Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher - Better Newspaper Contest
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/96748
Division 5 Best In-Depth Feature or Feature Package/Category 10 First place 40 year anniversary of Title IX Sam King, Journal & Courier (Lafayette) Comments: Sam King���s report on the 40 years of Title IX included information on 10 local athletes. Great local angle on a major issue. Great writing! Second place Walking in the shadows of 9/11 Mark Bennett, Tribune-Star (Terre Haute) Comments: Solid reporting. Good job with strong writing. Third place Hoops��� heyday Tim Brouk, Journal & Courier (Lafayette) Comments: Good local story on the heyday of local hoops in this county. Good writing. 40 year anniversary of Title IX Sam King Journal & Courier (Lafayette) A track and field athlete once asked Benton Central standout Jan Conner, ���Does your school have a basketball team?��� Conner grudgingly admitted, ���No, we don���t have a basketball team.��� Imagine that heartbreak for a superior athlete in basketball-crazed Indiana. Conner set 14 state track and field records with the Bison and went on to become the best basketball player on Indiana State University���s team before becoming a hall of fame coach. ���It was hard. We wanted to have a basketball team but they wouldn���t let us,��� said Conner, who recently retired as a teacher at Lafayette Jeff. ���They said it was a contact sport and girls shouldn���t be playing basketball, yet in northern Indiana they���d been playing basketball for years.��� Conner, a 1970 graduate of Benton Central, was ahead of her time. She was, however, more fortunate than some. Her high school had a select few girls sports, and her dominance allowed her to become the first Indiana high school girl to earn an athletic scholarship when she committed to ISU���s track program. Forty years ago today, Title IX made it possible for females everywhere to get that exposure. The law, passed on June 23, 1972, afforded women opportunities not before seen in education, employment and ��� what it will mostly be remembered for ��� athletics. Before Title IX Connie Garrett admits she���s jealous. As an athletic female growing up in Marion, she competed with the boys on the playground. They eventually stopped including her. At Marion High School, girls were members of the pep block at basketball games. ���That���s what girls did and nobody thought anything of it,��� said Garrett, who coached Clinton Prairie to three state volleyball championships and a state girls basketball title. She is a member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. After college, Garrett became the GAA sponsor in Huntington. The Girls Athletic Association gave females limited opportunities to showcase their athletic talents. ���We would meet once a week and play whatever. It might be six weeks of volleyball, six weeks of basketball,��� Garrett said. ���Because I was just that way, I would call somebody in the area and say, ���Hey, do you want to get together and play?��� ���There was no athletic department in charge of it. Nobody had uniforms. We just got some T-shirts and put Page 52 numbers on them, did our thing and had fun doing it.��� Though Conner didn���t get a chance to play high school basketball, her skills in the sport didn���t go unnoticed once she arrived in Terre Haute. Conner was spotted in intramurals at ISU and was asked to join the basketball team. She became the team MVP. Indiana State was ahead of the game in women���s sports, which Conner cited as a reason for choosing to go to Terre Haute for college. Purdue wanted to start a track program and needed an athlete of Conner���s caliber. Conner wanted to go somewhere that already had established women���s sports. But there were setbacks too. Before a trip to Butler University, Conner was excited to play in historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the Indiana boys high school basketball championships were held. Hinkle was held in the highest regard by basketball fans. ���It was a sacred shrine,��� Conner said. Conner and the other starters were allowed to warm up prior to the game, but did not play. At Purdue, she played against the Boilermakers ��� not in Mackey Arena, but in the Co-Rec. Early years Cathy Wright-Eger was a freshman at Lafayette Jeff during the first year the Indiana High School Athletic Association recognized girls swimming as a sport. The Bronchos had a strong team that year and won the first girls swimming team state championship in 1975. The venue? Warren Central High School, not an ideal place for a state championship meet. ���It was little compared to now. Now they go to IUPUI and they have that gigantic pool,��� said Wright-Eger, the former Purdue women���s swimming coach and current leadership adviser for the John Wooden Leadership Institute. ������ It was at a high school, really crowded on deck. I remember us winning and throwing our coach in, and in my mind, it was just a little high school pool, not where you have big meets now.��� For Nancy Cross, girls basketball games were much different in Indiana than in her home state of Massachusetts. As a player in the outskirts of Boston, Cross was used to equal practice time. The girls would practice immediately after school; that privilege alternated with the boys each year. As a Purdue women���s basketball assistant under Ruth Jones, she would recruit players who were competing in empty gyms. Every shoe squeak echoed throughout, and every conversation from the few in attendance could be heard by all. When the Intercollegiate Athletic Facility was built on campus, the women���s basketball team was encouraged to play games there because of the smaller crowds. Jones refused. ���I remember Ruth Jones saying to me, ���If we give up playing in Mackey Arena, we will never get it back,��� ��� Cross recalls. ���She said, ���How can I ever bring a recruit here and show them what a phenomenal facility this is, but tell them you don���t get to play here? Our goal should be to get more people who support women���s basketball and come to games instead of admitting defeat and going to a smaller venue.��� ��� That began to happen when the Boilermakers were allowed to supply full athletic scholarships. The main recruiting target who helped that happen was current women���s basketball coach Sharon Versyp, a talented guard who was Miss Basketball at Mishawaka High School. The Boilermakers now have three Final Four banners hanging in Mackey Arena, including one for their 1999 NCAA championship. Equality? By the law, things were equal. In the eyes of many however, men were far superior to women and should be treated as such. In the early years at Clinton Prairie, where Garrett began coaching in 1972, she did not receive equal use of the gym. Same for Conner when she began coaching at Warren Central in 1975 and then after she returned to her alma mater, Benton Central, in 1977. Gail Gripe, who resigned last year as Lafayette Jeff���s volleyball coach, saw just how sexist things still were while coaching at Creston High in Grand Rapids, Mich. Gripe���s team won the state championship in 1980 over Wayne Memorial. Fans made the long drive to Dearborn, but there were two who noticeably didn���t: the school���s principal and athletic director. ���We needed to go down the night before and stay and (the athletic director) was so opposed to that. He gave me the hardest time,��� Gripe said. ���We would���ve had to leave at 2 or 3 in the morning. He didn���t give us any warm-ups. We played in old uniforms. It was so chauvinistic it wasn���t even funny.��� Gripe used her own money to purchase a photo of the state championship team, which hangs in the school recognizing the 1980 Creston volleyball team. Gripe cites the Lafayette Jeff athletic department���s For complete story, see www.hspafoundation.org. Click on ���Contests.���