Mrs. Mulder
I read it and reread it. Quite an athlete? So much potential? Develop that gift? It was the most inspiring thing anyone had ever written to me, and I could not wait to start working for next year. Shirley, as always, had to go visit her cousins in New Jersey that summer, an annual family tradition she both loved and was starting to resent for the time it took away from basketball. But Connie and I decided to attend a girls’ basketball camp Mrs. Mulder had told us about on the campus of William Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Our friendship had taken root in basketball and we were excited to go off on this adventure, maybe all the more so because we had never heard of a basketball camp for girls before, much less Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Connie said her friend Diane Defrancesco, an incoming freshman—Connie called her “DD”—was coming, and I talked Bari into going as well. She figured no one would care about her hair there, and besides, she wanted to lose a little weight. So did Connie, who estimated she put on about 10 extra pounds at Mister Donut.
It wasn’t that girls did not perspire before the summer of 1976, but none of us had ever sweat like the week we spent under the tutelage of William Penn coach Bob Spencer and his staff. At lunch the first day, we spent the first few minutes staring at each other and ourselves with equal measures awe and disgust.
“Gross,” Bari said, looking down at her yellow camp-issued T-shirt. “I don’t even see a dry spot.”
“Yeah,” I responded. “How great is this?”
While Connie spent her off-hours nauseated over the strange hairs in the sinks of the communal bathroom, DD concentrated on finding the most original way to get herself almost thrown out of camp. Having apparently seen the movie The Parent Trap one too many times, she would pull the old take-the-lids-off-the-salt-shakers gag and pour cold water on the wrists of the nearest sleeping camper or teammate she could find.
While she was definitely keeping up with everyone on the court, it was also apparent DD liked to have fun. Connie and I doubted she could do both, and one night we had a mothers-daughter talk with her.
Us: “DD, you’re going to get us all kicked out. Knock it off.”
DD: “OK, OK, calm down. You’re like my mother.”
Each day was an education we had never before experienced. As hard as we thought we had worked under Mrs. Mulder, this was on an entirely new level. And it was in a hot gym in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where we truly learned what it meant to push ourselves beyond what we were sure were our physical limits. Sweat was a good thing, pain even better. We practiced for four hours in the morning and scrimmaged for four hours in the afternoon, and always there was running, suicides taking on a new meaning. Some of us even threw up, or at least came close, and didn’t particularly care. If this was a cult, we were easily and quickly indoctrinated, with the possible exception of DD, who had clearly not signed on for this kind of punishment.
On the walls of the gym there were signs with such sayings as THERE IS NO “I” IN “TEAM” and A WINNER NEVER QUITS AND A QUITTER NEVER WINS, which we believed to be the work of Shakespeare, so brilliant were they in their simplicity and eloquence. We had never heard them before, so they were not clichés to us. What’s more, they spoke to us, and we were set to live by them.
Back home, while I dribbled around my patio with my right arm tied behind my back in order to strengthen my nondominant hand, Connie worked her way up and down the sidewalk in front of her house, looking for any patch of gravel or uneven surface she could find after learning that this was the best way to improve your ballhandling. And she had worn away the paint on a patch of ceiling in her bedroom directly above her pillow from practicing her follow-through while lying in bed.
We had fully, inexorably, and happily found our purpose. From the tactile joy of our first real uniforms to our first peek into how the game of basketball was supposed to be played to the oppressive heat of an Iowa gym to the everyday, mundane pleasure of dribbling off our bedroom ceilings, there was no doubt. We had gone from athletes to jocks.
CHAPTER 5
“Son, son, get up!”
FOR THE RETURNING MEMBERS of the Niles West girls’ basketball team, the fall was brimming with possibilities.
The rest of womankind, however, still had a way to go.
The Supreme Court had just ruled 6–3 in favor of General Electric that it was not gender discrimination for companies to provide insurance that covered some men-only disabilities but not disabilities resulting from pregnancy. The FBI issued a report calling wife battering the country’s least-reported crime, prompting the women’s movement to call for more public attention and more police effort in response. In more positive news, Barbara Walters became the first woman to coanchor a network evening news show for an unprecedented $1 million annual salary, though it should be noted that Harry Reasoner, her partner on ABC World News Tonight, made no secret of his hostility.
At the US Open, Chris Evert won the women’s singles title, but it was Evert’s role as men’s champion Jimmy Connors’s girlfriend that drew more attention to Evert than her gritty determination or blistering forehand. And the real news of the tournament was transgender Renée Richards, who was barred from competing in the women’s draw after she refused to take a chromosome test.
It seemed we were all a little misunderstood.
For the 15th straight year of my life, I wore my hair short. And for probably the 12th straight year, I was often mistaken for a boy. Easing the pain somewhat was that this observation usually came from those over the age of 60 who also thought that any boy with hair below his ears was a girl.
Until one sweltering September morning early sophomore year, this had been a relatively private problem of mine. I had just finished playing tennis in Mrs. Mulder’s PE class that morning and was standing in the cafeteria line when a wave of dizziness hit me. I was either going to throw up or pass out, I wasn’t sure which. But I determined that either way, the cafeteria was not the place to do it. Rushing out of the lunch line and dashing through the heavily populated student lounge, I felt the strange sensation of the floor rising up and hitting me in the face.
