Course Correction

by Ginny Gilder

  But it’s hard to dispute the facts: 3:21 left on the clock and we are down by 12, a big margin for a team that’s far from home, playing in the Arizona desert. I’m not in the lineup myself. After all, basketball is a far cry from rowing, not to mention that I’m in my fifties now, but I am sitting in the visiting owners’ seats, watching the action closely and willing my players to pull off a miracle.

  There’s no sniff of desperation from my Seattle Storm players. They look focused as they switch to offense. Swin Cash starts the Storm’s comeback attempt by hitting an eight-foot running bank shot, drawing a foul by DeWanna Bonner, and making her free throw. Taurasi misses her next three-point attempt, Lauren Jackson’s jump shot from nine feet out swishes in, and our defense kicks in, forcing a pair of turnovers, including a steal by Camille Little, which culminates with her being fouled and going to the line for two, which go in. Down by five now. Another couple of Mercury misses (suddenly Taurasi has gone stone cold, oh sweet!), sandwiched by another Jackson bucket and one, courtesy of another Mercury foul. With thirty-two seconds left, Swin ties the score at 88 with an effortless lay-up, but it’s the Mercury’s ball and they call a time-out.

  I watch my team huddling with their coaches by the visitors’ bench, the WNBA franchise I purchased with three other women two-and-a-half years earlier when the then new owner of Seattle’s men’s and women’s professional basketball franchises, the Seattle Supersonics and Storm, respectively, decided to move his teams to Oklahoma. While our group could do nothing to avert the loss of the men’s team, we succeeded in keeping the women’s team in the city. It wasn’t like any of us had dreamed of owning a professional sports team, but this opportunity offered so much upside that pursuing the purchase proved irresistible: contributing to our community by keeping one of its gems safe and sound at home; helping to build the nation’s only women’s professional team sports league; showcasing top women athletes as leaders and role models; and promoting the concept of women as successful leaders in any business domain. Prior to the WNBA’s inception, only two women had bought majority stakes in professional sports teams instead of inheriting them. (Joan Payson was founder of the New York Mets in 1961; Marge Schott purchased a minority share of the Cincinnati Reds in 1981 and assumed majority ownership in 1984.) Who wouldn’t relish the idea of helping to bust the glass ceiling of professional sports team ownership? What better use of our dollars than to assume the financial risk for a business endeavor that married our shared love of sports with our commitment to social justice?

  We were playing for the Western Conference title. One step outside the arena, the weather, cloudless blue sky, 107 degrees, made me grateful that basketball was not an outdoor sport. The arena was cool and dark, but the players sweated visibly nonetheless.

  The year? 2010. The players on the court were all born at least ten years after Title IX’s passage. They grew up shooting hoops, earned full rides to play in college, and now were living their dream: playing basketball for a living. As for me and my co-owners—who grew up in the decade preceding Title IX and pioneered the legislation’s application to force the first changes in college sports venues—views on girls’ participation in sports had differed from community to community, college scholarships for female athletes didn’t exist, and the idea of playing sports for a living was a pipe dream for women. Now, sitting courtside at a game televised live by ESPN, our ownership group was in the hunt to claim the first championship in professional sports history by a franchise that was not just owned, but purchased by women.

  Time out over, the Mercury set up and Temeka Johnson attempts a jumper, which our star point guard, Sue Bird, blocks. She then grabs the rebound and signals another time-out. The clock shows 23.7 seconds left.

  I haven’t always known where to steer, but I’ve consistently pursued ways to express the passion that emerged from my years as a top athlete, increasing access to opportunity for marginalized populations. I probably wouldn’t have used that fancy phrase to explain my decision to participate in the Yale Women’s Crew strip-in or to rationalize my drive to make an Olympic team despite my shorter stature, but my wake offers proof of the course I’ve taken over the decades.

