Springfield’s Alma Uphoff Liebman used a mocking tone to describe early girls basketball regulations in Illinois.
In the years before Title IX and before the Illinois High School Association allowed girls to compete on school teams, girls intramural basketball teams were often forced to play an odd style of the game. Instead of the familiar five-on-five full-court game, each girls team used six players at a time. Three from each team were stationed on one half of the court, and three were stationed on the other half “because it was too hard on us to play full court,” said Liebman, her voice full of sarcasm.
“Half court basketball’s not basketball,” said one of the Springfield area’s first girls basketball coaches.
Over at Lanphier High School, Cindy Luton joined the staff in 1968 and quickly started pushing for girls sports teams. She played basketball at Illinois State University, but initially coached field hockey because the Illinois High School Association didn’t lift its ban on girls basketball until the 1972-73 season.
It wasn’t even until the mid-1960s that the American Medical Association explicitly debunked the idea that strenuous exercise was detrimental to women’s health or their ability to bear children. Resistance came from administrators concerned about finding gym time and allocating enough space for girls teams. The IHSA worried about who would coach and officiate girls games. Once formed, girls basketball teams often fought for gym time and funding.
Then, in 1972, Title IX changed the playing field.
“I knew it was coming,” Luton said about girls and women’s sports, but added, “you needed that extra push” to make large-scale changes to improve conditions for female athletes.
That extra push came with Title IX, a federal act that forced schools to offer equal opportunities to both genders. A new oral history exhibit through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield called “What About the Character of the Girls?: Girls’ and Women’s Basketball in Illinois, 1968-1977” chronicles the efforts of pioneers such as Luton who pushed for social change and used Title IX to give athletic opportunities to female students.
Title IX
Enacted in 1972, the 37 words in Title IX mandate equal opportunities for women. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the act, which requires girls have the same chances at any school, from preschool to college, that accepts federal funding, said three-time-Olympic gold medal swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation.
The legislation requires schools to be fair in every area, from the math classroom to the soccer field. There must be an equal opportunity to participate, equal scholarship money and equal treatment in terms of playing time, facilities, uniforms and quality coaching.
Congress allowed schools time to create an entirely new program of sports. Schools needed to find the resources to duplicate existing athletic opportunities.
Basketball has been a major beneficiary of Title IX, Hogshead-Makar said.
“It has been a revolution,” she said. “Girls were acutely aware of their second class status prior to Title IX. It’s hard for us to imagine today how far we’ve come, but we still have a long way to go.”
Ellyn Bartges interviewed women’s basketball pioneers from throughout the state for “What About the Character of the Girls?” She started the project during master’s and doctoral programs at Western Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“These were ordinary people in so many ways but also extraordinary,” Bartges said. “They really wanted their charges, their students, to have something that they didn’t.”
Bartges played in the first women’s high school state tournament in 1977. Her Hinsdale South High team lost in the quarterfinals on a controversial end-of-game call to Palatine’s William Fremd High. Bartges later coached basketball at Macomb High School, and worked as an assistant coach at Penn State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“Change is rarely fast, but it seemed to move forward,” Bartges said. “Title IX provided the opportunity and the mandate that brought in some places almost instantaneous change. In other places, change was slower.”
Early coaches sought to prove sports would provide the same benefits for girls as boys.
“Athletics for boys had proven to be an effective means of shaping character,” Bartges said.
It’s now clear women who participate in sports are healthier and are less likely to get breast cancer, heart disease and other chronic diseases. These girls are less likely to smoke and use illegal drugs, become pregnant, be depressed or commit suicide, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. The foundation also cites studies showing high school athletes also perform better in the classroom than their peers.
Playing a sport “gives anyone in those situations the opportunity to learn what’s it’s like to be a team member and not just a lone wolf,” Bartges said.
The beginnings
In the years before Title IX, organizations formed to promote collegiate women’s sports and other opportunities. Physical education instructors created the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in 1966 to national sports tournaments for girls. In 1969, Pennsylvania’s West Chester State won the first National Invitational Championship in women’s collegiate basketball. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women started in 1971, the year before Title IX allowed for more opportunities at the high school level.
Before Title IX, fewer than 300,000 women played high school sports and they received next to no funding, Hogshead-Makar said. Today, there are about 3.1 million girls playing high school sports.
“You just don’t get numbers like that, huge shifts in behavior, without some kind of legislation,” Hogshead-Makar said.
When former Illinois State women’s basketball coach Jill Hutchison played college basketball, women’s games were part of sports days. There were about four sports days for basketball each year, and the teams only played two games a day. Hutchison coached at Illinois State from 1970-1999 and is the winningest coach in the school’s basketball history, male or female. She worked to create opportunities for high school girls.
“I was a huge advocate,” Hutchison said about launching the early women’s high school teams. She led free coaching clinics to help those new to teaching the game. She also hosted camps for players.
However, getting an opportunity to play did not mean all things were equal to boys athletics.
