Nikki on the Line

I love their cool, shiny uniforms.

Here’s what wasn’t cool (or lucky), though. When Bet­ty Helen played bas­ket­ball, the peo­ple in charge of girls’ sports thought that “vig­or­ous” exer­cise was “unla­dy­like” and harm­ful for girls. So, unlike the boys’ teams that played with five play­ers on the floor, all of whom ran up and down the length of the court, drib­bling, pass­ing, shoot­ing, play­ing both offense and defense, the girls’ teams played what was called “a half-court game.” Six play­ers from each team on the court. Three in the front­court on offense. Three in the back­court on defense. No play­er could cross the half­court line. Also, the girls could not run while drib­bling the ball (too vig­or­ous). If they caught a pass, they could only drib­ble once before pass­ing the ball to anoth­er girl.

Wow. That doesn’t sound much like bas­ket­ball, does it?

But still, Bet­ty Helen got to play on a team. Com­pet­ing against oth­er schools. Work­ing togeth­er with her teammates.

Hav­ing fun. 

I had fun play­ing bas­ket­ball, too. Espe­cial­ly because by the time I start­ed high school in 1970, some things had changed. The peo­ple in charge of girls’ sports had final­ly decid­ed that vig­or­ous exer­cise was okay for girls. (What a sur­prise!) So now we could play full-court, drib­bling-the-ball, run­ning-the-length-of-the-floor, every­one-plays-both-offense-and-defense bas­ket­ball. Just like the boys.

And like my moth­er-in-law, I was lucky! Because unlike many school dis­tricts across the coun­try, my school dis­trict in Cal­i­for­nia offered com­pet­i­tive sports for girls. Girls’ teams — just like boys’ teams — could play against teams from oth­er schools in our dis­trict. Our sports weren’t con­fined to our P.E. classes.

But here’s what wasn’t lucky.

Here I am with my Mon­ta Vista High School team­mates in 1971 (I’m #11 and my sis­ter is #12). Do you see what we’re wear­ing? Gym suits and tie-on pin­nies with num­bers, while the boys’ teams wore real bas­ket­ball uni­forms sup­plied by the school. And do you see where we’re sit­ting? Out­side on the black­top courts. We were only allowed to play in the gym when the boys weren’t using it. Also, unlike the boys, we played only our reg­u­lar-sea­son dis­trict games. No dis­trict play-offs. No region­al tour­na­ments. State cham­pi­onship games? Not a chance.