The backhanded compliment rolled right off my back. Their insecurity and grudging respect was amusing to me. I wasn't interested in competing with or comparing myself to boys. But they certainly were worried about me.
Although no one came right out and said it, I sensed that the idea of my playing sports didn't sit well with my parents at first. Partly, they were concerned for my safety. They wanted to know the names of all the adults involved before they allowed me to run track. However, once they heard the names Ward and Fennoy—men they knew and trusted—they gave me permission to join the Railers.
Daddy wasn't troubled by the idea that I'd be running and jumping in track and field events. But he and my mother were skeptical about the basketball team. When I first broached the idea, Momma and Daddy looked at each other uneasily and said, “We'll have to think about it.”
It was such a touchy subject, they didn't discuss it in front of me. They went into the bedroom and when they came out, they told me they didn't think it was a good idea. The reason: With track, my studies and my household chores, I was already spread too thin.
But the truth is, while they were comfortable with the notion of girls' track, they associated basketball with men and boys and didn't think girls should be playing it. It was a new concept and they hadn't accepted it yet. Unlike other school districts around the country, East St. Louis had never before offered competitive basketball for girls.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but my parents thought if I played basketball, I'd become a lesbian. Along with most of the other people in the community, they were unenlightened. Sports were fine for other girls, but not their girls. When Mr. Foster, the gym teacher at John Robinson Elementary, decided to start girls' sports teams at the school, he recruited girls from another school! Then the coach had the audacity to ask me and the other cheerleaders to cheer for them.
“Cheer? Why can't we be on the team?” I asked him.
“I didn't know you wanted to play; I thought you all just wanted to cheer,” he said.
“I love being a cheerleader, but I want to play.”
I was annoyed and I didn't care if I got in trouble for talking back. I wasn't going to stand on the sidelines cheering while people kept me from doing something I knew I could do well. However, I didn't play on a girls' basketball team until I was in junior high, when the school district began to sanction the teams and games. The school's supervision of the activities reassured my parents.
The usual hobbies for girls in my hometown at the time were cheerleading, baton twirling, dancing, cooking and sewing, and dating. The most esteemed extracurricular activity was making a debut. The debutante cotillions were the social events of the year in East St. Louis. My classmates talked of nothing else between November and January. But by the time I was old enough to be involved, I was interested solely in athletics. So while we sweated inside the practice gym at Lincoln High in shorts and T-shirts, the debs were either in St. Louis department stores, trying on expensive, beautiful dresses, or sitting at home addressing fancy, printed invitations to their balls.
Afterward, the pictures of the girls in their white gloves, upswept hairdos and fancy ball gowns shared space with news of the latest Lincoln High Tigerette basketball victory and pictures of us in our braids, sweatbands and basketball uniforms, jumping for rebounds and dribbling.
Lesbianism became more than an abstract idea the day a girl on our high school basketball team received a fan letter from a woman that was very explicit. My teammate was freaked out by it. She pulled me aside after practice one day and showed me the note. The letter was shocking. We'd heard stories about women liking other women, instead of men, but none of us had personal experience with it. My shaken teammate asked me if the letter meant she was a lesbian. I told her no and urged her to give it to our coach. We never heard any more about it and I never heard about any other teammate being approached in that way.
I have never felt—I have a hard time even saying the word—unfeminine while playing sports. Mr. Fennoy convinced us there was nothing unfeminine about it. “People will try to tell you otherwise, but playing sports won't change your sexual orientation,” he said. “We're trying to give you experiences that will broaden your horizons. You should use sports as a springboard, the way whites do. Through athletics, you can get a scholarship to college, which will propel you into a career and allow you to be whatever you want to be.”
He told us stories about famous female athletes including Wilma Rudolph, a great lady and Olympian. Through his stories, I discovered that Wilma and I had much in common. Like me, Wilma came from a poor background. She was one of twenty-two children. She had scarlet fever and polio as a child and couldn't walk for many years. When she was growing up, the other kids made fun of her and didn't include her in activities because she wore braces on her legs. But she used sports as motivation. She was determined to walk, and eventually Wilma not only walked, she ran—very fast. She played basketball and ran track and was a member of the champion Tigerbelles track team at Tennessee State University. She also won three gold medals in sprint events at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Eventually, Wilma married and had four children.
The day Mr. Fennoy told me about Wilma, I went directly to the library and found a book about her. At home that night, I sat on my bed and devoured every word. Wilma became my role model that night and has been ever since. She was a superb athlete and a great lady who carried herself with dignity.
The community's reaction to our athletic activities confused and frustrated me. Initially, some parents told their daughters not to get involved in sports and a lot of girls with athletic talent dropped sports altogether in the face of such strong peer and parental pressure. But when our basketball and track teams became successful, those same parents showed up at every competition and cheered their lungs out. I initially thought it meant we were proving that we could run, jump and sweat, then go home, shower, dress up and be treated like the rest of the girls. But attitudes didn't change much.
