[The Old Chapel/ Highlights/ Campaign UMass/ Kay Scanlan]
Saturday, January 4, 1997, 2:43 p.m. The
Mullins Center
Two guys have preceded ten-year-old Katie Kidder in the Ground Round Half-time
Shootout. Two guys have failed.
The four-foot-tall blonde in the slacks and green top takes the ball, stands
on the assigned spot, eyes the basket, and shoots. She scores. The spot
moves farther away from the basket. She steps on it, stops, focuses. Shoots
and scores again. The spot moves. She shoots again. She scores again. Shoots.
Scores. The crowd cheers, and Kidder walks off the court with a couple
of gift certificates and a beaming smile.
"I like to try to win," she says, a little shyly.
Academics who toil elsewhere on campus pondering the loss of self-esteem
among young girds, a tip: take a stroll down to the Mullins one afternoon
when Crystal Carroll, Beth Kuzmeski, and Sabriya Mitchell and company --
the UMass Minutewoman basketball team -- take the court. Confidence is
not a problem here.
Oh sure, the games are great, but equally interesting is the audience:
nearly half of the today's crowd of 1,159 are girls, girls of all colors,
sizes and ages. Ponytailed teenagers sit in clumps of threes and fours;
ten-year-olds chow down on Reeses-Pieces sundaes and popcorn as they giggle
and run up and down the stands.
There's even an all-woman cheerleading squad, and several six year olds
stand at the sidelines mimicking their moves, coveting those shiny maroon
and silver pompoms. No sniffing here about who's got the better tickets;
no state reps searching out their big shot seats. This is strictly a girlfriend
thing.
Jacqueline Zewski, 9, her younger sister Jocelyn, and their friend Holly
Briere are regulars at the games; they're attending today with Molly's
father, Gary Briere '81. The sisters Zewski like the cheerleaders' shoes
--Nike Cheerleaders, which Jacqueline has. But Jacqueline's also here for
research.
"We're learning to do the zone defense," she says, "But
they go so fast that we can't figure out what they're doing."
"We do that 1-3-1 zone defense," chimes in Molly, "But they
don't do that."
The girls come by their knowledge of basketball from Joanne McGowan '77,
who played for the Minutewomen and now coaches a girls recreational league
in Sunderland.
"There's a real transfer of knowledge going on there with Joanne,"
says Gary Briere with a laugh. "She sure didn't get this stuff from
her dad."
Coach Joanie O'Brien says the girl phenomenon began two or three years
ago. Members of the women's team often go out to community breakfasts in
the surrounding towns, so the girls get to know the Minutewomen personally.
"So when they come to the games, they know the kids," O'Brien
says. "There's a personal relationship."
"When I was a kid, there weren't a whole lot of people to look up
to," she says. "Now the young ones have a chance to look up to
a female who's out there sweating and working. These are the kinds of kids
that you wouldn't mind your daughter being like."
Some attribute the girls' passion for hoops to In These Girls, Hope
is a Muscle , a 1995? book by journalism professor Madeleine Blais,
which chronicles a championship year in the Amherst High Schools girls
basketball team. Others point to Title IX, the federal law that sought
to bring equity to men's and women's athletics in the schools.
But it may be much simpler than that. Sisterhood is powerful, but girls
just want to have fun. Also, they like winning as much as the next guy.
What do you like most about basketball, second grader Jocelyn Zewski is
asked.
"Making baskets!" she replies.
Duh.
