Gracie

by Suzanne Weyn

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

  “A boy took the ball from me. I want to go home.”

  My dad took my hand and practically dragged me back onto the field, saying: “We’re not going home!” Then he interrupted Coach Chyzowych and told him what had happened.

  Mr. “C.,” as he was called, blew his whistle. “Boys,” he said, “come over here, please.”

  Now I was a spectacle. All the attention was on me. I didn’t know what would happen next. With all the boys gathered around and quiet, he said, in his native Ukrainian accent, some of the most validating words I’d ever heard: “Boys, soccer is a game for boys and girls. Lisa Shue has just as much right to a ball as each of you.” He had been holding a ball as he talked, but then he put it on the ground and passed it to me. Thank goodness, a couple of boys came up to me and we began to pass to each other.

  That moment in 1975 was a turning point in my life. I often think how similar moments must have been happening all over the country, and how so many other girls, like me, must have felt anxious but managed to find the courage to prove that they belonged on the field with boys.

  Thank you, Mr. C.

  With love from your first girl player, Elisabeth Shue.

  When Elisabeth hit high school in ninth grade, the school wouldn’t let her play on the boys’ team anymore. Unlike Gracie, Elisabeth shifted her attention and athletic ability over to gymnastics.

  Elisabeth began to appear in commercials and then movies. She also went on to college, first Wellesley and then Harvard, where she continued her interest in sports, playing field hockey and, later, soccer. By the time she got to Harvard women’s soccer teams had come into being, and Elisabeth was able to play on the Harvard women’s team.

  Meet Carly Schroeder, the Young Star of Gracie

  “My soccer boys are the best! I had so much fun with these guys. They played in the rain, heat, cold temps, and all night when they had to. They were so inspiring because of their passion for the game. I had the best time on this movie,” says Carly Schroeder, the young actress who plays Gracie Bowen.

  Carly is young (she turned sixteen on October 18, 2006), but she’s already been working as an actress for ten years. She started as a child on TV playing Serena Baldwin on the long-running daytime drama General Hospital and also on its sister show, Port Charles.

  Leaving daytime behind, Carly moved on to something completely different—comedy. She played Melina Bianco, Matt McGuire’s devilish best friend, on the Disney channel’s popular Lizzie McGuire and also in The Lizzie McGuire Movie. She has lent her voice to two movies—Babe: Pig in the City and Toy Story 2—and also models, recently for Abercrombie & Fitch and Jessica McClintock.

  On the big screen, she played Cindy Brady in the movie Growing Up Brady. She has appeared in several independent films, including Mean Creek, Prey, and Eye of the Dolphin, as well as in Firewall, with Harrison Ford and Virginia Madsen. She’s proud of all these movies, but working on Gracie will always be special to her. It was an experience she calls “unforgettable.”

  She told fans: “The Shues have renamed me Carly Shue because I am part of their family now. I wear that title proudly. I have never put so much energy into a movie. Each day, I was either physically challenged by soccer or my day was filled with emotional scenes. This movie and Davis Guggenheim [the director and husband of Elisabeth Shue] have made me a better actress because Davis went for specific details, and we connected artistically. This was a story about his wife and her family, so he could express exactly what he needed in each scene.”

  Carly was not a soccer player when she was first cast in the role of Gracie, but she is very athletic. In her free time she enjoys horseback riding, fencing, karate, scuba diving, and surfing. She worked extremely hard to add soccer to her list of athletic achievements and accomplished that goal in a short time.

  To learn fast, she trained at Catz Sports in Pasadena, California. (Carly lives with her family in Los Angeles, but she’s originally from Valparaiso, Indiana.) “I have to play against large boys in the movie,” she told fans, “so they wanted to make sure I was physically fit to take the beatings.”

  In addition to weight training and workouts with the regular trainers at Catz, she also worked with Dan Calichman, who used to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy professional team. She says she learned a lot from him: “The man has skills.”

  The training wasn’t easy, but Carly felt she got the best possible result by working at Catz Sports. She says: “If you are in sports and you hope to hit your highest potential, then you should train here. The results are amazing.”

  Carly got to meet some of the great women soccer players of our time: Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, and Abby Wambach, while working on a DVD for soccer that aims at helping kids improve their game. “These three girls are incredible people,” she says. “They love what they are doing, and they are thankful every day to be playing the game.”

  In April 2007, when Carly got her driver’s license and a car, she and her mom took a road trip together so Carly could gain the confidence she needs behind the wheel. She told fans: “It was an awesome (white knuckles at times) good time. Mom made me drive for two hours through the mountains above Ojai. I was so afraid I was going to wreck my new car. I checked out a college in upper California, but I think it is too far from LA to work with my acting career.”

  You can write to Carly at: 1560 Newbury Rd., Suite # 167, Newbury Park, CA 91320

  What Is Title IX?

  In Gracie, the character of Gracie Bowen appears before the Board of Education to petition their decision not to let her play soccer on the boys’ team. One of the things she does is read Title IX to them. What is it?

