'Wow, What a Baller!': 50 Years of Title IX and the Athletes Who Demanded Their Right to Play
Event description
- Academic events
- Family friendly
- Open to the public
“Wow, she plays like a guy.” Believe it or not, this is *not* the compliment we may think it is. Sporting excellence is not gendered, but our language and perceptions of desirable top-of-sport qualities often carry a masculine connotation, suggesting not so subtly that women cannot be excellent.
A recommended edit: “Wow, what a baller!”
A baller has skill. A baller has grace. A baller has swagger. Confidence. Joy. Beauty in the perfection of the craft. A baller keeps eyes on the prize. A baller gets the job done.
A baller is a universal term, denoting not the realm of a particular gender, but a human performing at the very top of the game.
That game could be competing in an athletic contest, like basketball. Or that game could be challenging social norms and political barriers, like fighting a school district or state or even the International Olympic Committee to demand the right to play.
For generations, men in sport built and maintained sport for boys and men. For generations, those forced out fought cultural and political battles to play sports too. And they kept on playing all throughout, despite the many obstacles thrown in their way.
This academic year marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX, and the sporting lives of the generation of girls and women—the ballers—whose athletic dreams straddled pre- and post-Title IX worlds have much to teach us.
Join us Wednesday, March 1, 2 p.m. in West Hall 135 to learn about these ballers from Andrew Maraniss, author of Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women's Olympic Basketball Team, and Sheri Brenden and Peg Brenden, author and subject of Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX. The conversation will be moderated by ASU sports historian Victoria Jackson.
A reception will follow, where we encourage the sharing of Title IX stories and stories of balling!
About the speakers
Peg Brenden is a retired judge and avid tennis player who made history by advocating for equity reform for girls who wanted to participate in high school athletics prior to the passage of Title IX.
In 1972, the St. Cloud, MN, native was named a co-plaintiff, along with Antoinette St. Pierre (a track and cross-country athlete), in a lawsuit against their high schools and the Minnesota State High School League to gain equal access to sports. The suit maintained that limiting the schools’ sports teams to boys was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Federal District Court Judge Miles Lord agreed and issued an order allowing both girls to participate on the boys’ teams at their schools. Judge Lord’s decision was appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and affirmed. It was a groundbreaking precedent that helped pave the way for the implementation of Title IX.
Decades later, Sheri Brenden, Peg’s younger sister, began digging into the historical record. A former law librarian, editor and newspaper reporter, she uncovered the details of the federal court case and pieced together the two girls’ athletic experience. The result is her new book Break Point, a mix of courtroom tactics, sports strategy and a blend of family memoir and women’s history. Published by the University of Minnesota Press, Break Point royalties go to The Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport, a University of Minnesota interdisciplinary research center devoted to sponsoring, promoting, and disseminating scholarly activity on how sport impacts the lives of girls and women.