Often, Springfield-area girls who played high school basketball in the early days had few resources. Funds were scarce and these teams commonly raised money to buy uniforms — if they wore uniforms at all.
“That was the spirit of expansion and of creating opportunities,” Bartges said.
The early women’s coaches often worked as physical education teachers. Some coaches came from Pennsylvania, Iowa and other states with established programs.
In Springfield, Luton’s first teams often practiced from 7 to 9 p.m. to get gym time — a common problem for early women’s teams.
Though there was resistance to females playing, the girls were thrilled just to be there. “They would do anything. They were so excited to play,” Luton said.
During her first year coaching at Lanphier, Luton made $40. After splitting that salary with an assistant coach, they chipped in for an end-of-year pasta dinner.
They spent about $19 each.
‘Basketball is basketball’
Despite the inequities, talent emerged during those early years.
Because of her on-court dominance in the 1970s, Springfield’s Lynn (Callahan) Riddley entered the Springfield Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. Springfield High retired her jersey number in 2004. She was the first girls player in Springfield history to have the number retired. In addition, she was elected to the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Riddley still holds records for points per game in the Girls City Tournament, points per tournament, field goals per game and field goals per tournament.
In a single game in 1977, the 5-foot-11 senior scored 48 points against Sacred Heart. As part of an athletic family, Riddley grew up playing sports. Her sister, U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, is in the Illinois College Hall of Fame for her basketball and volleyball careers.
Riddley said she couldn’t imagine what her high school years would have been like without basketball and volleyball.
“I didn’t realize when I was playing, we were kind of the pioneers,” Riddley said.
Kris Glintborg started coaching women’s basketball at Springfield High in 1978.
“Basketball is basketball, no matter what the gender,” he said when he applied.
He had no assistant his first year, coaching both the varsity and junior varsity on his own. While the school had a brand new gym, the girls typically practiced in an older, upstairs facility. They had to compete with boys basketball and wrestling for floor time, but Glintborg says the girls were eager to play.
The girls used a regular sized ball in those days. Glintborg said he stressed fundamentals since his early players hadn’t played structured basketball for years. He says girls and women’s teams today often demonstrate a better grasp of fundamentals than their male counterparts.
While funding is still at the root of inequality in girls athletics, today’s teenagers grew up in a different culture. While Bartges and her peers often heard people say they couldn’t play sports or compete in other areas because they were girls — athletic girls back then were not considered feminine — that language is no longer common. Women’s sports continue to progress.
“You don’t hear that now,” Bartges said. “There’s a big difference and as more years march on and as women continue to get better training and better conditioning.
“They will continue to advance, there’s no question in my mind.”
In the years before Title IX and before the Illinois High School Association allowed girls to compete on school teams, girls intramural basketball teams were often forced to play an odd style of the game. Instead of the familiar five-on-five full-court game, each girls team used six players at a time. Three from each team were stationed on one half of the court, and three were stationed on the other half “because it was too hard on us to play full court,” said Liebman, her voice full of sarcasm.
“Half court basketball’s not basketball,” said one of the Springfield area’s first girls basketball coaches.
Over at Lanphier High School, Cindy Luton joined the staff in 1968 and quickly started pushing for girls sports teams. She played basketball at Illinois State University, but initially coached field hockey because the Illinois High School Association didn’t lift its ban on girls basketball until the 1972-73 season.
It wasn’t even until the mid-1960s that the American Medical Association explicitly debunked the idea that strenuous exercise was detrimental to women’s health or their ability to bear children. Resistance came from administrators concerned about finding gym time and allocating enough space for girls teams. The IHSA worried about who would coach and officiate girls games. Once formed, girls basketball teams often fought for gym time and funding.
Then, in 1972, Title IX changed the playing field.
“I knew it was coming,” Luton said about girls and women’s sports, but added, “you needed that extra push” to make large-scale changes to improve conditions for female athletes.
That extra push came with Title IX, a federal act that forced schools to offer equal opportunities to both genders. A new oral history exhibit through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield called “What About the Character of the Girls?: Girls’ and Women’s Basketball in Illinois, 1968-1977” chronicles the efforts of pioneers such as Luton who pushed for social change and used Title IX to give athletic opportunities to female students.
Title IX
Enacted in 1972, the 37 words in Title IX mandate equal opportunities for women. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the act, which requires girls have the same chances at any school, from preschool to college, that accepts federal funding, said three-time-Olympic gold medal swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation.
The legislation requires schools to be fair in every area, from the math classroom to the soccer field. There must be an equal opportunity to participate, equal scholarship money and equal treatment in terms of playing time, facilities, uniforms and quality coaching.
Congress allowed schools time to create an entirely new program of sports. Schools needed to find the resources to duplicate existing athletic opportunities.
Basketball has been a major beneficiary of Title IX, Hogshead-Makar said.
“It has been a revolution,” she said. “Girls were acutely aware of their second class status prior to Title IX. It’s hard for us to imagine today how far we’ve come, but we still have a long way to go.”
