Comes the Revolution

(10 of 10)

Some 7,000 students, nearly 3,000 of them girls, compete on teams with a firm no-cut policy. Everyone gets a chance to play. Teams are fielded according to skill level, and a struggle between junior varsity or C-squad basketball teams is as enthusiastically contested as a varsity clash. Cedar Rapids' schoolgirl athletes compete in nine sports, guided by 144 coaches. Access to training equipment is equal too. The result has been unparalleled athletic success. In the past eight years, Cedar Rapids boys and girls teams have finished among the state's top three 68 times, winning 30 team championships in ten different sports.

Girls' athletics have become an accustomed part of the way of life in Cedar Rapids. At a recent girls' track meet, runners, shotputters, hurdlers, high jumpers pitted themselves, one by one, in the age-old contests to run faster, leap higher, throw farther. For many, there were accomplishments they once would have thought impossible. A mile relay team fell into triumphant embrace when word came of qualification for the state finals. Team members shouted the joy of victory—"We did it!" —and then asked permission to break training: "Now can we go to the Dairy Queen, Coach?" Granted.

The mile run was won by 17-year-old Julie Nolan of Jefferson High School. Sport is, and will remain, part of her life. "I've been running since the fifth or sixth grade. I want to run in college and then run in marathons." She admires Marathoner Miki Gorman, who ran her fastest when she was in her 40s. "That's what I'd like to be doing," she says. Asked if she has been treated differently since she got involved in sports, this once-and-future athlete seemed perplexed: "I don't know, because I've always been an athlete."

Kelly Galiher, 15, has grown up in the Cedar Rapids system that celebrates sport for all. The attitudes and resistance that have stunted women's athleticism elsewhere are foreign to Kelly, a sprinter. Does she know that sports are, in some quarters, still viewed as unseemly for young women? "That's ridiculous. Boys sweat, and we're going to sweat. We call it getting out and trying." She has no memories of disapproval from parents or peers. And she has never been called the terrible misnomer that long and unfairly condemned athletic girls. "Tomboy? That idea has gone out here." It's vanishing everywhere.