State

by Melissa Isaacson

  “Judy, come on,” said Shirley. “What are you trying to prove? Stop it. We win as a team and we lose as a team.”

  But Judy ignored her, bounced the ball deliberately, then shot. And just as we knew she would—just as we had done at an 80 percent clip as a team all season long—she lofted up the perfect free throw, barely rippling the net as it went through.

  She then looked at us solemnly and walked off. It was silly really, the whole thing, and silly for us to be mourning a loss that in the long run would do nothing to affect our chances of going downstate.

  Judy knew that, just as we all did, and minutes after thinking her world had come to an end at age 16, she was smiling again at the absurdity of it all. Now feeling much better, she decided that as long as she had her socks on, she may as well slide off the gym floor and into the locker room, and so she did. Except that she miscalculated slightly, veered off course, and landed in a pile of debris that was exposed when the bleachers were pushed back. As she got up, wrinkling her nose and wondering why she felt wet, we collapsed on the ground in hysterics, for as best as we could tell, Judy was now covered in someone else’s vomit.

  Mrs. Mulder wondered why we were wiping tears from our eyes and giggling as we boarded the bus, but she didn’t question it. Apparently, we had already put the loss behind us. Still, as we returned to school that night, our coach worried about how we would respond from that point until regionals in two weeks. She also worried about how we would respond to the news that she was pregnant and coaching her last games with us.

  But she also knew there was no hiding it any longer. She was entering her second trimester with her third baby, and she had clearly “popped,” or so she told Jean Armour when she asked for her advice. She also asked Mr. Schnurr and a few others, and they all agreed that she needed to give her team enough time to digest the news and get used to it before the postseason began.

  And that was now.

  “You were right,” she told us as our bus cruised through the dark suburban streets, “when you made the point about our team being a seed that has grown all season. Mr. Schnurr told you that at the beginning of the season and it was in your last poem to me, and that development is something that reflects our hard work.”

  Our eyes began to glaze over. We had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

  Finally, without actually using the word pregnant, she spat it out.

  “We’re having another baby,” she said.

  And she was leaving us.

  At 16, 17, and 18 years old, this was a lot for us to process. Of course, there was the instant embarrassment and revulsion every kid feels when digesting the notion that their parents, or in this case a parental figure, did what they had to do to have a baby. Then there was the common sense reaction to be happy for this person whom we cared for and who was experiencing one of the true joys of life. That lasted for about five or six seconds, followed by the selfish teenage reaction—perhaps the overriding emotion, for me anyway, which centered completely on me and how this would affect my life. And I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  Someone joked that the kid’s name had to be “Westley” for Niles West, and Mrs. Mulder promised that if she had a boy, Westley it would be. It was one great big joyous moment.

  I looked around at the seniors, resentful as hell.

  Of course they’re happy for Mrs. Mulder and excited about the news, I fumed silently. What did they care? They were graduating. We would win the state championship together and then they would all go out contented and victorious, without a second thought to the rest of us they would leave behind. She said she was going on maternity leave but we all knew better. She wasn’t coming back, and I felt betrayed. At least my mother had trained me well enough to pretend I was happy.

  We were now 17–1 following the Libertyville tournament with four games left before regionals began. Once again, we handled Glenbrook South and Maine East easily, winning by an average of 41 points, but had two tough foes remaining in Mid-Suburban League North champ Buffalo Grove and good ol’ Maine South.

  We had the best crowd of the season for the Buffalo Grove game, but again we came out flat. Connie was especially uptight after spotting DePaul women’s basketball coach John Lawler in the stands.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told her before the game. “He already knows how good you are. There’s no added pressure.”

  I probably could have chosen not to use the word pressure in any context. She had been writing to various colleges all season, inviting coaches to come watch her play, sending them film of our games. But aside from DePaul, she was getting almost no response, and it was starting to make her nervous. More than that, it made her realize that we would have to make it downstate for coaches to actually see her in person and for her to have any chance at all at a scholarship.

