State

by Melissa Isaacson

  “Thanks, gang.”

  It was a sweet moment, even Peggy and I had to admit, and we all wiped away tears in unison until Connie broke in. “Here’s to the best coach in the state. Hip, hip … ”

  “Hooray!” we shouted back.

  “Hip, hip … ”

  “Hooray!”

  “Let’s hear it, Coach!” Judy screamed as we waited for the familiar call. And in typical booming fashion, he complied.

  “It sure is GREAT to be a WINNER!”

  After telling us to dress quickly—yeah, right—because we were going out for a steak dinner and he was “blowing the dough, baby,” it seemed as good a time as any to break into the Laverne & Shirley theme song. We were nothing, after all, without our theme songs.

  Give us any chance, we’ll take it. Give us any rule, we’ll break it. We’re gonna make our dreams come true, doing it our way …

  This time it was Gene Earl’s turn to throw his head back and laugh.

  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel just as midnight struck on April 1. Peggy and I looked at each other. It would be too easy. And as our teammates drifted in and out of each other’s rooms, we hastily devised a plan. Mr. Karbusicky, our ticket manager and history teacher, it was decided, would be the lure. Well, not Mr. Karbusicky for real, but at least his name. It was not an elaborate plan, but at one in the morning after winning the state championship, we felt confident it would make our coach look silly and be good for a few laughs, and that was enough for us.

  “Coach, Coach, come quick!” Peg and I yelled down the hall. “Mr. Karbusicky is in our room, and he’s acting really strange. He won’t leave.”

  “He’s in his pajamas,” I said, hoping to add a little drama.

  “Yeah, and they have elephants all over them,” shouted Peg as I shot her a dirty look that said she was going too far.

  Fortunately, our coach had had just enough wine with his dinner to consider this plausible, and he came racing toward our room in his own pajama bottoms and undershirt, ready to rescue us, when half the team jumped out from behind the bed screaming, “April fool!”

  It was childish and stupid, no question about it. But it cracked us up, and if there was any danger of our accidentally drifting off to sleep that night, someone absconded with the hotel security guard’s handcuffs and cuffed me to Coach Earl, prolonging the laughs for much longer than either the coach or I would have preferred.

  April fools.

  Going on no sleep, we had only the cold and mist to keep us alert the next day atop the Skokie fire trucks that ferried us through the township. A half mile of police cars with sirens blaring and honking cars with streamers streaming trailed us through the streets, more brave souls than we would have imagined standing under umbrellas on street corners, waving as we drove past.

  The temperature hovered in the upper 30s, but we huddled together unfazed, some of us in ski jackets, others in Niles West windbreakers, and tried to tell each other we would never, ever forget this moment. Some of us had our Kodak Instamatics and others had the Polaroid cameras where the photos came out instantly, and we gathered around to see the highlights as they unfolded.

  Back at the gym, the bleachers and basketball court were full, TV cameras from Chicago stations capturing it all as we followed Connie, who carried the trophy through the crowd of about 1,500 to a podium set up on the baseline. We each said a few words, among the more memorable being Becky’s proclamation that “I ain’t a rookie no more.”

  It was all festive and fun and a great example of high school innocence and exuberance until the end, when Dr. Mannos started speaking and some of the students in the crowd began to yell for open halls, their chants becoming louder until his speech was nearly drowned out.

  A few weeks earlier, Mannos had closed Niles West’s hallways to student traffic during free periods because of excessive noise. His decision had been the talk of the school, and it was no real surprise that our classmates took this opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights, but Coach Earl was offended at their timing and ordered us to walk out of the gym, which we did, thus ending the rally.

  The next day’s Chicago Tribune chronicled the walkout on page two of the sports section. Atop the front page of the section, above stories about the Blackhawks and White Sox, read a banner headline: EVEN NILES WEST’S CHAMPS CRITICIZE TOURNEY REFS.

  A pullout quote from Peg read, “Lady refs call more chicken fouls than men. They don’t really let you play your game. Men refs allow more incidental contact.”

  I had never heard Peggy use the phrase “incidental contact” when she was complaining about the refs, but it looked very impressive in print.

  Discussion and criticism regarding the all-female crew of officials had been a sidelight during the tournament, with newly crowned state championship coach Gene Earl leveling the biggest blow in the Tribune when he said, “I know at least 100 male officials who are better qualified than the woman referees we’ve had throughout the final days of this tournament. Men have more experience, so they have to be better than this.”

  Not surprisingly, the fallout from his and other male coaches’ remarks was swift. Earl was swamped with letters calling him a buffoon. The girls’ athletic director at Buffalo Grove High School, a woman, accused him of setting back girls’ basketball 100 years. The male secretary of the IHSA blasted him for his poor judgment, which Coach Earl responded to by citing his inalienable right to free speech.

  One woman who identified herself as a junior high coach confronted Earl in person and told him men shouldn’t be coaching girls’ teams.

  Despite the criticism, 20 years after he had started coaching at Sesser High School, where he compiled a three-year mark of 7–44 with the boys’ varsity team, Gene Earl was a hero. At least they hailed him as such in the halls and over Niles West’s PA system in the days and weeks following our victory, the first male coach to take a girls’ team to the state title. The first basketball coach in Niles West history to win a state championship, period.

