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State  By  cover art

State

By: Melissa Isaacson
Narrated by: Melissa Isaacson
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Publisher's summary

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 equality - or at least the closest that one high school girls’ basketball team ever came to it.

In 1975, freshman Melissa Isaacson - along with a group of other girls who’d spent summers with their noses pressed against the fences of Little League ball fields, unable to play - entered Niles West High School in suburban Chicago with one goal: make a team, any team. For Missy, 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 competition - and state tournaments - for girls’ high school sports.

At the time, Missy and her teammates didn’t really understand the legislation. All they knew was they finally had opportunities - to play, to learn, to sweat, to lose, to win - 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 team’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.

©2019 Melissa Isaacson (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

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Basketball Transforming Girls' Lives

Just finished a wonderful book by former Niles West student and professional sports writer, Melissa Isaacson! I laughed and I cried as she led me down memory lane. And though my wife and I and 6 month old baby followed the team closely - even down to Champaign for the state championship games, I really didn't know the half of it. Definitely the best after school pick up games in my days at Niles West were playing with and against these girls. And their hard work and success made the path to starting girls interscholastic soccer at Niles West the following spring an express lane super highway that led to recognition by the state of Illinois for a state tournament. Niles West even hosted the first two IHSA recognized state tournaments after hosting our own "unofficial" state tournaments for a couple of years beforehand. It's been wonderful to watch "Earl's Girls" grow up and stick together. This book is a great read about the dawning of interscholastic girls sports and the transformative power of being able to compete for your school. It's definitely not "just" a sports book. Great job of reporting and storytelling, Missy!

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