  When Buffalo Grove senior Joyce Gallagher hit a last-second jumper to hand us our second defeat of the season, 44–42, Connie figured the DePaul coach was probably ready to award Gallagher a scholarship on the spot.

  In one 10-day span, we had lost twice and were officially in a slump, at least for us. Mrs. Mulder used the fact that it was exam time and that we were all good students as an uncharacteristic excuse to reporters. But she worried that the baby news had thrown us off. All that was left now was Maine South, the same Maine South that had run out to a 17–0 lead against us earlier in the season before we pulled out a four-point win. Of course, that was the night we had warmed up by watching Bridget goad Holly Andersen into running through Maine South’s gym wearing their mascot’s head. Just a guess, but that might have fired them up.

  This time, we had Parents’ Night to motivate us, really just another excuse to try to get more people to come watch us. The seniors’ parents were given flowers and introduced on court before the game; it was all very sentimental and sweet, and it apparently put us in the perfect frame of mind to crush Maine South, which we did, 73–50, in our regular-season finale.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Mighty Susies and Other Technicalities

  IT WAS A SATURDAY NIGHT before regionals and Mrs. Mulder, as she often did, hopped into her car to scout a future opponent. Her kids weren’t asleep, but she had been able to make them dinner, so for the moment anyway, all was good and guilt-free. She tuned her radio to WCLR, a Top 40 station, and wound her way out of Arlington Heights, the shortcuts to virtually every school in the northern and western suburbs of Chicago as familiar to her as a trip to the grocery store she had no time for these days.

  She made these excursions on her own, her husband, Al, as always, looking after their daughters, and she never told us. Nor did we ask. We figured she got her information from opposing coaches or from the occasional film we were able to obtain. She didn’t think we cared much one way or the other. She imagined her players were enjoying their off-night as most teenagers would—out to a movie with friends, on a date, or better still, she hoped, at home watching television in their pajamas.

  When she arrived at the game, however, she found the majority of her team in the stands, as Shirley and I had hopped in a car as well that night and met Connie, Peggy, Judy, and Karen, figuring we could get something valuable out of watching a future opponent.

  “What are you girls doing here?” Mrs. Mulder asked, not altogether pleased. She did that pursed lips thing she only pulled out when really angry, while we squirmed in our seats like we were caught in the back of a VW van with a heavy metal rock band. Her mind raced. What would her players gain by actually watching our next opponent without her filtering that impression as she always did? And what would the opposing team think? Maybe this would fire them up even more. This was not in the game plan, and Arlene Mulder always had a game plan.

  But as we sat together and watched, she realized that this was not a fun Saturday night out for us. We studied their defense and memorized their offense and began to formulate a strategy on our own. And so our coach stopped worrying—at least for the time being.

  T
he next week, we were the subject of a long feature story in the Lerner Life suburban newspaper, previewing our prospects in the state tournament and in regionals, where we were to face Niles North and then, if all went as expected, St. Scholastica. Jim Braun, the sports editor, had become our official chronicler along with Susan Sternberg of the Suburban Trib, and on this occasion, he also wrote about our desire to go to Champaign, with “the opportunity to compete with Kojak and Love Boat on prime-time television.”

  We smiled to ourselves at the thought of playing on “prime-time television” opposite The Love Boat, but this was no laughing matter. The memory of last year’s supersectional loss to Hinsdale South never completely left our thoughts. Unlike last year, Mrs. Mulder noted repeatedly, we were the hunted, and there was nothing each of our opponents would rather do than knock off the team now considered one of the favorites for the state title.

  Just as she continued to harp on the fact that everyone was gunning for us, Mulder also continued to promote the team concept. But as the season wore on, she abandoned that strategy and simply insisted on mentioning every single one of us in every article. And local writers knew better by now than to push one of us over another, lest they be turned down in their next interview request.

