From Three On a Side and Three Dribbles to Three Pointers
“A record is a record. I don’t want it to be the reason people remember me. I hope people remember me for the way I played with a smile on my face, my competitive fire. They can remember the wins but also the fun me and my teammates had together,” ~ Caitlin Clark
I have great admiration for Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball teammates. Caitlin, as has been widely reported, has become the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, man or woman, and also has the record for the most three-pointers. I have sat with these staggering statistics for the past week, which have brought back memories of my own basketball playing days. Three pointers? NCAA records? Oh, how far women’s basketball has come.
Fifty five years ago, as a senior at a high school in a small seaside village in Massachusetts, I was asked to join my school principal and the acting athletic director for a conversation about, of all things, ‘senior superlatives’ (best of everything: class clown, best looking, best dressed, most likely to succeed, etc.) for the yearbook coming out in that spring of 1970. He and the athletic director had tallied up the varsity letters won by all the boys and girls in our graduating class. Best athlete was one of two superlatives they had the power to pick (most intelligent was the other). As things stood, I had been awarded the most letters (field hockey, basketball and softball). Rumors were circulating that, although I was one of the captains for the field hockey team(which won the state championship that year), I planned to drop basketball and softball my senior year. They wanted to know if the rumors were true, even though they said it would not change the tally.
It was true. I intended to drop basketball and softball so I could spend winter weekends and school vacations at my father and stepmother’s home in Southern Vermont and skiing Bromley and Stratton Mountains. And I told them I had taken up tennis and would be switching from softball to join the tennis team in the spring. I also told them that had it not been for school sports politics, social restraints, abuse and outdated rules, there would be a handful of other very athletic girls in our Class of 1970 who were more deserving the award for most athletic.
I was thanked by the principal for my honesty and he assured me that I was deserving of the award as the girl who played sports in all three seasons in all my four years of high school. I never was certain as to why they wanted to talk to me, but I suspected that there may have been a political reason. The athletic director, who was also the basketball and softball coach, was not happy that I intended to drop off the softball team and about a complaint I had lodged about another coach who routinely peered at us as we showered. (I was, even then, already advocating for safer, saner and less stressful sports years before I dedicated my life’s work to protecting children playing sports, although I knew that my complaint was not appreciated by certain administrators.)
All but one other girl who started out with me as energetic freshmen athletes had dropped from sports teams after our freshman field hockey season ended abruptly when our coach caught all but one of us attending a Halloween dance (our first dance of high school) after being told not to. We accepted our punishment of being kicked off the team, and it could have ended there but our parents were irate that one girl (a favorite of the coach) managed to avoid being seen at the dance and stayed on the team.
By senior year, I had decided that school sports were no longer fun. Girls’ basketball had not progressed much at all since 1892 when my grandmother’s alma mater Smith College started playing women’s basketball. Seventy-seven years later, girls’ basketball was still only three on each side of the court, players could not cross the center-court line, and could only take three dribbles before passing off the ball. We had to iron a white shirt each night before our game to be worn with our skirted uniforms with a tartan sash tied just right. If we violated these rules we would be benched. The passage of Title IX in 1972 brought about major changes, but they were too late for me and my teammates.
I love that Caitlin Clark can say what all girls should be able to say: “I hope people remember me for the way I played with a smile on my face, my competitive fire.” I know the Caitlyn Clark effect won’t end with her. Little girls, whatever sport they play, whether it be softball, basketball or field hockey, can be proud to be called athletes and earn the senior superlatives many pre Title Nine girls like me spurned.
Producer: The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer (PBS)
Author: Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (Harper Collins)
Coalition Member: UNICEF International Safeguards of Children in Sports
NCAA-DoD Mind Matters Grand Challenge (Concussion Education) winner
CDC advisor: Heads Up awareness program
HuffPost Contributor: Link to articles
Medium Contributor: Link to articles
