DEBORAH CROMBIE: I know I've mentioned here on the blog that my granddaughter (who will be TEN tomorrow!! Happy birthday, Wren!) is playing soccer, and how much I LOVE going to her games. I tried to get a good action shot last night but it's hard when they're moving so fast!
Obviously, I love supporting her, but I also love supporting all the girls. It's been fascinating to watch their personalities and characters develop over the couple of years the team has been together, and to see their strengths in the way they play and interact with one another. I love that they are such good sports–more important than any athletic achievements, in my opinion. They're good natured when they lose and they're kind to their opponents. You wouldn't guess Wren's team lost from this picture with her dad!
My daughter played sports, too (as she reminds me!), a couple of years of soccer and then softball up into early middle school, when she switched to gymnastics.
I, however, did not, and I envy these girls the experience. Before Title IX in 1972, a few high schools had girls' basketball and volleyball teams, but there was nothing organized for younger girls. Girls were expected to want to be cheerleaders and that was pretty much it.
Would I have been any more athletic or coordinated if the opportunities had been available? Maybe not, but I'm sorry I missed that boat, and really glad I get to experience it vicariously!
How about you, dear REDs? Did you play sports? Did/do your kids/grandkids play sports? And did you love it or hate it?
RHYS BOWEN: I had sporty high achieving parents. My mom was a schools high jump champion. My dad a good soccer and cricket player. I started tennis when I was 8 and it was a big part of my life until I was in my 60s and got a damaged disc between my shoulder blades. I played for school, college and in various groups. In school I was also on the netball team. In college captain of table tennis ( in which I still play a mean game!)
Going to a girl’s school we had every sport offered to us. My own kids started on swim teams when they were five and some moved to water polo ( still an important sport for Jane and daughter Meghan) They play golf and pickleball.
I also watch any sport on TV ( except darts and bowling. Too boring)
I should add that the one sport I hated was watching my grandson in high school wrestling! Horrifying!
HALLIE EPHRON: There were virtually no sports for women (pre Title 9) when I was in grammar school. We had “gym” every day but all I remember is lining up in size places and taking a shot at the basket and playing dodge ball. In high school, having to take swimming was pure torture, and I had a very frequently recurring “period” that excused me.
Things are so much better now. My daughter played soccer – on the girls team and a coed team. She liked the girls team better. My granddaughter is on the swim team and does gymnastics and (heaven help me) “cheer.” It’s great, but exhausting from a parent’s perspective, having to show up (which we WANT to do) at so many events and cheer her on.
DEBS: That's a lot, Hallie! Wren is still in gymnastics, but it's very low key, and I'm not sure how much longer that will last with the demands of soccer.
JENN McKINLAY: YES! Basketball, volleyball, and judo as a youth. Volleyball as an adult. And now, I’m taking Tai Chi in an adult ed class because why not? I was a kid in the seventies and a tween/teen in the eighties so sports were a big thing for girls. Mostly, I got lucky that I had a sibling less than a year older than me and he included me in everything so I also played hockey, skateboarded, kayaked, hiked, fished, boogie boarded, and skied. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff, too. Looking back, we were very busy in the best possible way.
HANK PHILLIPI RYAN: Argh. ALL I wanted was to be on some team, any team, anything. There were no girls teams, though, not formally, it was more “let's play softball during gym class.” But there was no one worse at sports than I–maybe because I refused to wear my glasses, which does create problems. Always chosen last. And “PE” in those horrible horrible horrible snap up the front gymsuit things was, to use Hallie’s perfect word, torture.
I was a pretty good horseback rider, I have to say, back in the day. And I could actually ice skate pretty well, strangely. And I was in all the plays–that kind of team sport I could do.
LUCY BURDETTE: I regret that there weren’t sports for girls when I was growing up, but girls did dancing and cheerleading. Boys played the sports. In another world, our daughter Molly was a very talented athlete with a lot of options. She played soccer and lacrosse, and then lacrosse for UC Berkeley. Her kids are not as driven, which I think is a disappointment, or at least a puzzle. John and I had lots of fun watching Thea play soccer last time we visited. Her team won their first tournament, and as you can see in the photo, she was thrilled.
DEBS: So cute! And that trophy is enormous!
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I straddled the Title IX era - it was passed when I was in grade school, but the tiny and always underfunded rural school I went to after we came back from Germany couldn’t support many teams. There was field hockey for girls, which I played with zest, and I was in the ski club, which started a life-long passion for alpine skiing. I skated a LOT, both in Germany, and in upstate NY, and when Mom married Dad and we moved to the Finger Lakes, I got my boating and sailing licenses. I still sail whenever and wherever I can.
