Chapter 20

“HOW ARE WE supposed to decide this?” Ardith moaned. The coaches were meeting after practice and Dennis had been invited to attend. “No more than two people per event. No person can participate in more than four events. Preliminaries count as events. This is insane.”

“Ah, the preliminaries rule doesn’t work the way you think it does,” Coach Andy said. “The preliminary and the final count as a single event. But if your runner is eliminated in the preliminary, it still counts as an event. We don’t need to worry about that at the State Qualifier meet. This year, all races are finals. So, with twelve schools in our qualifying meet, we can assume there will be three heats and places are by time. They should run just two heats for relays, except the shuttle hurdle relay, which will have six heats because the track only fits four teams for shuttle hurdles.”

“I suppose I should fill our individual races first and then figure out who should run in the relays,” Ardith said. “Dennis, fill in these positions with our number one runner in each event.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dennis had the blank form set up on his laptop and began typing in the names at once.

“100-meter dash, Brenda Grant and Amy Unger. 200-meter dash, Judith Long and Becky Davis. 400-meter dash, Tori McDonald and Debbie Stackhouse. 800-meter run, Diane Long and Leah Davis. 1500-meter run, Leah Davis and Janice Goodwin. 3000-meter run, Laura Percy and Emily Wilson. That fills the individual running events.”

“You’re getting a lot of girls playing. That’s great,” Coach Andy said. “Is your team really that well balanced?”

“We have a couple that could be contenders in more than one race, but I don’t see it being more than a toss-up for who’s fastest. For example, Judith has a personal best time in the 100-meter dash better than Amy has. But Amy has been consistent with her time and Judith seems to bounce around a lot—fast and slow.”

“Well, here are the hurdle girls,” Andy said. “100-meter hurdles, Natalie Armor and Roberta Armor. 400-meter hurdles, Daniella Armor and Roberta Armor. Then we have the shuttle hurdle relay. Obviously, Natalie, Roberta, and Daniella. I’d like to use Leanne Vining as my third. She’s been steadily improving all season.”

“That looks like it will leave good runners for the relays,” Ardith said. “I think we’re obvious for the sprint medley. That would be 100-meter Brenda, 100-meter Amy, 200-meter Judith, and 400-meter Tori.”

“Are we still good for having Brenda, Amy, Judith, and Becky for the 4x100 relay? Are we over-booking any of them, Dennis?” Andy asked.

“No, sir. That makes three events each for Brenda, Amy, and Judith, and two for Becky.”

“Here’s where we get into a problem. Judith is in the sprint medley, the 200-meter dash, and the 4x100 relay. I have to choose whether to use her in the 4x200-meter relay or in the distance medley. Do we have anyone we can switch to take her place in the 4x100? I think you’ll agree the 200 is her strong event and we could use her in both medleys,” Andy said.

“I can work with that. We can add the 4x100 to Debbie. I think that will give her four events with the 4x200, the 200-meter dash, and the distance medley,” Ardith said.

“Okay, that would mean the distance medley would be 200-meter lead, Judith. 200-meter second leg, Debbie. 400-meter leg, Tori. 800-meter leg, Diane. How are we on using Tori?” Andy asked. Dennis looked through his chart.

“We’ve got her in the 400-meter dash, the sprint medley, and the distance medley,” Dennis said.

“So, putting her in the 4x400-meter relay will max her out. She’s really made an art of the 400, so I think that’s where her focus needs to be,” Andy said. “But that means our 4x200 relay is going to need Leanne to round out the four instead of Tori.”

The horse-trading, as they put it, went on through the rest of the team and then they started working on the boys. It was dinner time when Ardith offered to give Dennis a ride home.

“You look very happy, Dennis. What’s up?” Ardith asked as they drove to his house.

“The world just looks good at the moment.”

“Your eyes?”

“Yeah, that. But I also like that we have twenty-four girls on our track team and all of them will have an opportunity to compete at the State Qualifying Meet. I wish we didn’t need to travel all the way to Traynor for it, but it could be worse, I suppose.”

“That is a good thing. Going from nine to twenty-four is quite a change for you, isn’t it?”

“Things have calmed down with the bigger group,” Dennis said. “They’re great.”

“A good many of them will be back next year. Will you?”

“If you’ll have me, I’m here for my entire high school career.”