  But the fanfare was not well received in at least one small corner of the gym. Listening to the accolades for Earl one day after we had won, Judi Sloan, one of the most respected coaches and teachers at the school, a gifted athlete in her own right and one of the toughest women around, sat alone in the girls’ gym office and cried. She cried for her friend Arlene Mulder and she cried for all the woman coaches just like Mulder who would be forgotten.

  When they named an award for Gene Earl, still another in the trophy case named for a male coach at the school, Sloan, a future winner of the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching, was discouraged. It wasn’t that she had anything against Earl personally. He was a pretty tough guy not to like, and she respected the job he had done with us. But like many of her female colleagues, she simply wished he would have stopped during one of the many interviews and award ceremonies and thanked the woman who had laid the foundation for him, that at least one reporter would have taken note.

  As for us, it all largely went over our heads—the rally walkout, the ref controversy, the woman teachers’ sadness over Mrs. Mulder. For us, it was about getting new satin state championship jackets and milking every bit of our newfound celebrity. We were cool. Special. Or at least we thought so.

  For Connie and Peggy, basketball would surely continue at the college level. Though Peggy’s contribution was largely unsung, she had gone from JV two years earlier to first-team all-tournament and all-state honors. For Judy and Karen and me, there would be intramurals and club sports. Seeing my playing time decrease so dramatically my senior year cushioned the pain I had anticipated when taking off an athletic uniform for the last time. But so too did winning, leaving the five of us with a feeling of satisfaction and resolution that Shirley and Bridget and Diana never got to experience.

  We were invited to numerous awards banquets that spring, attending with the likes of DePaul’s Final Four team and the Maine South boys’ champs. We received keys to our suburbs,
got cash gifts from our banks, and traveled to Springfield, where we met Illinois Governor Jim Thompson and had a resolution presented to the Illinois legislature honoring us.

  But it was our appearance on Ray Rayner and Friends, where we got to shoot layups at a basket on set; play with the show’s mascot, Chelveston the duck; and introduce the next cartoon, that completed the dream.

  When it came down to it, that’s all we really wanted. Our very own uniforms, high-top basketball shoes, our names on a scoreboard. And in the end, a kids’ TV show.

  Give me an R …

  Youth offered us only so much wisdom and so much perspective. But somewhere beyond the superficial symbols of success, we recognized this was life-altering, and we knew where it started—on the Little League fields where we could not play and in the gyms where we could not practice. On a tiny, poorly lit court in the balcony overlooking the Boys’ Gym, Billy Schnurr told us we could do it. Arlene Mulder taught us to believe. And Gene Earl showed us the way.

  Once girls, we were now athletes. Once athletes, we were now state champions. Forever.

  EPILOGUE

  I SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED about what came next, when my teammates “grew up” and our coaches grew older.

  As I think back, it makes perfect sense that Connie would become a hero to kids in her community. That Shirley would persevere and Arlene Mulder would lead and Peg would survive. That we would, as a group, fight through the tragedy and abuse that statistics said we would probably experience and somehow rebound, somehow remain standing.

  In so many ways, what happened to us after that day in Champaign is what this book is really about. In so many ways, it is evidence of what sports gave to us, of what basketball, specifically, did 40 years ago to shape our lives today.

  In wanting you to know what happened to all of us after 1979, I could have written another book, but not surprisingly, my editor frowned on an epilogue longer than the 23 chapters preceding it. Here is our compromise:

  Arlene Mulder

  ONE OF THE FIRST TIMES I interviewed Arlene Mulder at length for this project, she called from her dorm room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was enrolled in the John F. Kennedy School of Government graduate program at Harvard. Among her fellow students were 68 elected officials, from state senators to representatives to mayors like herself.

  For 20 years and five consecutive terms, Mrs. Mulder was the mayor of Arlington Heights, one of the largest suburbs in the Chicago area and the most populated village in the United States. Though generations of girls will never know what they missed by not having her as a teacher, she clearly found her true calling as a public servant.

  After Michael was born, Mrs. Mulder still thought about returning to teaching. Though she loved spending time with her children and her husband, she felt a little like she had when she had gone from graduate school to motherhood a decade before—“drowning in domestic stuff and needing mental stimulation,” she recalled. “When a part-time job opened up at Niles West in 1972, it allowed me to gain my self-esteem back.” And when the opportunity came up in the summer of ’79 to become a park commissioner, she dove in despite the fact that she “didn’t know what a park commissioner was.”

  Two years later, Mrs. Mulder officially gave up her teaching tenure and was elected to the Arlington Heights park board, serving as commissioner and parks president through 1991. After two more years as a village trustee, she became the first woman to be elected mayor in the 106-year history of the village. And when she retired in 2012 as one of its most popular and respected elected officials, it was after 34 years of public service.

  “I’ve never felt like a politician, and I never wanted to be,” she said. “In most people’s minds, they don’t trust politicians. It has a bad connotation. It reminds people of empty promises not fulfilled, made before someone in office knew what capabilities they had and that you can’t do it yourself.” That was never her. She was a facilitator and consensus builder, both as a teacher and as a mayor. “I pull people together, and I try to encourage them to do what they can do well,” she said.

