State

by Melissa Isaacson

  While it may have occurred to Connie that she only wore hand-me-downs and that other girls had Sweet 16 parties while her sisters did not, she was not necessarily bothered by this. When she was little, she would lie in one of the basement bunk beds she shared with the older Erickson girls, listening as they discussed their boyfriends. And every summer, her whole family would go down to Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, where they stayed in a little cabin, two girls to a bed, boys on the floor. Connie felt like a millionaire because they had all this and a small boat.

  She would watch her big brother Tim, a star football player at Niles West, all tan and muscular and bare-chested, wake up early, run down the hill from where their cabin sat, and dive into the lake, and it was that hard-working, wholesome, athletic image to which she aspired.

  When Connie was 11, however, that perfect picture would be forever altered. It was the summer of 1972 and her sister Marilee, the embodiment of everything Erickson—gregarious, fun, beautiful, a great athlete who started a powder-puff football league in addition to being a cheerleader and homecoming queen—had just graduated from Niles West. Marilee was headed to Southern Illinois University, the first Erickson girl to go to college, and it was a time of great celebration.

  It was her 18th birthday, and she was on her way to her older sister Sharon’s house in nearby Glenview. Marilee was driving a convertible, an old junker as Connie called it, that often stalled. She was at a stoplight and the family’s theory is that she probably gave the engine a little gas to keep it from dying when she accidentally gunned it into the intersection.

  She collided with another car and the impact ejected Marilee from her car and onto the side of the road.

  Connie answered the phone when the police called. “Get your father right away,” the officer instructed her. “There has been a serious accident.”

  Bob Erickson was out back, constructing still another addition to the house, hammering away, when Connie ran out to get him. Her older brother Randy stayed home and babysat the younger kids while their parents rushed to the hospital. After watching the kids continue to play and yell and generally fool around, Randy finally yelled at them to stop.

  “This is really serious you guys,” he told them.

  Hospital rules prohibited the youngest Erickson kids from visiting their sister, but Connie’s mom talked the nurses into it. Connie and her twin brother, Chris, stood by the bed, trying to convince themselves that it really was Marilee lying there. The only parts they recognized were her toes. Everything else was too swollen.

  Her parents had decided they would not remove Marilee from life support but were told that leaving her on a respirator would mean a life of little quality. And so it was something of a blessing when the hospital called to say she had begun breathing on her own. It was now in God’s hands, the family knew.

  Marilee died that night.

  It seemed the entire staff and student body of Niles West attended Marilee’s funeral, hundreds and hundreds of adults and teenagers filing through the funeral home and, later, in and out of Connie’s living room. It was the first time Connie ever saw her father cry, and silently she vowed that somehow she would fill her sister’s shoes.

  On the day of basketball tryouts, Connie worked her way to the gym, navigating the same gauntlet we all did.

  Niles West royalty came in the form of varsity football players and other highly regarded senior boys who leaned against a wall of windows in the ironically named student lounge—more of a widened hallway separating the gyms, cafeteria, and auditorium from the rest of the school—and formed a virtual reviewing stand before which the school’s population was forced to pass. The cheerleaders, prettiest of girls, and legacies like Connie would get winks, nods, and occasional hugs while the rest of us would hope simply to walk by unnoticed.

  The west side of the school held an allure all its own, and we were magnetically drawn there. There were girls like Connie and Shirley and me, and Karen and Judy, a mix of girls from different sports, some of whom were not even sure which sports they would play. For me, the gym was the only place where I felt totally comfortable. With every insecure, traumatic step through the halls of the massive high school, in which I was simultaneously convinced that everyone was staring at me and that I was completely invisible, I became obsessed with the idea of being on a high school sports team, and so I lingered around the gym, hoping no one would notice how much time I spent there.

  Fortunately for me, Mr. Skuban’s homeroom happened to meet in the Contest Gym, more commonly referred to as the Boys’ Gym, and our section of bleachers offered the perfect vantage point each morning to look up at the scoreboard, the names of the varsity boys’ basketball players spelled out in dazzling white letters and staring down at us like a Broadway marquee.

