<p>If you are as old as I am, I seriously doubt it!! For the most part, there weren’t any girls high school sports when I graduated from HS in 1971. This came up in conversation the other day. I had to go back to my yearbook to make sure. We had a “Girl’s Athletic Association” (GAA). Looks like they dabbled in gymnsastics, and synchronized swimming, but in the “sports” section (= team sports) there are only boys sports. It is hard for me to imagine some of these sports without girls teams, track and field (NO GIRLS) , baseball, golf, tennis (NO GIRLS!), football, cross country (NO GIRLS) wrestling, swimming (NO GIRLS), and basketball. (No soccer, no lacrosse at my HS) </p>
<p>Thanks to Title IX girls in HS (and college) today have lots of opportunities to play team sports. Is this the biggest difference between HS today and 30 years ago? Most of the yearbook looks just like today’s high school. The girls wore shorter skirts in 71 (showed more leg); they wear shorter shirts today (show more belly). I know you want to say “computers” are the biggest difference, but I still think the biggest difference in the HS experience is girls sports.</p>
<p>I have a letter that I saved from high school explaining Title IX to parents, specifically why girls could now take shop and boys home ec. </p>
<p>My class was also the last one where boys were given choices in gym and girls were assigned to specific classes like dance and gymnastics. </p>
<p>I played for a short while on my high school softball team. That would have been around 1973. </p>
<p>My class was also the first to be allowed to wear pants in junior high school. Well, the girls that is.</p>
<p>Oh, and as far as computers, the aforementioned letter looks like an original, typed on a typewriter. There were several thousand kids in my school district, I wonder if they really typed all those letters one by one or if there was some system. Scary. And attendance in my high school was taken on those newfangled computer punch cards, I can’t remember what they were called.</p>
<p>I graduated just as Title IX was enacted so I missed out. The only girls sport offered at my high school was basketball. The players wore jumpers! And that was in the day when guards “guarded” the basket, i.e. stayed in the back court and couldn’t score. There was Little League in my hometown and on summer evenings I would go and watch the boys play. It never crossed my pre-lib mind why there wasn’t a girls league. As the mom of 3 daughters, all of whom have played organized sports since they were little, I say thanks to Title IX and the opportunities it has created.</p>
<p>Yep, this mom played in high school. Late 70’s, early eighties. Varisty tennis, varsity swim and varsity badminton. Also team captain, went to a big public in the southwest known for its sports programs. I guess it should not have surprised me that DS#1, DD#2 and DS#2 are recruited athletes???</p>
<p>DS plays college football, DD swims and dives so she is being resruited for both sports, and younger son is also a football player and a wrestler. Sports was a huge part of my high school life, heck it seems that was all I did, so my kiddos were in sports from a young age. They were all on swim teams, all rode horses, all play tennis and then as they got older they picked more specialized sports for themselves. I can’t get any of them to take up golf but maybe later.</p>
<p>Raising them in a single parent household would have been unthinkable without sports. It truly gave them all life skills of time management, fair play, good sportsmanship, the ability to win and lose gracefully, loyalty, commitment and responsibility.</p>
<p>It taught them the value of just showing up. It taught them self-reliance, self-esteem and the real treasure, of just finishing what you start. And like I said, coming from a home with no dad, the finishing part is a real big deal.</p>
<p>Kiddos know how to play and work hard. And I know I could not have taught them all that by myself.</p>
<p>So I guess sports in high school for me, also helped my kiddos as well.</p>
<p>My W was a varsity gymnast at U of M in the mid-70s. Once kicked out of their gym by none other than Bo Schemblecher, when the football team “needed the gym”!
She laughs that she could never make the team now, given the advancements in women’s athletics.
They received varsity letter jackets, but not the same as the men. That practice has since been discontinued.</p>
<p>My mid 60’s era NJ public hs had a good number of sports for girls–field hockey, cross-country, basketball, soccer and softball. They have added others as facilities were added for tennis and swimming. I don’t think anyone thought much of it although the cutest girls seemed more into field hockey.</p>
<p>This is interesting, my Mom and I were talking about this at Christmas. At our high school - she graduated in 1949, and I graduated in 1976 - there was girls’ athletics (no women back then) in her day, primarily volleyball, basketball and softball, but by my time in the mid-70s it was non-existent?! She taught for many years, and remembered some hogwash at that time about too much physical activity being bad for “the female parts”. We agreed, though, the real reason was the increased cost of football and basketball by the 70s. When she was in school, the football games were played during the day (no lights), referreed by whoever (paid refs in the 70s), and so on. It wasn’t just athletics, either, in her day there was a drama department and dances - my graduating class put on the first prom any of the kids could remember. Weird.</p>
<p>I graduated from high school in 1968 – from the only public high school (750 students) in a small city in upstate NY (pop. 8,000). There were plenty of sports for both sexes. The biggest difference was just in what sports were available. The girls had basketball, tennis, bowling, field hockey, volleyball, gymnastics, and archery. (I was on the varsity tennis team.) The boys also had basketball, tennis, and bowling, and also football, track, cross-country, and soccer. My school also had a GAA (Girls’ Athletic Association) – which was the equivalent of the boys’ Block Club for varsity athletes.</p>
<p>dcmom3 - Trip down memory lane. I too played girls basketball, when guards stayed on one half of the court and forwards the other. Do you remember when maximum # of dribbles was 2? While I was still playing (I think Lincoln was President), we had the radical evolution where there was one “roving” guard and one “roving” forward who could cross the center line.</p>
<p>I was on track team in junior high and high school- we didn’t really have anything else for girls- we did have gymnastics- but that was mainly for girls who took outside lessons in elementary, and there was tennis, but those whose parents didn’t belong to “clubs” did track.</p>
