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"Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success."- MBN |
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 Where I Was When
Billie Jean King Beat Bobby Riggs© Mariah Burton Nelson Billie Jean was on my side.
She understood everything. When Billie beat Bobby, on September 20, 1973, I was seventeen. My family had recently moved to Phoenix from Pennsylvania, where I had competed in swimming, field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. In Phoenix my high school only offered volleyball and tennis for girls. I joined both teams but felt bitterly disappointed that there was no girls' basketball. So I asked the boys' coach, the astronomy teacher, if I could try out for the boys team. He laughed in my face. "Your breasts would get in the way," he said. I was shocked but tried to ignore the comment. "I'm good," I explained, rising up to my full six-foot-one-inch height to look him in the eye. "I played varsity starting in tenth grade in my old school. Give me a chance." "Your breasts could get injured, hit with an elbow." He stepped closer to me as if to demonstrate with his own elbow. I stepped back. "I just want to try out," I persisted. "Only if I can personally bind your breasts," he replied, eyes twinkling with glee. Students didn't sue teachers in those days. I don't think I even told my parents. My mother is a pioneering physician and a swimmer and a feminist but we didn't have the vocabulary then to talk about sexual harassment and sexual exploitation and even regular old discrimination against female athletes. She didn't quite "get" how important basketball was; how could she? There were no college scholarships for women then, no pro league beckoning. And Dad said he didn't want his daughter to be a "jock." Which was like saying he didn't want his daughter to be tall. Too late, Dad! I played intramural ball with the boys instead, and was scouted by my gym teacher, who recruited me to play on her AAU team, the Phoenix Dusters, where I was welcomed and embraced by my teammates, all of whom were in their twenties or thirties. Our theme song was Helen Reddy's "I am Woman." It was our only cassette, and we played it over and over in the car on long road trips in the southwest. We were women. Hear us roar. Still, as a teenage feminist, I was lonely –- and angry. Our history textbook devoted just two pages to women -- the suffrage movement -- and I made that my senior project, creating papier-mâché images of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard that I suspended from a coat-hanger mobile. I hung it in my classroom, where in the breeze the women made swooping, threatening motions at the history teacher, whom I hated because of his sexual overtures toward lots of girls, including me. The summer before the match, I followed the hype carefully, thrilled at Billie Jean's bold statements about equal rights for women. Then, a month or so before the Battle of the Sexes, the Virginia Slims tour came to Phoenix and my tennis team was asked to serve as ball girls. How exciting! But -- too tall to run inconspicuously along the net, I declined. I did, however, brazenly follow Billie Jean into the women's restroom, which was doubling as a players' locker room, to ask for her autograph. Bless her: Preparing for her match, dressed only in bra and undies, she granted my request. That evening, after the crowd had dispersed, I climbed a chain-link fence to dislodge, then steal a huge plastic "You've come a long way, Baby" banner featuring that skinny cigarette-smoking flapper from the roaring twenties. I knew the "baby" part was demeaning and of course I also knew that theft was morally and legally wrong but at that point in my life I felt an overwhelming need literally to grab any visible symbols of feminism I could find. The banner covered one wall of my bedroom for years. More than 28,000 people witnessed the Battle of the Sexes at the Houston Astrodome. More than 48 million watched on television. I was one of television-watchers, alone in our den, sitting in my father's Lazy-Boy but without the footrest extended, rocking forward the whole time, knowing that something very important was happening for women, and for me. My siblings were in college; I don't know where my parents or Phoenix Duster teammates were; I did have a few new schoolmates who were athletes but somehow I ended up alone there, and lonely. Luckily Billie spoke to me and for me. With her relentless groundstrokes she expressed all my anger and determination and pursuit of fairness. When she won in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, I leapt out of the chair and cheered, yelling at the television in a way that I never have before or since. I was no longer alone. Billie Jean was on my side. She understood everything. She was on my team, and we had won. Mariah Burton Nelson is an author, athlete, and professional speaker who uses sports stories to show people how to lead and succeed with courage, compassion, commitment, and confidence. For reprint permission contact the author; information below. To contact Mariah about her presentations, call 703/276-8323 or write to her at Mariah@MariahBurtonNelson.com Home © 2000-2002
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