Jo Kadlecek (left) and Valerie Gin sign a copy of their book. Photo courtesy of Jo Kadlecek
By Valerie J. Gin and Jo Kadlecek
“The memory of a strong woman is a sanctuary . . . .” And so begins our story.
The strong women we knew as kids were teachers, relatives and teammates who encouraged us to play any sport available to us—thanks in part to a newly enacted law called Title IX. It was the mid-1970s and Val was growing up in Illinois, Jo in Colorado. Both of our high schools and colleges were beginning to offer young women like us a chance to participate in the games we’d before only watched our brothers play. We were grateful for each coach—female or male—who supported and taught us in spite of the challenges, and there were many. Still, from soccer and softball to volleyball and basketball, we loved every scrappy opportunity we were given to compete.
But we also loved books. When we searched the library for any sport story for girls, we couldn’t find many, save a few dusty biographies of forgotten athletes. We both went on to compete as college athletes before also becoming college coaches. Val was born to coach and to train coaches. Jo quickly learned she was better at teaching and writing, so pursued both.
When our careers crossed paths at a small liberal arts college in New England—where Val is still chair of the kinesiology department and Jo was journalist in residence at the time—we began talking about how sports had shaped our lives, built our confidence and developed in us crucial life skills, like discipline, goal-setting and teamwork. We talked, too, about the novels that had inspired us to new ways of seeing, stories that had ignited our moral imaginations and sent us to new places and ideas.
That’s when it hit us: Where were the novels about women’s sports? How come only young adult literature featured female athletes, if at all? Why didn’t someone write the kind of novel we’d always wanted to read? And how could we help today’s young athletes know what we—and others before us—had gone through so they could enjoy today’s competitive opportunities?
As we lamented the lack of good fiction with women athletes at the center, we also decided to address it head on. From those conversations, we began to plot. We gathered Title IX anecdotes from friends and colleagues, as well as our own, scheduled meetings, and created a story line that was officially published September 30, 2015, as a novel called, WHEN GIRLS BECAME LIONS.
The novel moves between 1983 and 2008 as two coaches’ stories progress, exploring the impact Title IX legislation had on their mid-western town. That inaugural team in 1983 also wins the state championship, but like so many (real life) women’s sports of that era, they never received their due. Not until 25 years later does the new young coach discover their legacy, and begin to help recognize their achievement.
From here looking back, we know, as authors, that the story of WHEN GIRLS BECAME LIONS is a familiar one. Though fictional, it explores the history-shaping power pioneering women had so that others could enjoy the level of sports we see today. Their story reminds us that without the real life inspiration of risk-taking athletes—like NWFL quarterback Barbara O’Brien, tennis star Billie Jean King and others—we’d still be sitting on the sidelines.
So, too, would we be missing out on the crucial sense of trust and solidarity team sports instill in our relationships with one another. Yet that central theme in WHEN GIRLS BECAME LIONS, which celebrates women’s friendships against the backdrop of this shared sport history, doesn’t fit easily into today’s women’s fiction or the male-dominated sports genre. In fact, the New York publishers who “loved the idea and the manuscript” couldn’t decide how to market it. Was it women’s fiction? A sports novel? Contemporary or historical? Though their feedback was helpful, we knew we needed to get our book out there—sooner than later. So we decided to do what those heroic pioneers did, and what many Title IX recipients have learned to do: we took matters into our own hands and made it happen. We published the novel ourselves.
Four years, one small grant and dozens of edits and conversations later, we finally produced the type of novel we wanted to read: a tale of two teams, Title IX and the women who became champions—and friends—through it all. When Julie Foudy, Olympian and ESPN Commentator, told us she “absolutely loved this great read about women in sports, (that) contemporary fiction with women athletes at the center of the narrative is long overdue,” we knew things were moving in the right direction, even if it was slow going. It was an important and exciting step.
Title IX and supportive communities paved the way for us as athletes. Now we’re hoping the literary playing field becomes increasingly leveled as well for readers and athletes like us, so that when they go hunting for a book that tells their story, they’ll find more than one.
Check out the book trailer here:
When Girls Became Lions – now available! from Christopher Gilbert on Vimeo.
Valerie J. Gin is a professor of kinesiology, a former collegiate volleyball and softball coach who earned numerous Coach of the Year honors. When not traveling or teaching for the International Sport Leadership Schools, she’s downhill skiing or walking her dog on the beach near her home in Gloucester, MA.
Jo Kadlecek never made the USA women’s soccer team—there wasn’t one in her day—and instead became an English teacher and a professional writer, authoring 16 books before WHEN GIRLS BECAME LIONS. She and her husband recently moved from Boston to Australia to be near his parents and to swim in outdoor pools.