<p>My younger daughter is on a rec soccer team and has been for years, it is too competitive at the high school level though for her. She has also played volleyball but ditto for high school, she is planning on joining the high school track team though this spring.</p>
<p>I graduated in '72. I went to an all-girls school where sports or PE were required. I did water ballet (synchronized swimming in the spring) and competitive swimming (I was a diver) in the winter–and calisthenics in the fall. When I got to MIT, I continued to dive, and ended up on the swim team; no diving coach for the women’s team. Asked to join the men for diving practice. Was turned down. Complained. Then, thanks to Title IX, was offered a chance to “audition” to work out with the men. Passed the audition (with bruises from missing dives I’d never done before then) and continued to dive until I graduated. A few years later, the coach was coaching half men and half women, and had a nice crop of All-American divers, both male and female. Once the coach made up his mind that women could dive, he was completely fair, to give him credit. However, that “audition” was certainly hell. (I heard much later that he’d told one of the other divers that I “had balls.”) (Moderator: please don’t censor that. It was a common way to describe aggressive women in the 70s, and really should be left in!)</p>
<p>Because I attended an all-girls’ HS (‘70), we did have sports, but I didn’t qualify for basketball (too short). I did bowl (candlepins) but we never competed. On my own, I also did skating. Once I got to college, I participated in as many PE classes as possible and was on the intercollegiate sailing and crew teams. Did my senior year at another institution where I was on that school’s first varsity women’s crew team and received a varsity jacket (women’s crew team moniker but in men’s sizes only). I’m surprised when I look at my H’s HS yearbook to see no girls’ sports.</p>
<p>I’m glad that HS’s today offer sports to girls. S wrestled and D played volleyball. D also did junior wrestling in 7th grade. Our HS did have a separate girls’ wrestling team for several years that had grapplers that won national championships, but then the coaching staff changed and the girls graduated. Now it’s a mixed gender team. I should confess that I got very involved with helping the wrestling team and at one point was going to help start a mom’s wrestling group. Talk about playing sports vicariously!</p>
<p>I graduated from a public h.s. in 1970. I know for sure that we had girls basketball and that girls played on the tennis team – other than that I can’t remember any sports. I wasn’t involved in athletics myself.</p>
<p>I graduated from public school in 72. We didn’t have official girls teams that played “real” games like the boys did, but we had 7th period PE called “girls sports.” The best athletes were in that class and played all of the sports (tennis, basketball, volleyball, softball and track) against the other high schools in our area. It was all rather informal and small. In our school of 1,500 students, there were about 25 girls that got to play sports.</p>
<p>I went to an all-girls boarding school ('74) and everyone played sports. We did field hockey, basketball, lacrosse and softball. The only people excused were the dancers (it was also a school for performing arts). There was a team for every level and we played against other schools in the area…There were some mighty miserable girls on that field hockey pitch, but I loved it.</p>
<p>This is a great thread. A subject very near and dear to our hearts.</p>
<p>I played JV tennis and was terrible, but I had fun. Ran track for about two weeks and quit because I <em>did not want to run laps!</em> My best sport was and is skiing; I am much more comfortable on 200’s on a black diamond run than I am in high heels on stairs.</p>
<p>As an adult I picked up tennis again and am now a pretty decent player. </p>
<p>So happy my DD is able to be an athlete, excel, compete. Sports have been great for her, physically & socially. She loves the game. She is really eager to play in college.</p>
<p>I attended a department of defense school overseas. Graduating class of 22. So I could be on any team that I chose. But the whole bouncing a basketball while actually moving down the court was a little too much for me. I was good at free throws though.</p>
<p>Played varsity tennis three years, track three years, swam three years. In college I played intramural (social) coed volleyball and LOVED it.</p>
<p>I have also recently picked up tennis again after a twenty five year period. I joined a league. I think I am the oldest singles player in the league :-/.</p>
<p>Anyway, I have always required that my daughters participate in at least one sport or physical activity. They can choose the activity and I support whatever they choose.</p>
<p>Only one daughter has chosen any of my sports, Oldest d is a good swimmer. She played varsity volleyball also. Little d is currently trying every sport she has time for and pursuing them all with great enthusiasm.</p>
<p>3togoMom skiied for her high school team in the early 70s … this was in Vermont and I doubt there were many other sports available to the girls then.</p>
<p>In the fall of 74 I started my sophomore year in high school and my school had maybe 3 sports (volleyball, basketball, and softball) for girls … I ran cross country and track and 2-3 girls ran on the boy’s teams because it was the only team available. The next year Title IX really kicked in at my high school (and the local county) and the girls had a full slate of sports … Xcountry, track, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, softball, soccer, etc … the increase in the number of participants was amazing. For example, as a sophomore I believe 2 girls ran on the boy’s cross country team … as a senior our girl’s team came in second in the state with probably 20 girls in the team.</p>
<p>It was a time of an amazing increase in participation … a long overdue outcome … also a time of a lot of affirmative action arguments (my JV basketball team had to practice at 5:30-6:00 in the morning because the school did not have gym times for both both girl’s and boy’s teams to practice … a lot of lunchtime “discussions” about the “fair” way to divy up the gym time).</p>
<p>Did anybody else out there play deck tennis and nine-court basketball in PE? We also were graded on posture and expected to wear bloomers (with our first initial and last name embroidered on the left leg) with white short-sleeved shirts with collars. And this was a public HS (all-girls)!</p>