Game, Set, Match

by Susan Ware

  14 Celeste Ullrich makes this observation in Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice: Politics and Apologies in women's Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 134. In 2005, field hockey was offered as a varsity high school sport for boys at only 5 schools, compared to 1,684 schools offering participation opportunities to 62,980 girls. National Federation of State High School Associations, Sports Participation Survey (2005), .

  15 For background on industrial teams, see Cahn, Coming on Strong, chapter 3; and Robert W. Ikard, Just for Fun: The Story of AAU women's Basketball (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2005).

  16 See Amy Bass, ed., In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Dana Brooks and Ronald Althouse, eds., Racism in College Athletics: The African American Athlete's Experience, 2nd ed. (Mor-gantown, W. Va.: Fitness Information Technology, 2000); and Cahn, Coming on Strong, chapter 5.

  17 Karen H. Weiller and Catriona T. Higgs, “The All American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1943–1954: Gender Conflict in Sport?” Sociology of Sport Journal 11 (1994): 289–97. See also Cahn, Coming on Strong; and Barbara Gregorich, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993).

  18 Festle, Playing Nice, 17; Bil Gilbert and Nancy Williamson, “Programmed To Be Losers,” Sports Illustrated, June 11, 1973, 73.

  19 The best example is Meg Christian's song “Ode to a Gym Teacher” found on her album I Know You Know (Olivia Records, 1974). See also many of the essays in Susan Fox Rogers, ed., Sportsdykes: Stories from On and Off the Field (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).

  20 See Carol A. Maccini, “Present in the Fifties,” womenSports, October 1975, 52; and Anne Beatts, “How High School Sports Made My Life a Living Hell,” WomenSports, June 1975, 12–14. I was one of those gym-dreading, bloomer-clad girls. My transcript from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., showed practically straight As in academic subjects—and a C in “girls PE” my senior year. I bet my gym teachers would be amazed at my adult interest in sports and sports history.

  21 Cahn, Coming on Strong, and Festle, Playing Nice, both make this point about the changes already underway. The quotation is from Festle, Playing Nice, 20. See also Bonnie J. Hultstrand, “The Growth of Collegiate women's Sports: the 1960s,” Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 64 (March 1993): 41–43; and L. Leo-tus Morrison, “The AIAW: Governance by Women for Women,” in Cohen, Women in Sport.

  22 Festle, Playing Nice, 98–101. See also Ying Wushanley, Playing Nice and Losing: TheStruggle for Control of women's Intercollegiate Athletics, 1960–2000 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004).

  23 “Here Come the Carpetbaggers,” WomenSports, September 1974, 52; AIAW Position Paper on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, approved May 1974, found in Dunkle, SL; Festle, Playing Nice, 183–84.

  24 Festle, Playing Nice, 92; Kathryn Jay, More Than Just a Game: Sports in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 57, 161. While later revelations suggested Eastern Bloc countries supplied their athletes with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, at first the difference between Soviet and American women athletes came down to the fact that the former embraced weight training and conditioning practices long before American women did.

  25 Jennifer H. Lansbury, “‘The Tuskegee Flash’ and ‘the Slender Harlem Stroker’: Black Women Athletes on the Margin,” Journal of Sport History 28 (Summer 2001): 233–52; Theberge, “Women's Athletics,” 514; Doris Corbett and William Johnson, “The African American Female in Collegiate Sport: Sexism and Racism,” in Brooks and Althouse, Racism in College Athletics, 199–225. See also Bass, In the Game.

  26 Billie Jean King with Cynthia Starr, We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 96. Jay, More Than Just a Game, 69–78, traces the growing racial integration in sports. See also Patricia Vertinksy and Gwendolyn Captain, “More Myth than History: American Culture and Representations of the Black Female's Athletic Ability,” Journal of Sport History 25 (Fall 1998): 532–61. Gibson later played on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour.

  27 President's Conference on Fitness ofAmerican Youth, A Report to the President of the United States on the Fort Ritchie Meeting (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958), 1. President's Council on Physical Fitness, 4 YearsforFitness, 1961–1965: A Report to the President (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), 12, compares mean performances of boys and girls for 1958 and 1965, with dramatic improvement for both. By 1967, four out of five students now passed the standardized fitness tests, up from two out of three in 1961. See President's Council on Physical Fitness, Youth Physical Fitness: Suggested Elements of a School-Centered Program (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), frontispiece.

