Being a Girl in a Boys’ World

by Juliet Bailey Bischoff

In 1971, I graduated from Santa Barbara High School, a year before Title IX became law.

My memories as a female athlete swimmer are now somewhat comical, and to the younger generations, slightly unbelievable. Really, it doesn’t seem that long ago!

I remember the many boys’ teams with their new uniforms, including sweatsuits, the knowledgeable coaches, the assistant coaches, the new equipment, the weight room, the buses provided to meets on other campuses, and the junior and varsity letters and jackets.

In contrast, we girl swimmers received bathing suits that had the proud Olive and Gold colors, in wide stripes that could not have been designed any better to make our derrieres seem any bigger. The swimsuits were so roomy you felt as though you were swimming with a bucket on your chest. So, we held carwashes and did other things to earn the money to buy new team swimsuits.

Sweatsuits? What sweatsuits? Coaches? Our coach was the girls’ tennis team coach. After winning a swim meet we threw her in the pool.

And then we had to rescue her.

We didn’t know she couldn’t swim, but we had noticed she knew almost nothing about swim meets or workouts.

Buses? What buses? We provided our own transportation. My donation to our “fleet” was a 1961 green Chevy pickup with a horn that went off and whose passenger door opened whenever we made a left turn. We had so much fun with that truck.

I remember happily going to the administration office to obtain my varsity letter and jacket. I was told only boys could do so.

Last year I took the opportunity to look at my three high school yearbooks. I discovered that in the years covering fall 1968 to Spring of 1971 there were eight to ten official Santa Barbara High School boys’ sports, including football, basketball, baseball, tennis, swimming, water polo, golf, track, and cross country.

In each yearbook, the boys’ sports section began with a full two pages of headshots of the 11 or 12 most outstanding male athletes followed by 40 or so pages of pictures of team photos, action shots, and glowing write-ups of the games or meets.

As a comparison, in all three of my yearbooks from fall 1968 to Spring 1971, the only two SBHS girls’ sports of swimming and tennis were graced with one page each and no pages of any outstanding female athletes.

In my senior yearbook the only action photo was of three girls in the pool. “The caption read, “Members of the girls swim team plan for victory.” That sounded good, until one realized the terrified girls clutching the side of the pool were in the beginning swimming class.

What else do I remember? In my senior year, I’m not quite sure how but I became the assistant “coach” of the boys’ swim team and water polo teams. I do know that being classified as “assistant coach” got me out of lots of classes, and that it probably had more to do with the many, many, tins of chocolate cookies I baked the night before each meet for the bus ride home.

Are Sports Important?

Totally.

Are sports instrumental in helping girls develop so many wonderful life changing characteristics such as discipline, teamwork, humor, grace when winning and losing, compassion, determination, and much, much more?

Absolutely.

The road after Title IX was filled with progress and advancements for young women in sports, which translated into opportunities in the working and other worlds which were unimagined and unachievable in my high school days.

And then recently things took a detour, a detour devastating to so many girls and incomprehensible to someone who showered and shared female locker rooms year after year. I cannot imagine having to share showers, bathrooms, and changing rooms with boys, especially at that age. I cannot imagine competing in the pool or in most any sport against males.

I raised two boys. In elementary school they would bring their male friends home to challenge me in arm wrestling. I always won. But I was smart enough to know that wasn’t going to continue very far into junior high or high school. Their male bodies developed the upper body strength and higher center of gravity females don’t have. For years my sons believed I could still win. Now we laugh about it.

Sports were crucial to my life and still are. Title IX changed the world for female athletes and should continue in its role of protecting female athletes now and in the future. We have come so far; let’s not slide backwards.

So, let’s celebrate and embrace Title IX, and let the games begin!

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