Other than that… not so much, and I’ve had to be grudgingly driven to exercise for my health. Ross loved riding (his parents were both professional equestrians) and racket sports. We used to joke we had to-the-manor born tastes in sports and a living-in-the-hovel income.
DEBS: I'll bet there are a lot of younger women who don't realize that girls weren't offered the opportunity to play sports. We take things for granted so quickly.
What about you, dear readers, guys and girls? Did you grow up playing sports? Was being part of team important?
I didn't play sports, wasn't part of a team. Instead, I danced. Our girls both were ice skaters . . . .
ReplyDeleteMy high school had softball, volleyball, and swim teams for girls, but I wasn't interested. I took ballet for many years and was a cheerleader at the end of high school. When I went to Brazil for a year at 17, I learned to play soccer, and at college we would have co-ed pick-up games on the lawn.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter-in-law played soccer into high school, and Ida Rose already has two soccer balls. Looking forward to that!
I might add that as an adult I have been active. I ran daily for years, earned a black belt in karate, cross-country skied whenever I could, hiked, and danced. Now I walk 11-12k steps a day and am grateful I still can, because the rest of it is over. I miss XX skiing the most, but my arthritic toe and stiff hips have ruled that out.
DeleteMy mother was an athlete in the 1930s in Alabama, to the sorrow of her mother. She was naturally gifted at tennis, basketball, and baseball. She rode horses and was a good shot. She won every sort of prize and the other kids nicknamed her "Mike," because she was so good at boy things. She was known as Mike McDonald when she married and was called Mike until she decided at 48 to go back to her real name. Mom taught my younger sister and me to throw and catch and to shoot baskets. Outside of school we were on swim teams, tennis teams, and softball teams. Our oldest sister was hopeless at sports but our grandmother finally had her little girl who loved to sew and knit. I had decent hand-eye coordination and always won those Presidential Fitness Awards patches (remember them?) but I didn't CARE about sports, I'd rather read and daydream. I play no sports today. It was our younger sister who was really like our mother athletically. Not only talented but with incredible drive. Jane broke every record at our elementary school and was shaping to be a track star in high school. Unfortunately in the early 1970s this was not cool so she quit and became a cheerleader and party girl instead. This derailed her for a long, long time, to her regret. Today at 65 she's still a fierce tennis competitor and her own daughters played sports year round and won running scholarships to the U.S. Naval Academy. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteSelden, congrats to your daughters! Go Navy!!
DeleteYour mother sounds like a force to be reckoned with! But also sounds as if she let each of you blossom in your own way rather than pressing you into her mold.
DeleteThank you, but those were my nieces, who grew up in southern California. My own daughter in the Adirondacks raced for the U.S. Biathlon team (cross-country skiing + rifle sharpshooting). :) Selden
DeleteI finished school long before Title IX. I was extremely skinny and not well coordinated, so in grammar school I was always chosen last. But, as a teen I danced modern dance and stuck with that through my 20's. I was a good swimmer, too, and up to just a couple years ago, was still swimming for exercise. My coordination improved immensely with the dance. In my 20's I took Karate lessons and dressage. I always loved horses. I continued to ride into my 30's and still did occasionally for years. We also skied every winter, something that I loved. .
ReplyDeleteIrwin played baseball through high school. He took up tennis and skiing and skating as an adult and was a very strong and competitive tennis player. In the winter, we spent lots of family time skiing and skating.
Jonathan is very well coordinated. He took Karate from age 5 and got his junior black belt at 13. He still dabbles in Marshall arts. In college, he was on the fencing team. We had him on skates and skis as soon as he was out of diapers. As a toddler, he was not thrilled, but we explained that this is what our family does in the winter. He played hockey until age 11 when the size difference between him and other skaters made it too dangerous. I let him decide whether to keep playing or not and was relieved when he gave it up. He played soccer for a long time, earning money as a ref for kid's games.
Rachel was a natural, strong and capable. When she was with us she also skied and I believe she was on her high school tennis team. Her boys are great athletes.
Our grandsons are all very active. Rachel's sons are very athletic, catching on quickly to every sport. The oldest is a competitive runner who is already competing in national meets. The younger one still plays a few sports, but is mostly settling into soccer. Jonathan's son swims all year. He also takes Karate lessons and has fun skiing. He has not shown the patience for team sports and with his temperament, he might never be one to join a team. We'll see.
I was a book nerd, so if we can call being on the debating team, than yeah, I played sports, otherwise, the only sports and team I was on was when we had gym.
ReplyDeleteI think anything that's about "winning" can be termed "sports"... I was terrified of the debating team. At my high school they were all guys. And a sort of macho ethic ruled.