  28 Many of these developments are covered in Jan Felshin, “The Social Anomaly of Women in Sports,” Physical Educator 30 (October 1973): 122–24. See also Smith, Nike Is a Goddess, 23–24, 49–50; Nora Ephron, “Women,” Esquire, January 1973, 36, 40; Kenny Moore, “Case of the Ineligible Bachelorette,” Sports Illustrated, April 17, 1972, 82–85; Curry Kirkpatrick, “In Stratford, Nobody Beats the Raybestos Brakettes,” Sports Illustrated, September 11, 1967, 92–93; and Dorothy V. Harris, DGWS Research Reports: Women in Sports (Washington, D.C.: American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, 1971).

  29 Candace Lyle Hogan, “From Here to Equality: Title IX,” womenSports, September 1977, 16–26, 60; the quote appears on p. 16.

  30 Candace Lyle Hogan, “Title IX: From Here to Equality,” in D. Stanley Eitzen, ed., Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), 417; Maury Z. Levy, “The Girls of Summer,” womenSports, August 1974, 36–39, 64. See also Susan E. Jennings, “‘As American as Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet’: The Desegregation of Little League Baseball,” Journal of American Culture 4 (Winter 1981): 81–91.

  31 Levy, “Girls of Summer.” Boys were much more nonplussed. “You’re okay with me,” said one to Jenny Fuller of Mill Valley, California. “We needed a good first baseman.”

  32 Jennings, “As American as Hot Dogs”; Tom Tutko and Patsy Neal, quoted in Bonnie L. Parkhouse and Jackie Lapin, Women Who Win: Exercising Your Rights in Sport (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 58–59.

  33 Peg Burke, “Taking Title IX into Your Own Hands,” womenSports, October 1976, 13.

  34 Susan Birrell, “The Woman Athlete's College Experience: Knowns and Unknowns,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 11 (December 1987): Table 1. Jessica Gavora, Tilting the Playing Field, originally drew attention to how just leaping from the 1971 figure to later figures flattened out how much of the increase took place between 1971 and 1973, well before it could be attributed to Title IX.

  35 Birrell, “The Woman Athlete's College Experience”; Participation figures from the yearly National Federation of State High School Associations, Sports Participation Survey; Susan Ware, Title IX: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007), 21. See figure 4 in Ware, Title IX, 8, for the long range view from the 1970s to the present.

  36 United States Commission on Civil Rights, More Hurdles to Clear: Women and Girls in Competitive Athletics, Clearinghouse Publication no. 63 (Washington, D.C.: United States Commission on Civil Rights, July 1980), 11, 22. See also National Collegiate Athletic Association, The Sports and Recreation Programs of the Nation's Universities and Colleges, Report no. 7 (1987), found in Dunkle, SL. According to the NCAA report, “From 1976–77 to 1981–82, it appeared that the growth of women's sports had reached a climax and was slowing down. However, the evidence presented here indicates that this may not be the case.” It is true that the number of participants grew from 60,769 in 1981–82 to 74,429 in 1986–87, but that was still well below the 82,453 figure for 1976–77.

  37 Paula D. Welch, Silver Era, Golden Moments: A Celebration of Ivy League Women's Athletic
s (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1999), contains numerous examples of multi-sport athletes. James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 159, finds Women athletes in the 1976 cohort were very much like female students in general. The gap will widen in later cohorts from the 1980s and 1990s.

  38 Bil Gilbert and Nancy Williamson, “Women in Sport: A Progress Report,” Sports Illustrated, July 29, 1974, 26–31; “Sportswomanlike Conduct,” Newsweek, June 3, 1974, 50–55; Seventeen (1975) quoted in Jane Leavy, “Sports Chic,” womenSports, March 1977, 53–57. For examples of the coverage in Ms., see Lucinda Franks, “See Jane Run: Women in the 1972 Olympics,” Ms., January 1973, 98–100, 104; Brenda Feigen Fas-teau, “Giving Women a Sporting Chance,” Ms., July 1973, 56–58, 103, as well as Bud Collins's cover story on Billie Jean King; Ann Crittenden Scott, “Closing the Muscle Gap,” Ms., September 1974, 49–50, 55, 89; and Anne Roiphe, “Playing the Field,” Ms., September 1974, 67–69. The September 1974 issue also had a feature called “Found Women: Nine Sporting Lives,” 96.