  My favorite occupation is to incite people not just to dream, and dream big, but to shrink the divide between imagination and reality to their point of convergence, setback by setback, step by step. My efforts focus on removing the barriers—cultural, situational, and financial—that narrow the route to a meaningful life, and I’ve dedicated myself to addressing those in the realm of sports. I didn’t exactly follow a straight line from my involvement in the sports world as an athlete to that of a business woman. I worked in a variety of domains on both the nonprofit and for-profit sides of the business aisle, usually as an entrepreneur, before I found my way home to sports. But that’s another story for another day. What’s important is that I landed where I belong.

  I own the Storm not because it’s a basketball team, but because it’s a professional sports team that offers the best female basketball players in the world the opportunity to do what they love as a career. Far from the college campus and Joni Barnett’s office where I stood with my teammates nearly forty years ago, our backs stained with Yale blue ink, now I stand with different partners, engaged in another sport, promoting the same ideal on a different stage: male or female, people deserve the same chance to reach for greatness.

  Fair or not, access to opportunity is never given freely. I am one of the lucky ones and one of the determined ones. I was in the right place at the right time to help challenge the status quo that relegated women athletes to secondary status, and I have chosen to set my course on realizing the ideal of parity between the sexes in sports. Perhaps this dream is fantastic and will always remain beyond our reach. Miracles do happen, however, although never by accident and never without extreme effort.

  Tanisha Wright receives the inbound pass that ends the Storm’s time-out, dribbles deliberately to reduce the time on the clock and ensure that the Storm’s last shot attempt will be the game’s last shot … under twenty seconds to go, now under ten. She passes to Sue, who catches the ball outside the three-point arc and puts it up immediately, not a hint of hesitation, but an instant’s evidence of the beauty that comes from being in the zone. Mercury players jump to deflect the ball, arms reaching high and flailing. As the ball swishes through the net, there are 2.8 seconds left. Phoenix calls one more, now desperate, time-out, and Taurasi takes the last shot, her third miss in a row. Game over in a whoosh of poetic justice. One of my partners, Lisa Brummel, envelops me in a gigantic bear hug. Damn, after all these years, winning still feels incredible; there’s nothing else like it.

  I strive to keep on course, still applying the life lessons that started accruing the first day I stepped into a rowing shell. My Storm players may have learned their lessons on a basketball court, my daughter on a soccer field, but, no matter what sport, the take-aways are fundamentally the same: never give in to your fear or up on your dream, go the extra mile, planning and hard work consistently pay off, and the power of teamwork is tough to beat. Simple phrases, trite off the tongue, yet tough to traverse in real time.

  Ready all, row.

  Acknowledgments

  This endeavor’s beginnings go way back, so I will begin by acknowledging my parents. Along with loving me as best they could and providing for me in nearly every way possible, they set me up with all the curiosities that make up my personality and well supplied me with grist for my mill.

  Jumping forward fifty years to 2008, Dara Torres, whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting, nonetheless inspired me to question my assumptions about my own limits. Her willingness to challenge accepted boundaries related to age and peak athletic performance on the world stage set me on course to write this memoir, by igniting my desire to train for the Olympics again. Michael Gervais, PhD, took the hand-off from Dara. He didn’t laugh me away when I first asked him to help me train for the 2012 Olympics, but took me seriou
sly, advising that “something unexpected will likely come out of this adventure.” He was right; my return to the water as a competitive rower opened the memory floodgates that flowed not to London, but right here.

  Thanks to Lisa Wogan, who didn’t snicker when I first shared my dream to write a memoir but directed me to Hugo House, Seattle’s Mecca for those seeking their muse, where I immersed myself in the world of writers and writing and luxuriated in the experience of learning as a fresh-faced (okay, not really) novice.

  Without Kelley Eskridge, I would still be stuck on page 100, unable to figure out where and how to go. Kelley served as my writing coach and editor, first helping me figure out what story to tell and then coaxing and cheering me through every paragraph, period, and page. Realistic, yet supremely knowledgeable, compassionate, and patient, she took my initial draft down to its foundation and guided me from there. A champion of the writing process, which in my case meant a seemingly endless loop of rewriting, Kelley buoyed me through writing’s rough waters in every way possible and, in doing so, floated into the realm of trusted confidante and friend. Without Kelley, you would not be reading this sentence.

