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Subject: American Journal=Trauma in Texas: First the Oil Bust, Now Unisex High School
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 08:40:52 EST
Message-ID: <9.1992Nov7.084053@AmeriCast.com>

American Journal=Trauma in Texas: First the Oil Bust, Now Unisex
High School Football<By Elizabeth Hudson=Special to The Washing-
ton Post=AUSTIN, Tex.> When the oil boom went bust a decade ago,
many Texans thought that life could not get much worse. Then eli-
gibility rules for high school football were changed.

"People have told us it's the worst thing to happen since the de-
vil came to being," said Bailey Marshall of the recent decision
allowing girls to try out. He is director of the University In-
terscholastic League (UIL), which regulates school athletics in
the state that takes high school football very seriously.

"I'm sure nearly everyone out there is uncomfortable with this,"
Marshall said, noting that the decision was a legal one because
UIL officials were aware that at least one discrimination lawsuit
was in the works. "We just didn't think it was worth the fight."

People are exercised, but not because Texas is breaking new
ground by allowing girls to play high school sports.  Junior high
girls have been eligible to play football statewide since the
mid-1980s, and a recent UIL survey of the 50 states found 41
where girls can play football. Texas girls have been playing
basketball, volleyball and softball to enthusiastic crowds for
much of this century.

Nor do many Texans think that girls will significantly affect the
game. "Seldom will there be a girl who can make an impact on a
boys' football team," Marshall said. "It's ironic. This rule
change is probably the least consequential thing we've ever
passed, but it's the most controversial thing we've ever passed."

What aggravates the citizenry is that the UIL has tampered with
something akin to religion in a state where high school football
is treated differently than anywhere in the world. At its core is
a Friday night fever that sweeps the state week after week and
has provided an autumnal rite-of-passage into manhood for Texas
boys since before the turn of the century.

"It has something to do with that frontier spirit," said George
Breazeale, a reporter at the Austin American-Statesman who has
been covering high school sports since 1948. "Nothing can dimin-
ish it."

High school football won its colorful niche in Texas history when
small plains towns, isolated from up-north big leagues, sought to
make their home teams the biggest and best, a source of pride for
entire communities. Bigger, faster players were conveniently "re-
cruited" from other towns and, if they seemed to look 20 or 25
years old, often it was because they were. A common practice was
"redshirting" - having boys repeat eighth grade so they would be
bigger ninth-grade players.  "Theoretically, that went out in the
'30s," Breazeale said, "though you might still find some of it
going on."

Breazeale, who graduated from Burnet High School northwest of
Austin in 1947, said several of his classmates deliberately did
not graduate so they could play another year. "There were no two
ways about it," he said. "Those boys were heroes."

UIL regulations now place an age limit on high school football
players, and recruiting violations are investigated routinely.

Allowing girls to play, Breazeale said, "might make a difference
in the 1A (smallest) schools where they have to have bodies just
to be able to play. But I really don't see girls competing
against those big players in 5A."

That appears to be true nationwide, according to UIL data. Most
states that allow girls to play football report that only one or
two are participating statewide, Marshall said. In metropolitan
Washington, for instance, girls have played high school football
in Carroll and Montgomery counties in Maryland and at Ballou and
Roosevelt high schools in the District.  In Carroll County, Tawa-
na Hammond is suing the school system for injuries incurred in
1989 when she was the first girl on the football team at Francis
Scott Key High School in Union Bridge. But Marshall said girls'
participation has not brought an increase in liability insurance
rates. Despite expectations to the contrary, he said, his survey
also found that having a female teammate does not seem to faze
the boys.

Sasha Young, a junior at Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake,
Va., encountered a conflict last month, however. The team's
kicker-cum-homecoming princess had to sit out the first half of
the homecoming game so she could be presented at halftime with
her court. By the second half, she had swapped long gown and high
heels for shoulder pads and cleats and was back on the field.

Although Texas has become one of the last states to allow girls
to play interscholastic football, the small town of Stinnett in
the Panhandle north of Amarillo became part of history 45 years
ago when Truman Johnson, its high school coach, allowed a girl to
play. The news reached all the way to New York where the game,
recorded by a local radio station, was replayed nationally.<

"I just wanted to have fun," said Frankie Wood, 61, an Austin
mortgage banker, of the memorable night when she played defensive
tackle for Stinnett High. "I was a tough little nut, and I hound-
ed coach unmercifully every day to let me play."

Wood was a skilled vacant-lot player. "We used to have bonfires
and wienie roasts, and then the boys would go off and play foot-
ball and the girls would sit around and talk about hair.  Now
which sounds more fun to you?"

A petite 5-foot-3 and 118 pounds, only seven pounds above her
Stinnett playing weight, Wood said she could hold her own on the
field. "We had a real bad team," she said. "Finally, on the last
game of the season, coach said we couldn't do any worse, so he
told me to suit up and play."

Stinnett's loss that night is far less memorable than the outrage
that ensued. Within hours, UIL officials voted to ban girls from
football, a rule that would last 40 years. Wood said that her
teammates were hostile and that the basketball coach benched her
for the season.

"My mother was so embarrassed she wouldn't even go to the grocery
store," she said.

A mother of three and grandmother of five, Wood said she is glad
that girls have been given the go-ahead but is apprehensive.

"In 1947, Bill Williamson weighed 170, and we thought he was a
giant," she said of a teammate. "Girls who play now are going to
meet quite a challenge" against players who routinely weigh more
than 200 pounds.

For girls, this opportunity is long overdue, Wood said, noting
that, after all, "a person shouldn't have to dance backward all
of her life."<02:08 11-07C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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