Extracurricular!

The "Hi Tension" was the school newspaper and, because I liked to write and wanted to see my "byline" in print, I went to the first meeting of the school year. I wrote small articles for the monthly publication and it was really fun. My friend and I became girls' sports editors senior year and we wrote sports exclusively that year. We were both on the volleyball, basketball, and softball teams so we wrote about our friends and ourselves. The local newspaper never wrote about girls' sports, so we walked many of our articles to the local newspaper office and asked them to publish the articles that we wrote. We were very surprised when they did actually publish our writing, so we actively kept up writing and delivering. The result was that we had our bylines in the local paper too.

Sophomore year I didn't make the basketball team because I missed one of the try-out days...due to not hearing the announcement over the speaker at the end of school that day. I was very disappointed when the coach told me that I couldn't make it up. So, in the spring, I tried out for cheerleading instead. I was a cheerleader my junior year so I couldn't play basketball...the two sports had conflicting schedules. As a result, I didn't play on the team until my senior year. For those who do not know this, until the winter of 1970, girls' basketball teams had 6 players. There were 2 forwards who could not go past mid-court and stayed by their own basket, 2 guards at the other end of the court, and 2 "rovers" who could traverse the court and play at both ends. In 1970, the game was in transition between girls' rules and boys' rules. We played our league games using girls' rules and independent games using boys' rules. It was an interesting year! We had a winning record in the league but really did not do well with boys' rules. The independents killed us.

Cheerleading was fun, but I really wasn't girly enough to fit in with most of the girls. I was also just an alternate, someone who didn't get to cheer at all the games unless a regular was sick. At the end of junior year we got a new cheerleading advisor who decided to change the rules on how cheerleaders were chosen. Instead of "flying up" to senior cheerleaders, we all had to re-try out. I didn't like this decision because I felt that we were short-changed of our rights. After the try-out I was cut from the team, along with the other alternate. All of the other cheerleaders were-chosen and 2 new girls made the team. I always felt that this was pre-planned by the new coach because she didn't like us for some reason, or maybe she just wanted to make a statement about her power. For whatever reason it was done, it made me feel horrible about myself and I was angry for a long time.