[ARETE] Sheri Benden, Break Point

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find below and attached  Alan Zaremba's review of Sheri Benden's *Break
Point*. a book and review that will be of interest to all concerned with
women's sport and questions of equality
Thanks
Duncan

Reviewed by Alan Zaremba
Northeastern University

Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX (University of
Minnesota Press) is a well written, accurately titled, and valuable book.
The author, Sheri Brenden, examines a case that involved her sister, Peggy
Brenden--a tennis player, and Toni St. Pierre--a cross-country runner and
cross-country skier. Both athletes were enrolled in high schools just prior
to the passage of Title IX.  Neither school had girls’ teams in the
athletes’ respective sports.  Both Brenden and St. Pierre wanted to compete
and the only way to compete would be to play on the existing boys’ teams.
Both were skilled athletes and could compete with high school boys.
However, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) prohibited girls
from playing on boy’s teams. In addition, the MSHSL would penalize
opponents that competed with boys’ teams that had girls on them.

The book includes the background of the case; information about the two
athletes and their families; the court case proceedings including excerpts
from witnesses’ testimonies; information about how the women fared in their
high school competitions after they were victorious in court; the MSHSL
appeal; and what happened to the women in their years after the court case.


The book will be valuable to a number of audiences.

• Historians and social scientists studying the evolution of women’s
struggle to achieve equality in sport.

• Instructors teaching sports communication, management, law, or history
courses.
o The book could be used not only as a case history, but also to tease out
issues brought out during court arguments.  For example, the attorney for
the young women argued that the athletes were deprived of their right to
compete, and consequently the MSHSL rule perpetuated unlawful inequities.
The attorneys for the MSHSL contended that allowing women to compete on
men’s teams would retard the growth of women’s sports.  The judge asserted
that the case was only about these two athletes and his finding was not
intended to “involve a class action.” The MSHSL countered that a decision
to allow these two women to compete would inevitably set a precedent that
transcended the Brenden/St. Pierre case.  Instructors in various sports
courses might use Break Point as a springboard for point/counterpoint
discussion that could fuel interesting and likely animated debates.

• Those who study gender equality and compare current and past conditions.
o Are societies more enlightened in 2023 or, despite the growth of women’s
sports, do people still harbor the same attitudes about women and women
athletes? Brenden writes incisively that in 1972 “It was as if the phrase
‘female athlete’ were an oxymoron (132).  She refers to a 1972 women’s
track coach who said, “We try to keep the girls as feminine as possible,
and just let them run.” (131)  Brenden comments: “Athletic skill, muscle,
toughness were not usually included in anyone’s [then] definitions of
feminine.” (131) Fifty years later, to what extent have perceptions
changed?

• Media scholars who study media framing.
o Some of the newspaper headlines Brenden identifies from the case are
jarring. “Girls Sports Get Go Ahead; Boy’s Athletics Take Lumps.” (108)
“Girls Getting Pretty Darn Good at Track” (131).  In addition to these
headlines, Brenden describes media reporting and reporters. There are
examples throughout the book of media framing.

• Sociologists who examine culture and social change.
o Break Point reveals how individuals defend even illogical and unlawful
rules because these rules support and reinforce convention.  Brenden cites
a court case in 1971 during which a judge opined “Athletic competition
builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our
girls, the women of tomorrow.” (12)

• Any person, not necessarily a researcher, interested in women’s sports
and sports in general.

Some other engaging aspects of the book:

Readers (especially those who played, coached, or followed team tennis)
will find noteworthy the section that describes Peggy Brenden’s first
matches competing against boys. In brief, coaches from opposing teams
changed the order of their players to make sure that a tougher player would
compete against Brenden. In her initial competition, Peggy was the number
three player for her team. Instead of playing the number three player for
the opponent, the opposing coach had the number two player, play down, and
the number three player play up.  The former number three player lost 6-0,
6-0.  Brenden, at number three, nearly won, losing 9-7; 7-5 to the
opponent’s number two. Brenden’s coach commented, “They stacked their
lineup basically because the No. 3 didn’t want to get beat by a girl.”
(116) A Minnesota newspaper headlined the article about the match, “Girl
Prep Enters Boys Area, Loses.” (119)

There is a section about how the judge in the case decided that the
athletes’ attorney was a novice compared to the lawyers for the MSHSL.
Because of this, the judge decided to, essentially, assist the athletes’
attorney. The judge commented “…when a young lawyer comes in faced with
three lawyers of some experience and his first case in a situation like
this, I thought…it called for some judicial intervention to even the
scales.”  The attorney for the MSHSL was not pleased by the activity of the
judge. He commented “I would like to add an objection now to the conduct of
the court in the course of the trial…in intervening in this case, in trying
a big part of the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, I just think that ought
to be on the record.” (101)


It is revealing that the same woman, Dorothy McIntyre, a witness and
advocate for the MSHSL during the case who opined that “If we let the girls
get on the boys’ teams, then the school districts wouldn’t be motivated to
create equivalent systems for the girls” (39) is identified toward the end
of the book (150) as someone who, despite the ruling, was able to create
very strong women’s competitions.


There are a number of ways I think the book could have been even stronger.
It would have been good to include an index.   The “Further Reading”
section was a valuable inclusion but might have been more beneficial had
the entries been annotated. I wondered how items were selected or omitted
from the list. It was surprising, for example, that Playing for Equality, a
book cited in the endnotes (that intrigued me sufficiently to request an
e-version of the book from my university’s library) was not included. In
addition to the “Further Reading” section, the endnotes in Break Point are
rich with references to interesting articles related to women and sports.
I am not a supporter of the current trend to exclude superscripted numbers
in texts but include notes at the back of a book.  It was good to see that
the author included superscripts; these alert the reader. Many readers do
not refer to endnotes, but for those of us who do, the notes help identify
sources for further review. In Break Point there were a number of instances
when the content of the note had me exploring the source identified. There
were, however, a few instances where the notes were not clear or were
puzzling.  For example, note 13 on page 147 refers to a cover story in
Sports Illustrated. The citation, however, refers to a book written by
Jaime Schultz.  In Schultz’s book, the Sports Illustrated quote--from which
Brenden excerpted a portion--appears. Why was Schultz’s book, and not the
Sports Illustrated article used as the source?  There may be, and likely
is, a good reason—the book is very thoroughly researched—but there were a
few times when a citation was confusing at least to this reader.

These are hardly major issues. Break Point is a valuable book which,
particularly at the end, is very powerful.  Sadly, Toni St. Pierre was a
cancer victim at age 58, and the author could not interview her for Break
Point.  However, Sheri Brenden was able to relay information about Peggy
Brenden. The book concludes with a description of Peggy Brenden’s return to
her high school as an adult.  It’s likely that readers--particular those
aware of the obstacles women and other minorities have encountered in
sports--will find these final two paragraphs of Break Point stirring and
memorable.


Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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