Unfortunately, people aren't much more enlightened today than they were when I was coming of age in the 1970s in East St. Louis. Despite the advances female athletes have made and the growing popularity of women's tennis, golf, basketball, softball and soccer, the negative attitudes persist. It's true that there are gay women participating in sports. But I don't know whether they are more prevalent in athletics than they are in other professions. And I don't care. I would never criticize someone for the choices they make in their personal relationships. The most important thing to me is what's inside a person's heart.
I believe that many of the people who continue to label all female athletes as lesbians and shy away from women's sports for that reason are not only intolerant and prejudiced, they're also enemies of women's athletics. The labels and scare tactics are a way to justify their narrow-minded opinions and keep female athletics from succeeding.
It's really unfortunate. So many girls I knew back home got pregnant before graduating. Others got married soon after graduating and became housewives—not out of choice, but because they didn't consider the other options. Most of them never left East St. Louis. While I certainly don't look down on mothers or homemakers—I hope to be a mother and a homemaker myself someday—my point is that if those girls had developed other interests, they might have had more options. But either because of fear, intimidation or complacency, they didn't.
Some others in my neighborhood did see the bigger picture and their support kept me striving to prove the doubters and naysayers wrong. Squirrel, Doug and the other men in front of the liquor store were among my biggest fans. As I jogged by each afternoon, they cheered me on. The wife of the owner of Kaufman's, the big grocery store in our neighborhood, cut the pictures and articles about me out of the St. Louis daily papers and gave them to my mother. I taped them to the pages of my bulging scrapbook, beside the clippings I'd already collected from the East St. Louis weeklies, The Monitor and The Crusader. One of the sports columnists at The Monitor, Stanf
ord Scott, heaped praise on me and my teammates. He called us the “proud and beautiful” Tigerettes. He referred to me as “little Miss Superwoman” and “a black pearl.” After my picture appeared in Sports Illustrated, Mr. Scott wrote a column about what a great accomplishment it was. In it, he congratulated me on being “a great athlete and a beautiful young lady.”
The route for my training runs intersected with the city bus route that ran near my house. Every afternoon, I encountered Skip, who drove the bus and who always waved as I jogged by. One day, as I approached 15th and Piggott, Skip stopped his bus, opened his window and shouted as I passed, “Just keep working hard, girl, you'll make something out of yourself.” I flashed a big smile and waved as I bounded up the street, invigorated by his encouragement.
10
Painful Realities
When the letter arrived telling me I'd qualified to compete for a spot on the Olympic long-jump team and inviting me to the 1980 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, I couldn't stop staring at it and rereading it. I wanted to savor each word.
It was a time for fantastic dreaming. I couldn't get to sleep that night, I was so excited. I kept imagining myself on the medal stand. The next day at work, my mother started planning her trip to the Moscow Olympic Games. She was afraid to fly, so she and her friend Joyce Farmer tried to think of a way to get her from East St. Louis to Russia by train and boat.
The Olympic Trials were bigger than anything I'd ever experienced. After checking in at the bustling registration center, I received an identification tag and a big bag full of gear from Nike that included a pair of blue overalls with the word “Nike” across the bib, a jacket, lots of T-shirts and blue track shoes with a yellow swoosh. At Lincoln, we wore one pair of spikes until they wore out. That spare pair made me feel like Imelda Marcos. Mr. Fennoy had given me track shoes, but this was the first time I'd ever gotten so much free equipment. Because I'd already graduated from high school, I could accept it without breaking any rules.
But the grand prize was the blue and red sweat suit with the letters “USA” on the front, awarded to the athletes who qualified for the team. I looked longingly at a big stack of them folded and wrapped in clear plastic bags.
Whatever confidence I had vanished the moment I set foot on the track the first day. I walked over to the long-jump warmup area and there was Carl Lewis. He was a student at the University of Houston and the favorite in the men's division. I watched Carl warm up. His stride down the runway was breathtaking. He was so smooth and fast. Perfect tempo and such power! He sailed through the air forever before landing in the sand.
His sister, Carol, still in high school, was competing against me in the women's division. She and I had gone at it for years in AAU long-jump competition, trading first and second place. Another nemesis from junior competition, Gwen Loud, was also there. She was already in college, at UCLA. In 1979, Gwen's leap of 20′ 9½″ kept my 20′ 7½″ jump at the state championships off the books as the longest leap by a high school girl that year.
In high school, I was oblivious to my competitors. I just went out and jumped with confidence. But in Eugene, I was suddenly keenly aware of every potential threat. I knew both Gwen and Carol would be tough to beat. They were so at ease. The entire scene at the track overwhelmed me. My nerves got the best of me when it was time to compete, which only added to my timing problems down the runway. I finished eighth overall, managing only a pitiful jump of 20′ 4″. Carol's best jump, 21′ 6¼″, put her in third and on the Olympic team. Gwen jumped 20′ 10¾″ and placed fifth. I was in tears by the end of the meet. I had let a great opportunity slip away because I couldn't control my nerves. To top it off, not only didn't I get USA sweats, I didn't get any recognition at all. At the Olympic Trials, you were either one of the top three or you were nobody. It was a painful introduction to world-class competition.