  It was not the only facet of boys’ athletics that fascinated us, though. The varsity boys’ locker room was, to the girls anyway, an urban legend.

  “I heard it has chairs for every player instead of benches,” Patti Hilkin whispered to me one day during homeroom.

  “And don’t forget the pop machine,” another girl chimed in, our imaginations racing with images of a full-blown nightclub behind those doors.

  The girls’ gym, with its bifold door dividing it into two sections, and the South Balcony Gym, a tiny, airless compartment up one flight of stairs and most often used as a dance studio, as a meeting place, or perhaps for girls’ free-throw practice if they didn’t shoot with too high of an arc, were inferior to be sure. But they were all palaces to us. We watched as the woman PE teachers streamed in and out of their tiny shared office, scared to make eye contact with the tall, athletic-looking gymnastics coach, Mrs. Sloan; in awe of the blonde, petite track coach, Mrs. Armour; and intimidated by the very sight of Mrs. Mulder, who carried a certain intensity that appeared capable of both scaring you in gym class by day and perhaps winning Wimbledon by night.

  Arlene Mulder was 31 years old in the winter of ’76. She drove a cool car, wore a suede jacket, looked better in shorts than most of the other gym teachers, and exuded utter authority and confidence even as she wondered what in the hell she was doing.

  Except Arlene Mulder would never say “hell.”

  As she stood before 70 of us JV and varsity girls’ basketball hopefuls—up from 58 the year before—Mrs. Mulder was all at once steely eyed and warden-like, yet still feminine with the ever-present scent of Estée Lauder, and motherly, though certainly not like any mother we knew.

  Tryouts were in the Boys’ Gym, and the sensation of my gym shoes squeaking on the heavily lacquered court was thrilling in itself. “OK girls, if your last name begins with the letter A through I, I want you over here by the orange cones,” Mrs. Mulder barked, startling me out of my lacquer-and-squeak-induced stupor. I didn’t hear what she said after that or where the J through whatevers were going or what they were doing because I was busy sprinting directly to my corner, pleased that I was in Shirley’s group and still a little shocked that I was actually there at all.

  I looked around to see if anyone was shorter than my barely 5-foot-2 and didn’t see any obvious candidates among the guards like Connie, who stood 5-5. Among the forwards, Shirley was 5-8 and Karen, 5-7. I didn’t know the upperclassmen, but I saw girls who looked like they could play center at 5-10, maybe 5-11, all of whom seemed gigantic to me.

  We each wore a number written in Magic Marker on a sheet of paper taped to our backs like contestants in a dance-off, and we rotated through stations manned by student volunteers and PE teachers with clipboards: 30-second shooting, dribbling around cones, agility drills, vertical jump, free-throw shooting.

  Mr. Schnurr, the boys’ varsity coach, stood off to the side with Mrs. Mulder, charting everyone’s performance, while we moved anxiously from station to station, unaware that in addition to noting our free-throw percentages and vertical jumps, they were also studying things like our attitude, coachability, and hunger, even though most of us had never before heard that word applied
to anything but eating.

  I couldn’t help but notice Billy Schnurr. He was a star around Niles West, and I was as thrilled to see him as I would have been if Bulls coach Dick Motta were standing there. But beyond being starstruck, I was in my element. This was a sport I loved and that I was good at. I may have been short and skinny, but I could dribble and run fast, and sneaking glances around the gym, I deduced I was at least faster than most.

  Not faster than Connie, however. Connie was special, that much I could tell. She was wildly unpolished but athletic in a way I had never seen in a girl before, and it made me want to stop and stare. In sixth grade, my friend Gina told me that I walked like a boy (we were in a fight at the time). I think it had more to do with the way I held my arms than the way I walked, but whatever the case, it was one more thing to add to the list of things to be self-conscious about, and I made it a point after that to study how other girls walked so I could do it in a more feminine way. Connie walked like an athlete, a girl athlete, and this I had never seen before. There was a certain confident swagger, like the most talented boys carried, but also a grace and bounce to her step that suggested a greatness I could not quite decipher.

