State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation

State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation

Set against a backdrop of social change during the 1970s, State is a compelling first-person account of what it was like to live through both traditional gender discrimination in sports and the joy of the very first days of equalityâ€”or at least the closest that one high school girlsâ€™ basketball team ever came to it.

In 1975, freshman Melissa Isaacsonâ€”along with a group of other girls whoâ€™d spent summers with their noses pressed against the fences of Little League ball fields, unable to playâ€”entered Niles West High School in suburban Chicago with one goal: make a team, any team. For â€œMissy,â€ that turned out to be the basketball team.

Title IX had passed just three years earlier, prohibiting gender discrimination in education programs or activities, including athletics. As a result, states like Illinois began implementing varsity competitionâ€”and state tournamentsâ€”for girlsâ€™ high school sports.

At the time, Missy and her teammates didnâ€™t really understand the legislation. All they knew was they finally had opportunitiesâ€”to play, to learn, to sweat, to lose, to winâ€”and an identity: they were athletes. They were a team.

And in 1979, they became state champions.

With the intimate insights of the girl who lived it, the pacing of a born storyteller, and the painstaking reporting of a veteran sports journalist, Isaacson chronicles one high school teamâ€™s journey to the state championship. In doing so, Isaacson shows us how a group of "tomboys" found themselves and each other, and how basketball rescued them from their collective frustrations and troubled homes, and forever altered the course of their lives.

Country	USA
Author	Melissa Isaacson
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781572848252
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Agate Midway
Manufacturer	Agate Midway
NumberOfPages	317
PublicationDate	2019-08-13
Publisher	Agate Midway
ReleaseDate	2019-08-13
Studio	Agate Midway

State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation

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