My performance brought me back down to earth. Throughout high school I'd been the big fish in the pond. Now I was swimming with the biggest fish of all and I was back to feeling like a guppy. I was inconsolable. “It's a respectable performance,” Mr. Fennoy said. “Build on it. Use it as motivation for 1984.”
Brooks Johnson, the track coach at Stanford at the time, got into the elevator with me at the hotel after my event. He could see how blue I was. “You have a lot of potential,” he said. “Even though you didn't succeed this time, just remember, the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
I also met a young track coach from California named Bobby Kersee. I had read an article in Track & Field News about the program Bobby had built at Cal State-North-ridge. The monthly magazine is the bible of the sport, and in high school I read it religiously. Mr. Fennoy passed me the latest issue as soon as he was done reading it. Bobby had just been hired by UCLA as an assistant track coach. I made a mental note of it, but otherwise I didn't think much about this fellow Bobby Kersee. He didn't say much, and seemed quiet.
College recruiters sent me information and came to our track meets and basketball games throughout my last two years at Lincoln High. It was both thrilling and nerve-racking. Mr. Fennoy was so worried that someone would try to take advantage of us or do something improper that he screened every phone call, read every letter and monitored every visit from coaches. He even ordered us to temper our enthusiasm when we saw recruiters and coaches in the bleachers before our games and meets. “You can smile; but don't wave or yell ‘Hello,’” he instructed Deborah Thurston and me before the games UCLA basketball coach Billie Moore attended. She and her assistant coach, Colleen Matsuhara, made several trips to East St. Louis to recruit the two of us for the Bruin squad.
My parents knew nothing about big-time college recruiting, but they understood human nature. They kept reminding me not to take anything from strangers. I didn't understand what all the fuss-was about until late in my senior year. After the buzzer sounded at the end of the state championship basketball game, one of the city's wealthiest citizens congratulated me on our victory. As he shook my hand, he pressed something into my palm. I opened my hand and was startled to see a wad of bills. I don't know how much money it was because I didn't take the time to count it. As soon as I realized what it was, I handed the money back to him.
“Thanks, but I can't take this,” I said, before running back to join my celebrating teammates.
I knew Mr. Fennoy had said there were rules against accepting money and gifts. But what really prompted me to give it back was my mother's voice inside my head saying: “Don't let anyone think you can be bought.”
And it's a good thing, too. Later that evening I found out that several people had seen what the man tried to do. If I'd kept the money, they might have reported me. So, thanks to Momma's strict code of conduct and Mr. Fennoy's reinforcement of it, I avoided a lot of problems.
A few weeks after that, a coach from a top school showed up at our front door and offered me and Momma money to sign that university's letter of intent. I stood at the door with my mouth open as he made the offer. How did he find out where I lived, I wondered. Why was he offering us money?
Momma wasn't fazed by it. She was insulted by the assumption that because we were poor, we could be bribed. She dealt with him the same way she had the man from the Nation of Islam—politely but firmly. “We're not interested in your money,” she told the coach. “Jackie will make a decision based on what's best for her, not money. Thank you.” She shut the door.
I spent a day in Champaign-Urbana talking to coaches at Illinois, but quickly eliminated the school from my list. The place just didn't excite me. I also visited Madison, Wisconsin, and talked with Loren Seagrave, the very nice track coach there, whom I'd gotten to know over the years at AAU meets. Though I liked him a lot, Wisconsin was too cold for me. After suffering through all those bitter winters in St. Louis, I was anxious to go to someplace warm. I also eliminated schools that wouldn't let me continue to play two sports. UCLA met my criteria in all categories and was always my first choice.
My father didn't w
ant to hear that I was considering going any place but UCLA. He'd been a fan of John Wooden and the UCLA men's basketball teams of the 1960s and 1970s.
I felt that way about the women's program. I'd followed coach Billie Moore since 1976. I was impressed that she'd coached the U.S. Women's Olympic basketball team and that UCLA won the women's national championship in 1978. I also knew she really wanted me on her team. Between them, she and Colleen made a total of four trips to East St. Louis to recruit me. After one of her trips, Colleen wrote a letter to our local paper, praising the girls' sports program at Lincoln.
Daddy scraped together the money to pay for a recruiting visit to UCLA. He and I flew out there on Friday morning for a weekend stay. We'd left St. Louis on a damp, chilly morning. But the sun shone brilliantly over L.A. when our plane landed. What a paradise.
On first sight, Los Angeles was an eyeful. The mountains in the background were magnificent. But I looked at the packed freeways in wonder and horror on the ride to campus from the airport. There were so many cars, so many lanes, so many exits and a confusing jangle of interlocking highways. I'd been itching to get out into the world. But now that it looked like such a big, busy place, I wasn't sure I was ready. It intimidated me. If I decided to go to UCLA, I told myself, I wouldn't venture far from the Westwood neighborhood surrounding the school.
We toured the campus with an athletic department official. When the tour was done, Daddy and I met briefly with the women's athletic director, Judith Holland. Then Daddy bid me farewell for the weekend. “Here's my number in case you need to reach me,” he said. “You're on your own. That's how it will be when you get to college, so I'm not going to hang around and watch over you.”
A Kind of Grace Page 9