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No
other game captured the interest of Kentucky high school girls during the early 20th century like basketball.
Audrey Peterson was the winning coach of the 1932 Woodburn High
School state basketball tournament.
Coach Peterson trained her girls team to win and to follow the
same rules that boys didfull court and unlimited dribbleunlike
other girls teams The coachs remarkable record evidenced the training,
discipline, skill, and confidence that she taught her female athletes. It
paid off and they won!
But
it was their last win. The
Kentucky High School Athletic Association abandoned the state tournament
for girls. There was no
state tournament until 1975, when the Kentucky Legislature mandated that
the state tournament be re-established for girls.
Until the 1970s schools could choose whether or not to even have
sports teams for girls, and most chose not to.
In 1972, federal legislation called Title IX mandated that
institutions receiving money from the federal government treat both
genders equally in the programs and activities that they provide.
This legislation applied not just to sports, but all activities.
But it meant that schools had to provide equal opportunities for
female athletes.
Visit Appalshop's Web site to
find out how to order a copy of Girl's Hoops, an Appalshop film directed by Justine
Richardson.
Learn
more about Title IX at the KY Dept. of Education’s Division
of Equity site and the University
of Iowa Gender
Equity in Sports project Web site.
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