“I anticipate that there will be more girls who try out for basketball next year. It will change the dynamic of the locker room,” Ardith said as she pulled up in front of his house.

“I don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing. We were pretty rowdy this year,” Dennis said.

“Yes. I’m just wondering if you’ll go from nine girlfriends to fifteen,” Ardith laughed.

“No,” Dennis whispered. “No, no, no.” He opened the door. “Thanks for the ride, Coach. See you tomorrow.”

She grinned after him as he bounded up the steps to his door. ‘We’ll see,’ she thought. ‘It’s already shaping up.’

Part of what was shaping up was on the school board. Spring elections had replaced two members of the board. The new members were Lily Armor and Renda Long. Both women were avid supporters of the athletic department and now, especially the women’s sports. They came to the first school board meeting with an agenda.

“We were elected on the platform of expanding the girls’ athletic program,” Lily said. “We made huge strides in the program this year by starting the girls’ basketball team and now the track team. We believe the program should be expanded and that additional coaches be hired.”

“I appreciate the sentiments and certainly think we made a huge advance this year, but there are really only a few girls affected by this,” Superintendent Jones said.

“Nathan, we’re not going to let that slide,” Renda said. “There are twenty-four girls on the track team. That’s twelve percent of our student body—nearly a quarter of the girls in the school. And the district has been skating on its Title IX obligations for too many years. We are dangerously near the edge of losing that funding because we have not lived up to the criteria that were set.”

“We have never had much of an athletic program here. The basketball boys haven’t had a winning season in twenty years. The only other sports the boys have are track and baseball and the girls are participating fully in track now,” Jones replied. He knew he was going to be on the losing end of this battle, but felt compelled to guard the budget.

“That tells us we should expand the boys’ program as well,” Neil Levinson said. “Even the smallest schools around are fielding football teams. We have a couple of boys just primed for wrestling and there is no reason we shouldn’t have cross country here.” Neil’s statement made it even harder for Jones. That meant he had three of the four board members pushing for the expansion.

“Our coaches are already overburdened.” Jones said. “We can’t just toss more sports at them.”

“We have five open positions on the teaching staff for the fall,” Lily said. “We propose that two of those positions be filled by women who will also coach an expanded women’s program to include volleyball, softball, and cross country. Two of the positions should be filled by men who can coach football, wrestling, and cross country. That still leaves us a position that can be filled as needed, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another PE/coach on the staff.”

“There’s just one point I’d disagree with,” Garth Adams said. That made it four of four speaking in favor of the expansion. “I don’t believe we should define the coaches as male and female. They need to be able to coach men’s teams and women’s teams, but if you look around at the schools, several have men coaching women’s teams. And there’s even that school in Cedar Falls that has a woman coaching the boys’ football team.” There were nods around the table.

“We’ll need to work out the job descriptions and salaries,” Jones sighed. “I knew we were headed this way after the board elections in March. Welcome to the burden of paying for the programs we want. We need to address next year’s budget now.”

Oddly enough, the school district was cash-rich and had not taken full advantage of available education grants in order to fly beneath the radar of Title IX watchdogs. As soon as Wilmer Dietz got word of the move to enhance the sports program at Bartley High School, he organized a broader booster club and began fund-raising for a massive equipment purchase. Unlike basketball and track, football was a costly sport when it came to uniforms and equipment. And people leapt to get behind the movement, still riding high on the success the girls’ basketball team had brought to Bartley, Iowa.

“Did you hear?” Natalie asked Dennis as they headed to his house after their Saturday meet. The girls had come in second in an eight-way meet intended to imitate the State Qualifiers that were coming up in just three weeks. They would have two more eight-way meets in the next two weeks before traveling to Traynor for the Qualifiers. “We’re getting more coaches and more sports next year! We’ll have a volleyball team in the fall! Isn’t it great?”

“It sounds exciting. I wonder if there will be a place for a geeky boy as team manager,” he laughed. They ran into the house, announcing their presence to Ms. Dottie and Peg. Dennis’s sister came pelting down the hallway to hug her brother and gave Natalie just as emphatic an embrace.

“It’s warm out. Let’s play basketball!” Peg exclaimed. Natalie and Dennis both laughed and went out to join Peg. His sister was getting progressively better, though the progress over the past eight or nine years had been slow. She loved to dribble and shoot as long as no one was hovering over her. She got flustered if she was pressed, so the game was more like taking turns shooting than scrimmage.