So, this was what fainting felt like.
Almost immediately, I felt someone shaking me. I also heard the words that made me wish I had never regained consciousness. “Son, son, get up!” shouted Mr. Beeftink, one of the science teachers.
My reaction, at least in my own head, still facedown on the linoleum, was instantaneous. OK, I decided, transferring high schools might be a little extreme, so I will simply never walk through this particular hallway or go near the student lounge again for the next three years. I could do that. And anyway, maybe I was the only one who even heard Mr. Beeftink call me “son,” which was considerably more embarrassing than the actual fainting.
I had just about convinced myself of this after blocking out the wheelchair ride to the nurse’s office when a so-called good friend of mine, a junior whose sense of humor leaned toward Don Rickles, burst through the door to inform me that actually, “the entire school” had heard.
“And they’re still laughing,” she added, in case I wasn’t traumatized enough.
How many days until basketball season?
The image problem was worse for some of us than others. People tended to view girl athletes as boyish, something many girls found frightening and some boys, frankly, found intimidating. For me, though painfully self-conscious, I was not inclined to change my ways. I liked boys, but unless I was playing catch or making jokes with them in the back of class, they pretty much terrified me, and I found basketball much more interesting than the prospect of attracting a boyfriend anyway.
Like seemingly everything else she did, Connie’s social life came easily. She had dated an adorable blond-haired, blue-eyed boy named Bob Porcaro in seventh and eighth grades, and though they weren’t officially boyfriend and girlfriend, they remained good friends, and anyone could tell Bob still liked her.
For Diane Defrancesco, the prospect of jugg
ling basketball with the rest of her life her freshman year at Niles West was considerably more difficult. Her reputation as an athlete preceded her thanks to her older sister Charmaine, who had graduated two years earlier.
Char was a phenomenal athlete, very possibly the best female athlete Niles West had ever had up to that point, though it was hard to judge. During her freshman year at West, the only girls’ sport was called aquasprites, a hybrid of swimming and water ballet. Char, a great swimmer, was not thrilled, but she went out for it anyway. Over the course of the next four years, every time the school would add a girls’ sport, Char would try out and star in it—volleyball, swimming, badminton, tennis, softball, and finally basketball for the ’75 inaugural team. After graduating from high school, Char received a $600 tuition waiver to play basketball for Northern Illinois University and once there, was recruited to play field hockey, where the first game she ever saw was also the first one she ever played in.
But as talented an athlete as Char was, DD was thought to be even better, more naturally gifted. The only girl to play Little League baseball in Skokie when she was 11, DD once picked up a softball in gym class and casually heaved it 250 feet without so much as a warm-up toss.
Although she barely avoided being expelled from basketball camp, DD wasn’t a bad kid. She had a huge heart, was friendly and funny, and was never outright disrespectful to adults. We figured she was just a free spirit, the kind of kid who did things you wish you had the courage to do. DD only wished she had the stability that most of us apparently had.
Just as DD was starting high school, her mother was finally getting help for a drinking problem, and with both parents focused on her recovery, their youngest daughter was left to pretty much fend for herself. She had also begun experimenting with alcohol and pot and found she liked both. The only thing that could compete was sports. What she could not accept was the leap some kids made to equate sports with being boyish, especially when boyish meant something else altogether.
One day DD told us she had received a letter from another girl in school professing her love for her, and she was horrified. At 5-6, strong, and, like most of us, with a body viewed as built more for sports than for dresses, DD whispered to her friends, “I don’t want people to think I’m some dykey girl.” And from then on, she made a special effort at parties to flirt with the boys, before attracting the attention of Connie’s twin brother, Chris.
The topic of woman athletes and homosexuality was one that came up every now and then, and there was little differentiation made between sexuality and femininity. The fact that if you looked or acted too much like a guy, you might very well either be mistaken for a lesbian or actually be one was something we all generally acknowledged.
Mrs. Mulder was sympathetic to our anxieties over our self-image. “You are always young ladies, and I never want you to give up your femininity,” she told us as we blushed and whispered sarcastic comments to each other. “But on the court, you are also athletes.”
Our coach was looking toward basketball season as much as we were. She had attended some coaching clinics over the summer, and her friendship with Mr. Schnurr was a solid one now. They were pals and co-conspirators in their plan to make us better basketball players.
The climate among much of the Niles West staff, however, was a tense one. There was serious talk of an impending strike over the perceived delay in the renewal of a new teachers’ contract, and the staff was picking sides. But Arlene Mulder and Billy Schnurr didn’t talk politics; they talked basketball. And tennis.
Both were avid players, and after discovering one morning that neither had a homeroom class to monitor that fall, they met on the tennis court and hit for the 10 minutes before each had to teach an outdoor gym class. This arrangement worked beautifully for three days until another teacher spotted them through a window and reported it to the principal, and they were told to stop. Now they were partners in crime as well.