  39 See Louis Harris and Associates, Fitness in America—The Perrier Study: A National Research Report of Behavior, Knowledge and Opinions Concerning the Taking Up of Sports and Exercise (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984). The original 1979 study was copyrighted under the title “The Perrier Study: Fitness in America.”

  40 It didn't last. By 1985 the number of tennis players had dropped precipitously to 16 million. In 2009 27 million Americans play the game, a 12 percent increase over 2003. Andrew Adam Newman, “Bringing the Human Factor Back to Pro Tennis,” New York Times, July 21, 2009, B4. For the flavor of tennis in the 1970s, sample Bud Collins, My Life With the Pros (New York: Dutton, 1989).

  41 Gilbert and Williamson, “Women in Sport,” 29; “Comes the Revolution,” Time, June 26, 1978, 54.

  42 Donna Lopiano noted physical educators’ disconnect from both politics and feminism: “We are not participants in politics. Most physical educators are labeled, and are indeed, very conservative to the extent that they don't participate in political groups. I was astounded yesterday when (the institute participants) were asked how many were members of women's political organizations, and I saw all of eight hands go up out of 150 or 200 women who are in the forefront of one of the most visible women's issues in the United States.” Quoted in Cheryl M. Fields, “Women in Sports Scout Power Politics,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 1976, 12.

  43 This quote from a physical education leader may be a bit too harsh but does capture a certain resistance to change: “A good many of these people still are afraid of what competition will do for girls. I think they also are afraid of what competition will do to them. For years they have had easy jobs. They bring in the girls for a class, let them spend 15 minutes putting on their gym suits, then spend 15 minutes with some ladylike archery or volleyball, and the last 15 minutes of the period are devoted to taking a shower. Marks are given out on the basis of how often a girl remembers to bring her gym suit and how well she showers.” Gilbert and Williamson, “Programmed To Be Losers,” 66.

  44 Festle, Playing Nice, 98–99.

  45 Ted Green, “Basketball Goes Big Time at UCLA,” womenSports, March 1977, 28. This quote from Judith Holland, women's athletic director at UCLA, is from later in the decade, but it captures the philosophical divide well.

  46 Wushanley, Playing Nice and Losing, chapter 6. See also memo and supporting material from Mary E. Rekstad to AIAW Active Institutions, March 5, 1973, found in PSEW, SL.

  47 Cheryl M. Fields, “Rules Violations Grow in women's Sports” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 1976, 7; Grace Lichtenstein, “The Wooing of Women Athletes,” New York Times Magazine, February 8, 1981, 27; Cheryl M. Fields, “Demands of Women Athletes Rivaling Those of Men,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 1976, 7; Fields, “women's Athletic Group Votes to Bar Payments to Coaches for Recruiting,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 1977, 9; Fields, “Striking a Balance in women's Sports,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 1978, 5; Nancy Scannell, “Colleges Bewildered by women's Recruiting Rules,” Washington Post, September 2, 1979, D4.

  48 Neil Amdur, “As AIAW Grows, So Do Its Problems,” New York Times, April 8, 1979, 57; Fields, “Demands of Women Athletes”

  49 Kent Hannon, “Too Far, Too Fast,” Sports Illustrated, March 20, 1978, 36. See also Linda Jean Carpenter in Arthur T. Johnson and James H. Frey, eds., Government and Sport: The Public Policy Issues (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), 66.

  50 Hannon, “Too Far, Too Fast,” 36; William A. Sievert, “‘We Have 30 Teams—All of Them Major,’“Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 1977, 9.

  51 For an overview, see Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford, Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of women's Basketball (New York: New Press, 2005). See also the chapter on basketball, “Not Quite the Game Intended,” by Shelley Smith in Smith, Nike Is a Goddess.

  52 Caryl Rivers, “God and the Free Throw,” womenSports, March, 1977, 64.

  53 Rita Liberti, “‘We Were Ladies, We just Played Basketball Like Boys’: African American Womanhood and Competitive Basketball at Bennett College, 1928–1942,” Journal of Sport History 26 (Fall 1999): 575; Grundy and Shackleford, Shattering the Glass, 163.