  Inside, she was as scared as I was. Unlike the senior boys who were friends with her brother Mark and treated her like a kid sister, the senior girls in the gym did not seem to know Connie from the next freshman. Or if they did, they didn’t show it. And as Connie looked around, she was in awe. Not only were the older girls like Maureen Mostacci, Pat Conklin, and Sue Schroeder really good, but Connie couldn’t quite believe they allowed tryouts to be held in the Boys’ Gym. Trying to ignore her nerves as she sized up a turnout she estimated to be in the hundreds, maybe thousands, she told herself to simply not do anything stupid while the older girls began to notice her talent and instinctive strut, quickly deducing that she was different.

  Eventually, we broke up into short games of three-on-three and then were told to come back the next day for more of the same. Over coffee, Schnurr and Mulder conferred.

  “Remember, Arlene,” Schnurr told her, “you’re not just picking the team based on what they can do in tryouts or who you think are the best athletes. You can’t expect one player to do everything.” He grabbed her clipboard and slid it across the table. “You have to look at their body frames, who can rebound for you and play forward, who can handle the ball, and who can play guard,” he said. “You have to predict their learning curves.”

  She listened and learned. Arlene Mulder adored Billy Schnurr. And Schnurr was nothing if not a teacher. In rural Wilmot, Wisconsin, where he grew up the oldest of four children, his father was the high school principal, taught agriculture, and eventually took over the football, basketball, and baseball teams when it became clear that all the able-bodied (read: competent) men and coaches were off fighting in World War II. Trouble was, Marlin Schnurr knew very little about coaching, especially football. So he went out in the fall of 1943, bought the only four football books he could find, then looked at Billy and said, “All right, we have to figure out what we’re going to do.”

  As a junior, Billy played quarterback and defensive back as well as acted as assistant coach. As a senior, it was his team all the way—they lost only one game and gave up just seven points all season. By his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, four years later, he decided to put his education on hold to coach the baseball team at Madison West High School.

  Always thinking ahead, Schnurr wanted Mulder to plan for a future that was far from certain. At the time, there was still no state tournament in girls’ basketball in Illinois, but Dr. Mannos continued to fight his downstate counterparts who still felt basketball was a boys’ sport, and he was making progress with a longer schedule that season, from 10 games to 12.

  I would have been happy with almost anything.

  The morning after the second day of tryouts, I made my way to the gym to see if the team roster was posted yet on the bulletin board outside the girls’ PE office. Mrs. Mulder had specifically told us she would not put up the list until noon, but as long as Mr. Skuban’s homeroom was in the gym anyway, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to shoot a subtle glance in that direction.

  Nothing.

  The rest of the morning was excruciating. And the next chance I had to check, there was nothing cool or subtle about me as I sprinted from algebra toward the gym and stuck my face right up to the bulletin board.

  And there it was.

  Right under the heading NILES WEST GIRLS’ BASKETBALL JUNIOR VARSITY was my name. I caught my breath and scanned the varsity list, seeing Shirley’s name, of course, and then some freshmen—Connie Erickson, Karen Wikstrom, Tina Grass—which gave me a slight twinge of jealousy but more awe than anything. Who was I kidding? This was the high school varsity team we were talking about. If I continued to work hard, my name would be there someday, too.

  I wondered what to do next, when we would get to practice, when our games would begin, what the coaches would tell us.

  When we would get our uniforms.

