State by Melissa Isaacson

Author:Melissa Isaacson [Isaacson, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781572848252
Publisher: Agate Publishing
Published: 2019-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The Ultimate Slap

THE GYM WAS PACKED FOR THE GAME, a bigger crowd at 1,800-plus than we had ever played before by far, including more high school boys than you’d see at a typical homecoming dance. They had descended on Barrington High in carload after carload—football players, basketball players, band members, thespians, the gym rats not quite good enough to make their own varsity teams but who had helped make us better in scrimmages. These were boys I would not attempt to speak to in the hallway, but they were here for us, all of them.

We could tell by the noise alone how big the crowd was without taking a step out of the locker room. But the din outside the doors led to an ultimate sin inside.

Someone had handed Shirley a fake front page with a big bold headline reading NILES WEST GIRLS MAKE THE ELITE EIGHT, and we all cheered when she showed it to us, oblivious to the concept of jinxing ourselves.

Our parents apparently shared this lack of awareness.

Bridget excitedly explained that her dad had a few newspapers of his own and was passing them out to our fans. “When they announce Dundee’s lineup, everyone is going to pretend to read the paper,” Bridget told us in the locker room. “And then when we’re announced, they’re going to rip it up and fling it like confetti!”

Peg and I exchanged eye rolls, which was our fallback reaction to just about everything.

“Seriously?” I asked with just the right mix of “Really?” and “You’ve got to be kidding.”

It didn’t seem altogether cool, but we laughed along with the others, our adrenaline pretty much making anything seem funny and exciting. The locker room was loose, and that was a good thing.

But as we emerged from the locker room, Connie picked up on something immediately.

“Woman refs,” she whispered.

We all sighed. We hadn’t had female officials in regionals or sectionals, but we had occasionally run across some over the last three years, and it was rarely a good thing. Though we were all for equal rights, or at least we thought we were, it was painfully obvious that woman officials had a long way to go to catch up with their male colleagues. Refereeing was not just a skill but one that required instincts that could only be honed through experience, something these women just did not have yet. This, of course, was not their fault. It was a vicious cycle. They needed experience, just as we did, to get better. But in the process of gaining experience, they were setting the game back. Or, at least, we felt this way.

And it made little sense to Mrs. Mulder and to us that a game as important as the one that would determine who would advance downstate to the Elite Eight would be one in which they could afford to have woman officials gain experience.

Still, we felt we were more than ready. This was our fifth post season game en route to the eight-team state finals.

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