Of course, there were more serious issues at hand. The teachers voted to strike, and it seemed all of Mrs. Mulder’s friends and colleagues were ardent union supporters, taking to the picket line without hesitation. For Mrs. Mulder, however, there was a decision to make.
With the state tennis tournament about to begin and her talented sophomore Holly Bland one of the favorites to compete for the state singles title, Mrs. Mulder learned that Holly would have to forfeit her matches if she was not represented by her coach. Mrs. Mulder’s decision was now clear. But in her first attempt to cross the picket line, she was horrified as many of the same people she thought were her closest friends harassed and taunted her with chants of “Scab!”
“Arlene, you’re not going to go in there,” said John Armour, a Niles West coach and the husband of Jean Armour, her good friend and fellow PE teacher and coach.
Mrs. Mulder hurried to her car, dissolving into tears. After driving home, she called Bud Trapp, our athletic director, and asked for his advice. “Arlene, come to school tomorrow morning at five and I’ll give you a set of keys to the building,” Trapp told her, appreciating her dilemma.
It was a decent enough plan. Before dawn each morning of the strike, Mrs. Mulder sneaked into the building before picketers arrived and avoided catching any serious abuse. But all around her, chaos reigned. In a bitterly contentious school board meeting, the teachers who remained on strike despite threats from the board—about half the staff—were fired. And the great majority of the student body, in a scene reminiscent of the ’60s, marched outside, boycotting classes in a protest of our own.
Striking teachers taught their classes under trees in front of the school while Dr. Mannos took to a bullhorn, ordering students inside. It was all very exciting to a generation of kids who were too young to have had any real influence in the ’60s, and we told ourselves that this was important and that we weren’t just having fun cutting class.
Within a few days, however, it was a moot point as the teachers were rehired, students returned to classes, and the contract dispute was temporarily delayed.
Holly competed in the state tennis tournament, where she did not place but gained valuable experience. And Mrs. Mulder lost friendships she wondered if she would ever fully regain.
Basketball season started a month earlier than the previous year, with tryouts in mid-January. A new air of seriousness accompanied the early start. Everyone seemed to understand that there would be no room on the varsity team for those who weren’t willing to make a real commitment.
Mr. Schnurr, like the rest of us, had his eye on the upcoming season. One afternoon, while substitute teaching a girls’ PE class, he noticed sophomore Peggy Japely, a tall, gangly girl with obvious athletic ability, and asked if she was trying out for the basketball team after school. She looked at him as if he were a ghost, scarcely able to believe he was talking to her, much less discussing her basketball future.
Peggy was the girl in junior high whom no one really knew and no one really bothered to try to know. She had long, straggly hair that obscured beautiful blue eyes and was so painfully shy that most kids assumed she did not speak at all. She had tried out for the Parkview Junior High basketball team in eighth grade and hadn’t made it. At Niles West our freshman year, she decided she wouldn’t bother to try out at all. She occasionally found herself looking longingly toward the gym as each tryout rolled around but quickly put it out of her mind. She was a loser, she decided, and everyone knew it.
But now she was a 5-7 sophomore with the physical tools of a guard, the size of a forward, and the awkwardness of a teenager not yet used to her body. While she may have looked like a basketball player, she wasn’t necessarily ready for Niles West tryouts or any more prepared for rejection.
“You’re quick, you have good hands, and you have height,” Mr. Schnurr told her.
“I don’t know if I’m trying out,” Peggy mumbled, her head buried in her chest.
Mr. Schnurr was undeterred.
“Which class do you have last today?” he asked. And when
Peggy emerged from ninth-period history, there was the legendary Billy Schnurr, placing his hand firmly on her shoulder and walking her to the gym.
Peggy ended up making the JV team, and I feigned coolness at being one of 14 to make varsity along with our lone senior, Nancy Hohs; four juniors, Shirley, Diana Hintz, Bridget Berglund, and Toni Atsaves; five other sophomores, Connie, Judy, Karen, Nancy Eck, and Tina Grass; and three freshmen, DD, Tina Conti, and Toni’s sister Barb.
At our first team meeting, there were no congratulations. No time was wasted on empty praise or a trite pep talk. Mrs. Mulder went through a few basic housekeeping details and then brought in Mr. Schnurr, who got right to the point: girls’ basketball would have a state tournament this year.
Bureaucracy being what it was, we were seeing the results of a battle that had begun and ended before most of us had even started high school. Following extensive discussion in a meeting of the Illinois High School Association board of directors in November 1974, a motion made by Dr. Mannos was unanimously carried that the IHSA establish and sponsor state tournaments for girls in field hockey, golf, softball, and swimming in 1975–76, and in archery, badminton, gymnastics, and basketball in 1976–77.
Finally, Mr. Schnurr told us, we had a state tournament. And there was no reason, if we worked hard and were determined enough, why we couldn’t be the team to win the title.
“Why not Niles West?” he asked calmly but directly. “Why not you girls?”
His words echoed in the tiny gym and we looked at each other dumbfounded. Win? Us? Just by virtue of hard work and determination? We could do that. We wanted to do that. If it’s possible to hear another person’s heart beating in her chest, then I was sure I could hear Connie’s on one side of me and Shirley’s on the other.
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