  When I interviewed her once in 2004, Mrs. Mulder at 60 was pure energy, her staff made aware of her arrival each morning by the click-clacking of her heels on the steps, which she always ran, eschewing the elevator. A grandmother of seven who turned a part-time job into a full-time commitment, often putting in 14- and 15-hour days and seven-day weeks, Mrs. Mulder became one of the most distinguished public officials in Illinois. She was also recognized nationally as a trustee on the executive board of the US Conference of Mayors, internationally as a leader on the issue of aircraft noise mitigation, and locally as a mayor known for her economic development initiatives and fiscal responsibility.

  She loved us as much as her own children, she told me, but I think we always knew that. It was never about winning, she reminded me, and I know we were aware of that as well. It was about setting goals and striving to reach them, about working hard and playing together and knowing that whatever the result, we did it not as individuals but as a team. This for sure I remembered and clung to, even as Mrs. Mulder’s ways seemed to become outmoded or unnecessary.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m sorry if we never really thanked you. I’m sorry if you felt unappreciated, because it was your motivation that inspired us and carried us to the state title. It was your state title as much as ours.”

  She was very quiet.

  “Teaching is bringing out what is already within the person,” she said finally. “And sometimes it’s just magic.”

  Billy Schnurr

  AFTER RETIRING IN 1992, Schnurr ran the clock at Niles West basketball games for the next six years, and at one point, he helped design the new girls’ locker room. Yes, a special locker room for the female athletes. In his late 70s, Schnurr was still playing tennis twice a week, working out at a local health club, and playing poker with Gene Earl, Jerry Turry—the former dean of students at Niles West and later three-term mayor of Lincolnwood—and some other former coaches and teachers.

  Schnurr enjoyed dropping in on the occasional high school game, though he said he didn’t miss coaching anymore. As was his way, he enjoyed a quiet, unassuming life with his wife of 60-plus years, Lima, their children, and their grandchildren.

  Gene Earl

  SURELY GENE EARL had to have gotten a kick out of it when our team was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in the spring of 2004, and we had the best turnout by far for a team from our era. Later, back in a hospitality room at our hotel, our coach got up and made a little speech. This was nothing new to us, and we got ready to giggle. I was surprised that I felt really touched instead.

  “I don’t live in the past and I don’t get depressed,” he said. “But when the dust of everyday life covers your brain, memories of you 12 girls wash over me like a warm summer rain.”

  OK, so he was paraphrasing a country song by Kathy Mattea. The sentiment was there.

  For Earl, who retired from teaching and coaching in 1990 after 26 years at Niles West, life has been easily filled with family, golf, traveling—mostly to play golf—and some work, mostly at a golf course. There was a brief return to coaching. In ’97, a friend who was the Elk Grove girls’ basketball coach asked him to be her assistant in her last year on the job, and he accepted, staying two more years to help the new coach.

  But he missed his wintertime golf.

  “There’s no committee on what time do we get up, what time do we play, where do we eat that night,” he told me in a 2006 interview. “I might just wake up any day of the week and tell Ma [his nickname of preference for his wife, Marlene], ‘Hey, I’m leaving tomorrow.’”

  In 2008, Marlene became ill while the family was visiting friends and relatives in southern Illinois on Labor Day weekend, and Gene insisted that she see a doctor when they got back home. The cobalt treatments that had saved her life when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer 37 years before had now caused a blockage in
her lower intestine. They were told it was inoperable, and eight months later, on April 1, 2009, Alyce Marlene Earl, 73, died at home with her family by her side.

  After 52 years of marriage, Gene was on his own, making the occasional golfing trip to Florida and continuing to use the internet as a way to stay connected with his former players and old friends. Over the next three years, one of those friends he rediscovered was his high school girlfriend Sherrill Ferrera. “We’d send each other golf jokes and hometown news and whatnot,” he said.

  Gene and Sherrill now spend their summers at his home in Elk Grove and winters at hers in Ocala, Florida, where they play golf and volunteer two days a week for an organization that sends supplies to troops overseas and veterans at home. A six-handicap in his 70s, Earl was still shooting his age in his mid-80s.

  After coaching our ’79 team to a state title, his ’80 team was upset in the regional finals, the year Jackie Joyner’s team won the championship. The following season, he brought Niles West back to the Elite Eight, where they would finish in fourth place. And the next year, Becky Schnell’s senior year, the team lost in the sectional finals to New Trier.

  In his first four years as a girls’ coach, Gene Earl’s teams were 101–10. After that, they tailed off with several seasons at or near .500 before bouncing back with a 24–4 season in ’88. Following that year, Earl was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He was humbled by the honor.

  “Nobody would have ever heard of Gene Earl if we hadn’t won the championship,” he said. “The memories would have been there, but had you girls not won the ball games, I would have been just another unknown assistant coach. Jim Braun [the Pioneer Press sportswriter] said I came out of obscurity. I would have stayed in obscurity if I hadn’t taken the girls’ job. I wouldn’t have been a basketball coach ever again.”