  54 Ikard, Just for Fun, 13.

  55 Elva Bishop and Katherine Fulton, “Shooting Stars: The Heyday of Industrial women's Basketball,” Southern Exposure 7 (Fall 1979). See Ikard, Just for Fun, for more on Nashville Business College.

  56 Shackleford and Grundy, Shattering the Glass, 110; Ikard, Just for Fun, 104–115.

  57 Festle, Playing Nice, 249; Kay, More Than Just a Game, 169.

  58 Janice A. Beran, From Six-on-Six to Full Court Press: A Century of Iowa Girls’ Basketball (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993), 148. Here is Heywood Hale Broun's full quote: “When I went out to Iowa, I went as an Eastern media snob. I was prepared to be snobby. I was prepared to make fun of the rubes in bloomers. But I couldn't, not when I sensed the intensity all around me. I have never felt at any sport event such excitement as being inside this storage battery.… The important thing is all the girls the next day, winners and losers alike, were winners. They had all had a vivid sporting experience. It was sport at its best; full of joy and zest and excitement and a kind of nobility, because they didn't cheat; it was done on a very high level.”

  59 Ikard, Just for Fun, 99. Statewide, girls made up 50.6 percent of all high school athletes that year. Even today the high school percentage nationwide is stuck in the low 40s.

  60 For a superb combination of religious, feminist, and sport history, see Julie Byrne, O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); the story of the championships is on 173–75. Examples of general media attention to the team include Jane Gross, “She's the Center of Attention,” Sports Illustrated, April 9, 1973, 30–31; Joe Marshall, “On and Up with the Mighty Macs,” Sports Illustrated, February 3, 1975, 50; and Mike Mallowe, “The Game Gets Tougher for the Mighty Macs,” womenSports, July 1975, 36–39, 50–52.

  61 Pete Axthelm, “Women Who Win,” Newsweek, September 8, 1975, 51; Grundy and Shackleford, Shattering the Glass, 162–66. See also Larry Van Dyne, “women's Basketball: Too Good to Put Down,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 31, 1975, 6–7; Sarah Pileggi, “New ERA for Delta Dawns,” Sports Illustrated, March 31, 1975, 67–68; and Pat Tashima, “Delta State Rebounds for Glory,” womenSports, December 1975, 35–36, 50.

  62 Byrne, O God of Players, 183; Green, “Basketball Goes Big-Time at UCLA,” 26–30; Hannon, “Too Far, Too Fast,” 34–35.

  63 The following year the AIAW negotiated a television pact to show the championships and special events, yet another example of how they were mimicking the NCAA. Beverly T. Watkins, “Pact Offered for Televising women's Sports,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 1976, 8.

  64 Grundy and Shack
leford, Shattering the Glass, 166; Cathy Rounds, “Basketball,” womenSports, February 1975, 15; Ray Melnick, “Pat Summit Reaches the Salary Peak,” Birmingham (Ala.) News, June 1, 2006, 1C.

  65 Todd W. Crosset, Outsiders in the Clubhouse: The World of women's Professional Golf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 126.

  66 In addition to Pat Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 1998), see also chapter 7, “Beauty and the Butch: The ‘Mannish’ Athlete and the Lesbian Threat,” in Cahn, Coming on Strong. When golfer Betty Hicks informally polled a range of women athletes in 1979, most said that they were athletes before they knew they were lesbians. Betty Hicks, “Lesbian Athletes,” Christopher Street, October 1979, 46. For more on Billie Jean King's struggle with her sexuality, see chapter 6.

  67 Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets, 26; Eric Anderson, In The Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005); Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 204. See also Michael A. Messner, Taking The Field: Women, Men, and Sports (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Anderson thinks it might be changing. If a gay man is an asset to the team, who cares if he's gay?

  68 Jan Felshin, “The Triple Option … for Women in Sport,” Quest 21 (1974): 36–40; Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets, ix-x.

  69 Cahn Coming on Strong, 189. See also Rogers, Sportsdykes, for many examples.

  70 Judy Van Handle, “Sports and the Closet of Public Relations,” Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review 5 (Fall 1998): 49.