Girls hoops thriving since Title IX
Published 5:00 am Friday, March 2, 2007
The Spartan program gets equal footing, and then takes off.
Coach Dean Scherer’s boys team had Buchanan Gym to themselves for only one year when the US Congress enacted Title IX of their Education Amendment: “No person in the US shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from …education programs receiving Federal dollars.”
Girls were back with authority and a competitive zeal. No suffragette-era, bloomer-uniformed feminists playing an abbreviated game of six against six in which three each played at either end of the court as in the old days.
These girls wore gym shorts and boys’ jerseys and played run-and-shoot offenses with tenacious “D”…or tried.
In 1973, vice principal Tom Williams coached the first BHS girls’ team in years. Kerry Quinn was co-captain with center Christy Loverich, daughter of basketball legend Ed “Ashcan” Loverich, who chuckles, “We had fun, but were not very good!”
The ‘74 squad called themselves “Bonzon’s Bombers” for coach Gary Bonzon. BHS’s first woman coach was Carol Axtman in ‘75 who preached, “If at first you don’t succeed…”
Between ‘78 and ‘85, Coach Mike Welch elevated the program and in eight years led Spartan girls to three state tournaments finishing second in 1978. His JV coach, Fred Russell, had good seasons, too. With a half-court shot at a Sonics’ game, he won a new Buick.
Coach Leigh Ann Charlston’s thoroughness and inspiration took the program to the top between ‘86 and ‘89. It had been 39 years since BHS had won a State championship when Charlston’s girls returned to the island with the State trophy in 1987, the first for BHS girls. It was like 1948 all over again.
“The thing I will always remember about Bainbridge… always,” Charlston described as happy tears welled up from the never-to-be-forgotten moment, “was…was when the team came home … from the tournament…on the ferry. You might have thought that they’d have let our bus off first. They didn’t. They held us on the boat. They wouldn’t let us off – until the very last! And then came the sirens! Fire engines wailing, water hoses cascading, horns honking and everybody lined up to greet us from the ferry and all the way through town!”
Her Spartan girls of ‘87, ‘88 and ‘89 went 10-1 in the 2A State tournament play with two state championships, and nearly a third.
Christina Marshall was MVP of the ‘87 and ‘89 tournament. Vanessa Jones was ‘88’s MVP.
The ‘87 State champs were led by Marshall, Vanessa Jones, Krista Mirkovich and Cindy Russell. They repeated in ‘88 with Marshall, Mirkovich, Lynnsey Bailey and Stacey Anderson heading another stellar squad. The ‘89 team captured fourth, losing only to State champ Lakeside. The girls were soaring.
The sport that had made room again for girls had been color blind and reflected the Island’s predominantly European American demographics. Boys and girls with Philippine and Japanese ancestry with skills refined at Island Center Hall and Winslow’s Japanese Community Hall were swift and agile on high school teams over the years. Between 1939 and 1941, 30-40 percent of boys’ team players were of Japanese ancestry. In response to a query from a Kitsap black historian, the first African American students to wear Spartan uniforms were perhaps in 1979. with Aimee Calkins, R. J. Walter and Jim Green, all JV players. Green played varsity ball the following year.
Girls’ teams coached by Jim Dow and Penny Gienger followed the path blazed by Welch and Charleston. Gienger, for the past 15 years, has coached teams to the State dance almost half the time and to their first 3A State Championship in 1999!
Hardworking and talented Britt Themann, Alexis Kimball, Jenny Ray, Meghan Smith, Emily Pierce, Kim Beemer, Nicole Hebner, Fab Rezayat, Molly Dolan and Angela Reynvaan topped undefeated Meadowdale for the title.
“I just like to help girls win!” Giegner concludes.
Roger Miller, Gienger’s former assistant coach, compiled a detailed modern girls’ basketball history, “One-third of a Century of Excellence!” It’s in the BHS and Bainbridge Island Museum library.
Bainbridge boys havehad five or six coaches in as many years after Scherer left the team bench in 1993.
Now the boys play for outstanding Coach Scott Orness, whose father was a successful boys’ coach for Tacoma’s Franklin Pierce High School. The BHS boys won Districts in 1998 and today play in the State’s competitive Metro League.
Buchanan Gym was replaced by a new and larger Paski Gym in 2001. The Island’s largest venue occasionally has to turn folks away for thrilling barn burners and key games.
From the long-suffering men who were forever repairing broken windows and who kept up repairs to the old community halls, to the BHS Booster Club, which formed to aid high school athletics, island basketball has benefited from many supporters.
Bud Lundgren recalls, “The Booster Club started in football coach Bob Rosi’s living room. One of the main boosters present was the ever-popular Ed Loverich.”
Booster funds provided a football scoreboard, improved the sound system in the old gym, purchased a movie camera for Tom Paski and started a scholar athlete trophy.
At the end of her high school season, Peggy Stafford, ‘83, concluded, “Basketball has taught me to give everything I have in all that I do.”
Her teammate, Nancy Shryock (daughter of the team manager of the BHS ‘48 boys’ state champs) summed things up, “Winning, losing, practices, games, praying, sweating and working together like a family … that’s what it’s all about!”