  “Every time we take the court, we know we have 10 girls,” Mulder told Braun. “It doesn’t allow them to be selfish.”

  We entered the postseason 20–2, averaging 66 points per game while allowing just 42. But a stark reality hung over us as we began the 1978 girls’ state playoffs. Our coach was leaving us. And with every game, our seniors could be looking at the end of their athletic careers. But this only motivated us further. We would win it for Mrs. Mulder. And we would send our seniors out as champions.

  Regionals were held at Niles West, and the bleachers were filled nearly all the way to the balcony for our first game against Niles North. We had no real worries about our Skokie neighbors just a few exits down the Edens Expressway, and we had no reason to as we notched an easy 64–34 victory.

  St. Scholastica won a two-point squeaker over Evanston to set up the regional final two nights later. It would be our first step in the postseason, a new theme Mrs. Mulder had invoked, this idea that every game built on the step that came before. The gym was near filled again, and we were ready for JoAnn Feiereisel and the mighty Susies.

  Yes, the Susies.

  For years, many high school and college women’s teams were not given the same nicknames as the guys’ teams. Instead of the Warriors or Spartans, it was the Warriorettes or Spartanettes, or worse, the Lady Spartans, as if somehow that made it OK for girls to compete. More ladylike. We hated that. We had played St. Scholastica twice before over the last two years, and they always played us tough, but their nickname never escaped us. In their defense, they had little choice in being an all-girls school or the Susies, but still, we had our principles.

  The night of the St. Scholastica game, one of Niles West’s school administrators gave us each a rose dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. But we were in no mood for roses. We filled out goal cards for the game, and Bridget and Diana both wrote BE MEAN in large capital letters across their index cards. Bridget added, “Don’t get mad at myself, push harder, be intense.”

  Then she went out and broke Feiereisel’s jaw.

  Well, not intentionally or anything. But in a mad scrum for a loose ball in the latter stages of a game that began with Bridget trying to wrestle the ball out of Feiereisel’s grasp, the St. Scholastica star ended up sprawled headlong on the floor.

  Bridget was getting tougher every day, but she wasn’t that tough. As we clapped her on the back, encouraging her aggressive play before realizing that Feiereisel had actually injured herself and that she would, in fact, be taken to the hospital by ambulance with a dislocated jaw, Bridget recoiled in horror. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her, I swear,” she wailed, trying to convince teammates who did not need convincing.

  We wondered if this was the official end of her mean streak.

  In the end, we cruised to our second consecutive regional championship with a 65–42 victory over the Susies.

  Bridget may have been somewhat subdued, but we didn’t let that stop our celebration. No one had a ladder ready for us to cut down the nets and so, once again, we hoisted each other up on the taller girls’ shoulders. I stood on Shirley without the slightest thought that maybe putting 100-plus additional pounds on the shoulders of our leading scorer was not the smartest idea. It did not occur to Shirley either. The moment was too sweet, our emotions too overwhelming to think very rationally. But unlike the year before, we looked ahead almost immediately.

  “We’re happy we won,” Connie told reporters, “but this isn’t our ultimate goal.”

  We all solemnly nodded in agreement. And apparently, the rest of the school was in sync with us because they didn’t seem satisfied with just a regional title either.

  All around us, our classmates and teachers joined in our effort to go downstate. Bridget’s accounting teacher put up a transparency on the overhead projector each day with our scores and next games. Mr. Karbusicky did the same thing in history. Signs started going up in the halls, and kids whom I had barely spoken to all year suddenly smiled at me or whispered words of encouragement in the back of Mrs. O’Reilly’s Spanish class.

  Connie’s boyfriend, Bob, hid in the back with me, where we always had a great time discussing basketball and butchering the Spanish language. Bob had started doing stats for Mrs. Mulder and had convinced his friends, like many of the upperclass boys, to follow us. We had wanted a crowd and now we had it.