  My beta readers agreed to peruse an early draft of the manuscript and provide unalloyed feedback, likely wincing in anticipation. To Ester Bailey, Susan Coskey, Nicola Griffith, Cathy Harvey, Charlie Stevenson, Ed Taylor, Joanie Warner, and Andrea Wenet, thanks for donating your only chance to read this book for the first time to the improvement of a version that needed your help to find its full self.

  My Yale Women’s Crew posse searched their memories and their files for various tidbits pertaining to our college years on the water and off and engaged in spirited e-mail exchanges to help me recall various incidents: Chris Ernst, Sally Fisher, Jenny Kiesling, Margaret Mathews, Elaine Mathies, Mary O’Connor, and Cathy Pew. Thanks also to Nat Case and Barbara Chesler at Yale University for generously making source materials available. Thanks to David LaBarge for affectionately reminiscing with me about why he stayed so adamantly in the closet while he was at Yale, and to Ann Strayer, who so generously allowed me to share part of her story without shortchanging the truth.

  Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith merit double mention, Kelley for introducing me to her wife and well-reputed author, Nicola, and Nicola for thinking her agent might like Course Correction and then introducing us. Stephanie Cabot, no doubt influenced by her experience with the world of rowing, courtesy of her two oldest children, both Division I collegiate athletes, stepped up to the not inconsiderable challenge of finding a publishing home for a new author writing about a minor sport. Of course, Stephanie got her job done, for which I will be eternally grateful. Without her optimism and dedicated follow-through, my dream of becoming a published writer would be wallowing in the muddy backwaters of bitter longing.

  Thanks to my always upbeat editor, Joanna Green, who sold my story to her compatriots at Beacon Press and helped me wend my way through the publication process with a minimum of angst. I appreciate the efforts of the entire Beacon Press team, including Susan Lumenello, managing editor, and Beth Collins, production coordinator, whose expertise improved my manuscript at every step. Pam MacColl, Beacon’s director of communications, led the way on the marketing front, aided by Lucinda Blumenfeld of Lucinda Literary, who coaxed me out of the shadows into social media’s sunshine. Together, Pam and Lucinda worked assiduously to get the word out about my story, with great spirit and keen eyes for opportunity. My executive assistant, Jennifer Harshbarger, handled logistics of every stripe with aplomb, allowing me to spread myself thin enough to get everything that needed doing accomplished.

  Last, and of course not least, there’s my family. I owe deep thanks to my siblings: Britt-Louise, who read the completed manuscript to discern the depths of upset to which the rest of my family might descend and, encouraged that this was no Mommy Dearest, gave me the emotional approval to proceed; my prickly brother and Latin scholar extraordinaire, Dr. Richard Gilder III, who debated declensions and precise meanings to arrive at the perfect phrasing of my dedication; and last but so not least, Peggy, who has protected me as often as she teased me, keeping me safe and toughening me up for well over five decades now.

  To my three children, Gilder, Max, and Sierra, whom I did not ask permission to mention, much less, in Sierra’s case, to share part of her story, I love you forever, no matter what. And, finally, to the person who read every word of every draft in between her full-time job and her graduate studies, who heard (and may be excused for not listening intently to) every passing concern and complaint about the writing and publishing process and managed to convey sincere interest and patient support every time, my wife, Lynn, thank you. Without you, I would not have the amazing life I have.

  Bibliographic Essay

  In writing this book, I relied on a number of secondary sources to paint the picture and progress of both the women’s and the gay liberation movements from the 1950s to the present. In addition, I occasionally relied on the memories of my Yale Women’s Crew teammates to bolster my own.