Ellyn Bartges interviewed women’s basketball pioneers from throughout the state for “What About the Character of the Girls?” She started the project during master’s and doctoral programs at Western Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“These were ordinary people in so many ways but also extraordinary,” Bartges said. “They really wanted their charges, their students, to have something that they didn’t.”
Bartges played in the first women’s high school state tournament in 1977. Her Hinsdale South High team lost in the quarterfinals on a controversial end-of-game call to Palatine’s William Fremd High. Bartges later coached basketball at Macomb High School, and worked as an assistant coach at Penn State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“Change is rarely fast, but it seemed to move forward,” Bartges said. “Title IX provided the opportunity and the mandate that brought in some places almost instantaneous change. In other places, change was slower.”
Early coaches sought to prove sports would provide the same benefits for girls as boys.
“Athletics for boys had proven to be an effective means of shaping character,” Bartges said.
It’s now clear women who participate in sports are healthier and are less likely to get breast cancer, heart disease and other chronic diseases. These girls are less likely to smoke and use illegal drugs, become pregnant, be depressed or commit suicide, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. The foundation also cites studies showing high school athletes also perform better in the classroom than their peers.
Playing a sport “gives anyone in those situations the opportunity to learn what’s it’s like to be a team member and not just a lone wolf,” Bartges said.
The beginnings
In the years before Title IX, organizations formed to promote collegiate women’s sports and other opportunities. Physical education instructors created the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in 1966 to national sports tournaments for girls. In 1969, Pennsylvania’s West Chester State won the first National Invitational Championship in women’s collegiate basketball. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women started in 1971, the year before Title IX allowed for more opportunities at the high school level.
Before Title IX, fewer than 300,000 women played high school sports and they received next to no funding, Hogshead-Makar said. Today, there are about 3.1 million girls playing high school sports.
“You just don’t get numbers like that, huge shifts in behavior, without some kind of legislation,” Hogshead-Makar said.
When former Illinois State women’s basketball coach Jill Hutchison played college basketball, women’s games were part of sports days. There were about four sports days for basketball each year, and the teams only played two games a day. Hutchison coached at Illinois State from 1970-1999 and is the winningest coach in the school’s basketball history, male or female. She worked to create opportunities for high school girls.
“I was a huge advocate,” Hutchison said about launching the early women’s high school teams. She led free coaching clinics to help those new to teaching the game. She also hosted camps for players.
However, getting an opportunity to play did not mean all things were equal to boys athletics.
Often, Springfield-area girls who played high school basketball in the early days had few resources. Funds were scarce and these teams commonly raised money to buy uniforms — if they wore uniforms at all.
“That was the spirit of expansion and of creating opportunities,” Bartges said.
The early women’s coaches often worked as physical education teachers. Some coaches came from Pennsylvania, Iowa and other states with established programs.
In Springfield, Luton’s first teams often practiced from 7 to 9 p.m. to get gym time — a common problem for early women’s teams.
Though there was resistance to females playing, the girls were thrilled just to be there. “They would do anything. They were so excited to play,” Luton said.
During her first year coaching at Lanphier, Luton made $40. After splitting that salary with an assistant coach, they chipped in for an end-of-year pasta dinner.
They spent about $19 each.
‘Basketball is basketball’
Despite the inequities, talent emerged during those early years.
Because of her on-court dominance in the 1970s, Springfield’s Lynn (Callahan) Riddley entered the Springfield Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. Springfield High retired her jersey number in 2004. She was the first girls player in Springfield history to have the number retired. In addition, she was elected to the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Riddley still holds records for points per game in the Girls City Tournament, points per tournament, field goals per game and field goals per tournament.
In a single game in 1977, the 5-foot-11 senior scored 48 points against Sacred Heart. As part of an athletic family, Riddley grew up playing sports. Her sister, U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, is in the Illinois College Hall of Fame for her basketball and volleyball careers.
Riddley said she couldn’t imagine what her high school years would have been like without basketball and volleyball.
“I didn’t realize when I was playing, we were kind of the pioneers,” Riddley said.
Kris Glintborg started coaching women’s basketball at Springfield High in 1978.
“Basketball is basketball, no matter what the gender,” he said when he applied.
He had no assistant his first year, coaching both the varsity and junior varsity on his own. While the school had a brand new gym, the girls typically practiced in an older, upstairs facility. They had to compete with boys basketball and wrestling for floor time, but Glintborg says the girls were eager to play.
The girls used a regular sized ball in those days. Glintborg said he stressed fundamentals since his early players hadn’t played structured basketball for years. He says girls and women’s teams today often demonstrate a better grasp of fundamentals than their male counterparts.
While funding is still at the root of inequality in girls athletics, today’s teenagers grew up in a different culture. While Bartges and her peers often heard people say they couldn’t play sports or compete in other areas because they were girls — athletic girls back then were not considered feminine — that language is no longer common. Women’s sports continue to progress.
“You don’t hear that now,” Bartges said. “There’s a big difference and as more years march on and as women continue to get better training and better conditioning.
“They will continue to advance, there’s no question in my mind.”