  It was always the promise of a uniform that called to me. Even Brownies, with their dumb dresses, somehow seemed enticing with the beanie and cool change purse on the belt. When I was a seventh grader at Lincoln Hall, the girls’ basketball team wore pinnies with masking-tape numbers on them. They felt like part-jumper, part-apron, but they were something. By high school, my longing for a real uniform had hardly diminished. I did not really care what kind it was. Even the T-shirts we wore for Lincolnwood softball—which had an oversized logo of a girl with a 1950s-style curly bob and caps with a girly script L—were fine. But a real high school uniform, tops and bottoms, with satin lettering? The thought was more than I could bear.

  Our uniforms were distributed the next day, handed to us in mesh drawstring bags, all of which smelled like a mixture of old socks and a metal gym locker scrubbed with a Brillo Pad. And we were no less thrilled than if we had just received a jersey with USA written across the chest.

  Our jerseys did not have anything written across the chest. They were triple-ply, grade A, 100 percent industrial-strength polyester. If you stretched one out and poured a bucket of water over it, not a drop would seep through, which explained how the smell was so well-preserved. And when you rubbed it between your fingers, it had the distinct feel of sandpaper and seemed in danger of igniting at any moment.

  The shirts were dark red with a pinched band of white elastic around the sleeves and a small solitary white number on the front and back. My first choice was No. 4, my junior high number and the number of my hero, Chicago Bulls guard Jerry Sloan, but a senior already had it. So I picked No. 10 and consoled myself that Bulls forward Bob Love was no slouch and that two digits filled out the jersey better anyway. Our shorts were also dark red with two white stripes down the sides, which was cool, and we were given white nylon knee socks, which we were to wear over our own, also with three red stripes.

  There was no NILES WEST or INDIANS, or anything satin, and we found out that the JV team would have to share the handful of warm-ups because there weren’t enough to go around. But we were lucky. Some of the schools we played that year had to share their uniforms among all of their girls’ teams. At that moment, we were oblivious to the fact that the boys’ teams had home and away uniforms with plenty of satin and their own warm-ups.

  We tried to act as if our uniforms were no big deal as we slung the crusty mesh bags over our shoulders. But I was scarcely in the door that night when I pulled out each piece, my mother diplomatically avoiding any mention of the smell.

  While modeling them for our families, it was apparent that even after stretching the white elastic bands around the sleeves to their limits, there would soon be permanent indentations on our arms. And the shorts, regardless of their size or our varying body types, would become part of our own skin.

  Of course, none of us saw any real problem with this.

  We were special. Important. Official representatives of our school. Our town. We were
part of a team, not so far removed from the college and NBA teams we saw on TV. If we couldn’t be them one day, we could look like them.

  In reality, prison uniforms were more flattering and undoubtedly more comfortable. But these were ours now, and we took instant pride in them. We had an identity. We were athletes.

  CHAPTER 4

  Inappropriate Cheering and the Half-Court Shot

  IN GRADE SCHOOL, I was always a little bored during recess. Rather than appreciate the fresh air, exercise, and fun that recess was intended to provide us, I usually viewed my options and was disappointed. Recess was always a ready and painful example of the gender divide. The vast majority of boys would go directly to the field or blacktop and play baseball, basketball, football, or some game with teams and competition. Usually all it took was a ball of some kind. And on the patch of concrete outside the front doors of the school, there were the girls trading stickers, playing jacks, or in the early ’70s, playing with a toy called Footsie.

  Footsie was one of those ingenious inventions, like the Pet Rock, that made people all over the country ask themselves, “Why couldn’t I have thought of that and become a millionaire?” It consisted of a plastic yellow ring that went around your ankle. Attached to the ring was a plastic string and at the end of the string, a red, plastic bell. The object was to move your foot around in circles and jump over the red thing with your other foot. It took all the skill of haircombing, and though I owned one, as did every self-respecting elementary school–aged girl at the time, I thought Footsie was the stupidest thing I had ever seen, and it bored me beyond belief.

  This could be the reason why, when finally given the opportunity, all the girls who aspired to play competitive sports loved doing so in any format available. And it probably explained why, though our first game, against Highland Park at home, was still two weeks away, the idea of having two full weeks of practice leading up to it was just as thrilling.