  CHAPTER 4

  I had several wide-ranging conversations with Chris Ernst on several dates, including June 9, 2009, October 1, 2009, October 18, 2009, and March 20, 2014, during which we discussed which Yale programs rowed at the lagoon, for how long, and the events that led to her decision to arrange a team protest in Joni Barnett’s office.

  I engaged in an e-mail exchange with Jennie Kiesling on March 14, 2014, regarding Nat Case’s immediate reaction to the strip-in and surrounding events.

  Joe Ristuccia, in an e-mail dated May 12, 2014, confirmed Tony Johnson’s financial support of the nascent Yale Women’s Crew program. Conversations with Joyce Majure and Janet Klauber on April 26, 2014, and follow-up e-mails on May 8 and 9, 2014, provided details on the history of the Yale Women’s Crew and the beginnings of the EAWRC.

  See also:

  Steve Wulf, “Title IX: 37 Words That Changed Everything,” ESPN Magazine online, April 12, 2012, http://espn.go.com/espnw/title-ix/article/7722632/37-words-changed-everything.

  In addition, the official US Olympics Committee books proved valuable in detailing various Olympics-related statistics; see United States Olympic Book 1980 (Colorado Springs: US Olympic Committee, 1980); and Dick Schapp, The 1984 Olympic Games (New York: Random House, 1984).

  For details on the beginnings of the Eastern Association of Women’s Rowing Colleges and the first women’s rowing regattas in the early 1970s, see Paula D. Welch, Silver Era Golden Moments: A Celebration of Ivy League Women’s Athletics (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1999).

  See also:

  Kathrine Switzer, “The Real Story of Kathrine Switzer’s 1967 Boston Marathon,” Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women’s Sports (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007), http://kathrineswitzer.com/about-kathrine/1967-boston-marathon-the-real-story/.

  Women in Higher Education, “The Real Story of the Passage of Title IX 35 Years Ago,” http://wihe.com/the-real-story-behind-the-passage-of-title-ix-35-years-ago/.

  Iram Valentin, “Title IX: A Brief History,” WEEA Equity Resource Center, 1997, http://www2.edc.org/womensequity/pdffiles/t9digest.pdf.

  Barbara Winslow, “The Impact of Title IX,” Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/03_2010/historian6.php.

  US Department of Education, “Title IX: 25 Years of Progress,” 1997, http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/TitleIX.

  CHAPTER 7

  For the history of women’s engagement in sports from the early twentieth century, with a specific emphasis of the impact of social attitudes on the choices made available to girls and young women who wanted to play sports, see Welch, Silver Era Golden Moments.

  I spoke with Chris Ernst on March 20, 2014, about how she handled being gay in the 1970s when she was at Yale, specifically in her role as captain.

  CHAPTER 8

  On May 28, 2014, David LaBarge and I had a long conversation about his homosexuality and slow progression
to living as an openly gay man in the early to mid-1970s.

  CHAPTER 10

  I used standard and commonly accessed online sources to obtain details related to the above, as well as the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter’s decision to boycott the Moscow Olympics, and Anita De-Frantz’s challenge of his decision.

  DeFrantz v. United States Olympic Committee, http://www.leagle.com/decision/19801673492FSupp1181_11510.

  I obtained details regarding the celebration and associated events the US government hosted for US Olympians in the wake of the boycott of the Moscow Olympics from United States Olympic Book 1980 (Colorado Springs: US Olympic Committee, 1980).

  CHAPTER 15

  I used standard and commonly accessed online sources to obtain statistics on the growth of women’s participation in the Olympics.

  International Olympic Committee, “Fact Sheet: Women in the Olympic Movement,” update May 2014, http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Reference_documents_Factsheets/Women_in_Olympic_Movement.pdf.

  Beacon Press

  Boston, Massachusetts

  www.beacon.org

  Beacon Press books

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2015 by Virginia A. Gilder

  All rights reserved

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  Design and composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gilder, Ginny.

  Course correction : a story of rowing and resilience in the wake of Title IX / Ginny Gilder.