DeleteBecause I 1) possess the Y chromosome, and 2) have all the athletic ability of a dead marmot by the side of the road (like Dru Ann, I was on the debate team), I really have no business speaking on this topic, but I will because I have daughters and granddaughters and friends of the double X persuasion. I fully support Title IX. I fully support the smashing of the glass ceiling. I fully support the right of every person to achieve the highest goal possible. And, yes, I fully support the right of trans people to participate in sports. I do not support mealy-mouth politicians and the so-called righteous who work to deny any human being of trying to reach their potential.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Jerry!
DeleteDouble Amen, Jerry!
DeleteI was the least sporty girl you can imagine. Always picked last for teams, unless the captain was a good friend. Phys. ed. was the worst - except for gymnastics, which I enjoyed. My PE teacher was shocked, years later, when she discovered one of the sportiest girls was my daughter. Obviously she didn't get the sporty gene from me.
ReplyDeleteDebs, don't you find that 10 year old girls are simply the best? At that age my granddaughter was more mature than either of her parents. For the most part it didn't last but while it lasted there was nothing better.
So where is the line where girls go from delightful to impossible, sullen, eye-rolling trolls? Which fortunately doesn't last forever. And do boys undergo the same transition??
DeleteI too was pre-Title IX. But I do remember we had all the usual high school gym sports which I loved as I considered myself somewhat athletic. We also had some all girls after school teams (I remember being on the girls field hockey team) which we were selected for. And I was on the girls track team. I loved gymnastics but wished I had had more personalized instruction from coaches.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a small community that was near the ocean so we were always at the beach, surfing (at least my brother was), body surfing, swimming at the several local pools. As an adult, I took up tennis, walking-jogging, tried skiing (but didn't fair well!). As an older adult - for many years I swam laps at the local Y and did some open water swimming at a local popular beach cove.
My dad grew up in the UK and played rugby, cricket and soccer. He was Portland State University's very first (men's) soccer coach in the late 1950s. We grew up paying attention to sports and kicking a soccer ball around, learning to dribble and pass at least. At high school in the '70s, the girls options were track and field, swimming (I loved to swim, but never competitively), volleyball, and softball--and cheerleading. If soccer had been an option, I might have tried out. By the time our younger sister came along, there was a girls soccer team, and she played for several years. We loved supporting her! My niece played soccer from the time she was tiny, but quit in middle school. That competitive, team motivation never really took hold for her. I only found out that I was competitive many years after high school when we had a Portland to Coast Walk relay team. I loved passing people (road kills).
ReplyDeleteI come from a long line of non-sporty people, on both sides of my family. Title IX came my first year at university. We still had physical Ed requirements so I took volleyball (I was terrible at it) swimming (I love to swim in warm ocean waters) and archery. Phy. Ed. In junior high and high school was akin to torture-except for the uneven bars and the little bit of gymnastics. And those awful one piece snap-up uniforms! My goddaughter and her twin sister were into sports. Adorable at 5 playing soccer! If I could change one thing about growing up I’d have added some sports ability to my love of spending all day reading!
ReplyDeleteField hockey and track for me, because my HS didn't allow girls to run cross-country, and soccer wasn't available. I rowed in college. My kids grew up in Atlanta, a city of year 'round sports: swim team, tennis, baseball, basketball, soccer. The single most memorable season: 8 year old rec basketball didn't keep score. The object was to learn the game and have fun. The girls loved it and the parents were frustrated.
ReplyDeleteI played basketball in the Wareham JBA organization for three years as a kid. That was my only organized team sports outlet. I didn't play football or baseball. However, I played pretty much every sport as part of my youth. Just not on any official team. Oh, and I did gymnastics for about three years as a kid.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I would go on to coach in the JBA for 25 years as the first player to ever come back as a coach. And some of my players would go on to coach as well. Some even on the high school level. One player, though I had absolutely nothing to do with it, is even a college football coach in the area. A couple others would go on to play college football in the area too.
And while I'm a guy, I did have a hand in coaching girls as well as boys. The last five years I coached, I coached in the girls division. I was tired of watching gawdawful coaching of girls by dads who didn't know what they were doing. A girl would get the ball at one end of the floor, run all the way to the other end without dribbling the ball, the ref would call traveling, and the girl would not know what she did wrong because the "coach" of her team would be on the sideline clapping and saying, "Good job!".
That was horrifying to me, because she didn't do a good job. She made a mistake. And if you are any kind of decent coach, you're going to tell her she made a mistake and then correct the mistake so she knows what she did and how to avoid it next time.