  The school provided a fan bus to sectionals at East Leyden High School, and it filled up quickly. We would be playing Elk Grove, the Mid-Suburban League South champ, in our first-round game, and we knew that they, like so many of our opponents, would outsize us. But we also knew that with every game, we seemed to not just improve our offense or defense or both but to become more dimensional.

  Connie was now showing the same aggressiveness on offense as she showed on defense. Confident now of her foul shooting, she drove the lane whenever there was an opportunity and was the only one on the team who had developed an actual jump shot. I wanted dearly to be able to jump then shoot, just like the pros and the boys did it. But hard as I tried, my jumper was more of a jump-and-push, and so I had to settle for set shots. My brother Barry urged me to at least get the ball up over my head, à la Jamaal Wilkes of the LA Lakers, despite the fact that as a 6-foot-6 professional athlete, Wilkes had a slight advantage over me.

  Though Barb was only a sophomore, her shot was already a thing of beauty as she hoisted it back over her head, her hands in perfect position, the rotation of the ball consistent, her follow-through a textbook example of how it should be.

  By now Barb had begun asserting herself offensively as the shooting guard and had established herself as a bona fide starter, though I remained in the starting lineup. My job was to bring the ball upcourt and to set up our offense from the point-guard spot. But Barb got plenty of minutes, and Mrs. Mulder, using her system, was able to keep all of us happy and involved.

  Elk Grove had a center-oriented offense keyed around their 5-11 senior Carole Pollitz, who averaged 16 points per game. They also relied on their 5-11 senior forward Kim Richardson, who averaged 20 points in regionals. But they weren’t ready for our array of full-court zone presses—we were now solid with six different looks—and we made them pay.

  After clinging to a 19–13 lead after the first quarter, we out-scored Elk Grove 23–7 in the second, limiting our opponent to just one field goal and forcing 20 turnovers for a convincing 74–40 victory. Bridget held Pollitz to 11 points, while on the defensive end, Pollitz drew four fouls in the first half and fouled out in the third quarter. Connie and Shirley were also in foul trouble, but Diana and Barb picked up the offensive slack with 24 and 19 points, respectively, while Peggy pitched in with 12.

  A Chicago Tribune story that week centered on Bridget and h
er blue-collar attitude. “Niles West’s Bridget Berglund doesn’t get a lot of publicity,” Reid Hanley wrote. “She just does her job. Her job isn’t a glamorous one. She doesn’t score a lot of points and doesn’t do anything fancy. She just plays hard-nosed defense.”

  Bridget had arrived.

  The sectional final was against Wheeling. Now we were two steps away from a trip to Champaign, and I wrote about it in that game’s poem:

  Climbing the steps toward total success will take teamwork and desire.

  We’ll work toward our goals while playing tonight, then reset them even higher.

  We’re still showing teams that have two or three stars that they can’t beat a team that has 10.

  Our spirits are high, our minds intense, we’re closer now than we’ve ever been.

  Mrs. Mulder could have read my poems to herself and stuck them in a drawer, but she never did. She went over our opponent during her pregame speech and, then, maybe knowing that her message would always be incorporated into that game’s poem, would end her speech by reading the poem aloud, slowly, clearly, and with the proper cadence. I would always blush, though she was not supposed to know that I had written them. But I was also pleased that she read them to the team and in just the right way.

  Like so many of our opponents, Wheeling had a star player. Her name was Sandy Rainey, and though the 5-9 senior was still recovering from the effects of double pneumonia, she sure looked like she was healthy, scoring 24 points against Oak Park in their first-round sectional contest. Again, we would need Bridget to be tough.

  Rainey, her socks drooping around her ankles, looked like a female “Pistol Pete” Maravich and showed us moves we had not seen before. In the second quarter, Wheeling led by as many as six points and were winning 27–23 with just two minutes until the half. But as we had all year long, we turned our defense into our most effective offense.