  Gracie used Title IX to bolster her case because in 1978, when the story takes place, girls’ soccer teams did not exist in most schools. Barely 10,000 girls in the whole country played soccer in high school, and these were usually intramural and pickup games, not formal teams. But things were changing.

  In 1972, Congresswoman Patsy Mink was assisted by Congresswoman Edith Green in writing an act that came to be known as Title IX. Now known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 stated: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

  Although Title IX did not apply only to girls’ sports, that’s where it had its greatest impact. Since almost all public schools received money from the federal government in Washington, D.C., the schools had to comply with the act or lose their government money. Complying meant that as much money had to be spent on girls’ sports as on boys’ sports. It also meant that girls had to receive equal access to sports competition.

  Nonetheless, Title IX was simply ignored by many school districts, in some cases because they simply did not know about it. The districts would be able to go on as they always had until someone like Gracie Bowen challenged them for not complying with the ruling.

  At the same time in the 1970s that Title IX was becoming increasingly well known and acted upon, the women’s liberation movement was also growing. Women who were known as feminists challenged society’s ideas about the role of women. They held rallies across the country to demand equality in all areas of life.

  In 1972, the same year Title IX was passed, the Senate, responding to the growing women’s movement, voted 84 to 8 to send the Equal Rights Amendment to the state legislatures to vote on. The Equal Rights Amendment, also known as the ERA, stated simply that: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

  By 1982, which was the deadline for passing this amendment, it did not have enough votes to pass. In 1993, a Congressional bill to revisit the ERA vote also failed.

  Nonetheless, things have changed for women.

  As a resu
lt of Title IX, dozens of colleges across the country have established Varsity soccer teams. By 1981 there were over 100 Varsity teams established in NCAA women’s soccer and even more club teams.

  At the same time that women’s participation in sports was growing, the popularity of soccer for both males and females was also rising. For many years, soccer had been less popular in the United States than it had been in the rest of the world. But by 1980, almost 900,000 young people were playing soccer on teams, and more than half of the players were female. That number has continued to grow.

  In 1985, the first women’s National Squad was formed. These players received little attention from the public or the press. With a lack of attention, the squad broke up for periods of time and suffered from inconsistent training.

  In 1991 the establishment of the Women’s World Cup changed all that. The tournament was held in China in 1991, and it would give the U.S. women’s team a chance to prove what they could do. It introduced the world to soccer players Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, and others who would be stars of the sport for the next decade. Each of their games was attended by nearly 200,000 people. The hard-fought tournament resulted in a victory for the U.S. team. Although this victory received little notice in the U.S., those in the soccer community knew that a new era of women’s soccer had arrived.

  In the coming years, the women’s professional soccer team enjoyed a growing advantage over the teams in other nations, thanks to Title IX. It could pick from an enormous pool of talent coming out of the nation’s colleges, girls who had been playing from a young age.

  The year 1996 was a landmark for women’s soccer. That year women’s soccer was added to the lineup of the Olympics. NBC gave no coverage to the women’s events, but the crowds in the stands grew with every game. In the end, the U.S. took home the gold!

  In 1999, the World Cup was held in Pasadena, California. Things had changed since 1991. The turnout in the stands was huge. Even Bill Clinton, who was president of the United States at the time, was there. In the last round the U.S. played against the Chinese women’s team. The teams seemed equally matched. In the end, the game went into penalty kicks. American goaltender Brandi Chastain made the fifth kick, winning the game.

  The crowd in the stands went wild with joy. “I think the whole country was caught up in this,” said President Clinton, “not only fans of soccer but young girls, too. In some ways, it’s the biggest sporting event of the last decade. It’s new and exciting for the United States.”

  In 2001, the first professional women’s team in America debuted, the Women’s United Soccer Association. Soccer was the last sport to launch a woman’s professional team, but WUSA quickly made up for it with a string of successes. They took their players from the National Team and from top college draft talent. Attendance at their games surpassed expectations.

  In 2004, the U.S. women’s team once again won the gold! This was the last game for many of the veteran players who had won in the 1991 World Cup, and it was a great way to end their fantastic careers.

  Although women’s soccer in America developed later than in other countries, it has flourished, thanks to girls like Elisabeth Shue who loved the game and insisted on playing it and to smart, courageous women like Congresswomen Patsy Mink and Edith Green, who took legal steps to make sure they would be allowed to play.

  About the Writers

  Lisa Marie Peterson is also a writer and producer of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and the writer of the TV series In the House. Karen Janszen is the screenwriter of many other movies, including A Walk to Remember and Free Willy 2.

  Suzanne Weyn is a New York Times bestselling author with more than fifty titles to her credit. She has published books for children as young as kindergarten age, as well as novels for high school students. Suzanne’s most recent novels include titles for young adults. The Bar Code Tattoo (2004) was selected by the American Library Association as a 2005 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers and is a 2007 Nevada Library nominee for Best Young Adult Fiction.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2007 New Line Cinema Picturehouse Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form, without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, Newmarket Press, 18 East 48th Street, New York, NY 10017.

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  eISBN : 978-1-557-04988-9

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