It took a while for me to get the league to let me coach a girls team because they had put a rule in place after a rather public scandal with a coach occurred the next town over on the high school level. So the rule was only fathers with daughters on the team could coach a girls team. Years went by and I finally was able to convince them to let me do it.
First team I had was in the summer league and my first intro talk to the team was telling them that, "I don't know what you're used to, but I'm not going to lie to you and say you did something right if you didn't. I'll tell you what you did wrong and then how to fix it." One of the girls (she was ten) piped up with, "You're going to tell us we suck?"
I was a bit stunned and said, "Who have you been playing for?"
Basically, I refused to treat them as girls on the court. I may have altered how I said things to them, but I coached them as "basketball players". The name of the game is "BASKETBALL", not "Girls Basketball" or "Boys Basketball". So I treated them accordingly. It took a couple of seasons but the girls I coached came around to how I did things and soon we started winning. Ended up having three title winning teams, two of which were undefeated.
Oh, and that girl who piped up? She would play 7 seasons for me and was an essential member of each team. I joked that she became like a basketball daughter to me. I had one of my players come back to coach with me. There were two that, and again I had nothing to do with it, went on to play Division 1 college basketball, and another girl won two state titles in high school. Of course, a lot of them would go on to become teachers, nurses, social workers and moms after their playing careers ended which is also great since very few of them (unlike some of my boys players) would go on to criminal records.
Oh, and I have a cousin who despite being handicapped by her parents utter lack of athletic skills, would become a total jock growing up. She played basketball, field hockey, track and won a New Hampshire state championship in soccer.
I'm not sure how important being "part of a team" was to me growing up. I just liked playing. The problem was even though I knew what to do, I wasn't a great athlete when it came to playing in the basketball league. Hell, I pretty much stunk. Couldn't translate what I knew to being able to do it. But those who can't do, coach...right?
My time coaching is long done but I still remember the fun I had back in the day.
Jay, what a great coaching story. I'm sure you were great. (Selden)
DeleteWhen I was in high school we played "girls basketball" which had very different rules. For instance, a player could only dribble 3 bounces before shooting or passing or throwing it away... We played on half a court so had no idea about "off sides" - weird game.
DeleteWhat a great story Jay - thanks for taking the time to tell it. Don't sell yourself short, I'm sure the many girls who became successful in basketball did so because they had good coaching.
ReplyDeleteDEBS: Your granddaughter Wren looks like a mini you! Regarding sports, if you asked me if I played sports when I was 6 years old, then I would have said yes. I remember how much I loved playing sports (kickball, baseball) during recess at my public school. However, if you asked me at the age of 9 if I played sports, then I would have said No because I would be thinking of sports at the boarding school because the sport teams were very similar to Hunger Games scenarios (very rough with lots of injuries).
ReplyDeleteHowever, sports can mean many different things. Though I started ice skating lessons at the age of two, I actually started skating at the age of six when I no longer needed to hold on to the rails or hold someone's hand. In high school, I joined a citywide swim team, which meant that the team members included teens from many different schools since most of the public high schools had NO swim teams. I continued my dancing classes. By sports, if you mean team sports, I would say Swim Team. If Sports include All kinds of exercise like Aerobics, Ballet, and Ice Skating, then yes.
No team sports, no eye-hand coordination--in PE we numbered off for teams (evens, odds). I might have enjoyed track--but we only had softball, basketball, volleyball for girls and the coach for all was our PE teacher. She was a sadistic b*tch who enjoyed tormenting me all through middle school and the two years of high school when PE was still mandated. Not sure what I ever did to antagonize her so thoroughly, but her greatest pleasure in life was to humiliate me in front of the class. Shining moment occurred in 10th grade, when the entire class dropped out of a softball game to walk the track with me (my punishment for being completely disinterested in participating).
ReplyDeleteAnd Jay, how we would've loved to have a coach who cared about our strengths and cheered us on!
Lucy, congrats to your granddaughter - we have a Cardiff Sockers Club in our area. I wouldn't be surprised if our grandkids played in competition with them a number of years back. Soccer is big in San Diego and we have a national womens soccer team that plays at Snapdragon Stadium.
ReplyDeleteDebs, your granddaughter is blessed to have you in her corner. I am a total klutz and PE/Gym was a nightmare for me. One semester I made honor roll except for a D in PE. My mom marched into that school and told the teacher that she needed to base her grading on effort as much as skill. I am happy to say I made the honor roll and survived PE. This reminds me of when my niece was in high school and there was no girl's soccer team so she tried out for the boy's team, made it and was better than many of the boys on the team. A lawsuit ensued and she was forced off the team. That was a sad moment. -- Victoria
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