. Their gym had no bleachers, so spectators had to stand along the sidelines.

The “didn’t have” list went on: No locker rooms, no weight rooms. No food budgets at tournaments — the players made sandwiches and ate them in restrooms. At one tournament, they slept on the floor of a classroom, bringing their own sleeping bags and pillows. While they eventually got uniforms, their away uniforms were the wrong color — random closeouts that the school got on clearance. No trainers or medical facilities. When Debbie injured her knee senior year, she iced and nursed it on her own. (Fifteen years later, she learned that she’d torn her ACL and needed surgery.).

Meanwhile, the men had the new gym, luxury buses, hotel rooms, food budgets, basketball shoes and uniforms that were laundered for them. The women were told to be grateful for what they had. Apparently, sports were still a man’s right but only a concession for women.

In her senior year, Debbie’s team won their regional final, with hopes for a national title. She and teammate Tara VanDerveer – today the winningest coach in women’s basketball history! – roomed together in a small bunk bed dorm room. After a wrenching defeat, their basketball dreams died.

The upside to missing out

But that’s not the end of Debbie’s story.

Fortunately for Debbie, she discovered a love of teaching and coaching. She graduated with a physical education degree and took a teaching and coaching job with Muncie (IN) Northside High School.

“What other choice did I, or others like me, have?” she says. “There was still no professional women’s basketball. We didn’t see women sportswriters or women sportscasters on TV. Being a PE teacher and a coach was the only way forward.”

And here’s the unexpected twist about Debbie’s dilemma. The women who straddled Title IX, missing out on its impact, forged an entirely new path. If women were eventually going to play professional sports, they needed professional coaching. Women like Debbie — coaches like Debbie (and Tara) — created a world of opportunity for those following in their wake.

We’ll finish up Debbie’s story next time. In dramatic fashion, her high school coaching career culminated in a tournament with a surprisingly relevant question: Is it fair for boys to play on girls’ teams?