State A team, a triumph, a transformation

The mid-to-late seventies were a difficult time for girls' high-school sports. In 1972, President Richard Nixon had signed Title IX, which stated that high-school girls had to have the same athletic opportunities as boys. Good news, of course, but with it came resentment among some male coaches, whose once-exclusive domain was challenged. In 1975, the author was a freshman at Niles West High School in suburban Chicago. This is her account of the nascent girls basketball program at the school and how she and her teammates, plus a dedicated group of coaches and administrators, pooled their talents to win the 1979 Illinois girls high-school championship. Isaacson, who went on to cover the Michael Jordan Bulls as a beat reporter for the Chicago Tribune and is now on the faculty of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, digs deeply into the bureaucratic struggles it took to get teams up and running. The book is special because Isaacson captures the special bond that formed among the female athletes. Not only were they teammates, they were pioneers of a sort. For example, there were no girls' basketball shoes at the time, so the hunt was on for small Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars, the only basketball shoe available. In the epilogue, Isaacson summarizes the lives of her teammates after high school. They experienced a great deal of success and, of course, some heartache and tragedy as well. A wonderful book that is both eye-opening history and a moving and deeply personal memoir.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2019 Booklist

Isaacson, sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune and ESPN, overpromises and underdelivers in this lackluster coming-of-age account of her time on her suburban high school's basketball team. Isaacson recounts her trials and tribulations with the Niles West High School girls' basketball squad in 1975--three years after Title IX became law. Her telling feels vague and spotty, especially when quoting dialogue from decades earlier; and too often the details she includes--letters, poems, cheers, and team songs using the tune of 1970s sitcom theme songs--do little to elevate the narrative. In Isaacson's senior year in 1979, Niles West had a great run, culminating with the state championship win, yet her recap of the season and key plays of that final game lacks intensity. Despite her statement that this book is "evidence of what sports gave to us, of what basketball specifically did 40 years ago to shape our lives today," she relegates the post--high school experiences of her teammates and herself to a short epilogue. This is a missed opportunity on what could have been a great personal history of the affects of Title IX had on female sports. (Aug.)

The unknown story of a high school girls' basketball team in "a monumental place in our nation's history."Sportswriter Isaacson (Journalism/Northwestern Univ.; Transition Game: An Inside Look at Life With the Chicago Bulls, 1994), who has worked for ESPN and the Chicago Tribune, mixes her personal experience on Illinois' 1979 state championship team with a chronicle of the implementation of Title IX, which "prohibited sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receivingfederal financial aid." The author attended Niles West High School, which had no tradition of female interscholastic sports when she entered. The female teacher who agreed to coach the nascent girls' basketball team knew almost nothing about the game, so she listened carefully week after week as the male coach of the boys' team tutored her. Isaacson and most of her teammates came to idolize their coach, and they respected the boys' coach, too, for his patient role. This coming-of-age memoir, informed by a larger social history, alternates among biographical profiles of the coaches, the author's basketball-playing classmates ("after the passage of Title IX, tennis and badminton were clearly not enough"), parents and siblings of the students, and school administrators. As the narrative progresses and the girls turn into a winning team, Isaacson provides detailed accounts of the frequent victories and occasional losses, sections that may not interest nonfans. An irony of the narrative is that the much-loved female coach departed the high school for personal reasons after inspiring the girls for three seasons, and her replacement was a male teacher/coach. Under his guidance, the girls' team won the state championship during Isaacson's senior year despite numerous rocky moments caused by the coach's awkwardness in dealing with teenage girls. By her senior year, Isaacson no longer played a key role on the team, but she learned how to adjust and take significant joy in the success of the team.An intimate, at times inspiring account. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.