Mrs. Scanlan's road trip

Before the George Parks Highway was completed to connect Fairbanks and Anchorage, the main route from the Interior cut a wide triangle that took twice as long to drive. The old Richardson Highway ran east toward the Canadian border before bending at Delta Junction to head south through the Alaska Range. Just above Glennallen, the Richardson connected with the Glenn, which carried you through the Wrangell, Talkeetna, and Chugach Mountains before entering the big city. With bathroom breaks and a mandatory stop for a Glennallen diner’s famous French fries, the trip took twelve hours. Both ways took at least twenty-four – a full day of remote driving, mostly beyond civilization, in the days before cell phones.

Mrs. Scanlan was up for it.

When she pulled in front of Lathrop High School in a Head Start van one cool May morning near the end of my sophomore year, the group of us she had cobbled together for the 1971 Lathrop Girls Track Team thought there must have been some mistake. We were in high school, not preschool. We were teenage athletes, not little kids.

“It’s the only van I could find that’s big enough,” Mrs. Scanlan explained, brushing us off before we could utter a word. And with that we were on the road

Mrs. Scanlan must have been 50 years old at least. She was short, but stocky and strong. We could barely see her head over the driver’s seat, but we knew we were in good hands. She was, to each of us, formidable. Which was probably how we all came to be barreling down the highway that day with the familiar Delta Mountain peaks of Deborah, Hess and Hayes rising in the windshield.

Most of us had never run track. And until just a week before, most of us had never intended to. We had not been aware that the 1971 State Track & Field Meet would be held soon in Chugiak, and that girls our age across the state were training hard. We had not been aware that Lathrop had no girl’s team slated to compete. But we learned that Mrs. Scanlan was not about to accept our school’s no-show. She had approached each of us individually, pleading with us to sign up.

As the gym teacher, Mrs. Scanlan knew who was in shape. Several girls had joined the Nordic ski team. Others had excelled in the school’s Presidential Fitness program. I wasn’t a skier and had failed the Presidential Fitness test despite the hours Mrs. Scanlan had spent with me trying to improve my softball throw. But I was a member of the Arctic Swim Club and worked out five days a week. My throwing score ranked in the 20th percentile, but she wagered that my lungs were strong

“It’s just one week of running practice, and one meet,” Mrs. Scanlan promised us.

One by one, we committed ourselves. To the Malemutes! To the team!

For our training, we ran loops around nearby Hunter Elementary School on the dusty gray streets of spring break-up in Fairbanks. It was cold out still, but warming, and the days were growing longer. We celebrated our spring fever, running without coats in sweats and tennis shoes scrounged from the backs of our closets. When Mrs. Scanlan barked orders, we listened. We huddled around. We stretched and swayed and swaggered. No one else at school paid attention, but we savored our place on her elite team

It was only when the Head Start van showed up that we began to have doubts about whether the school was taking us seriously. We began to suspect that school officials didn’t know about our team, that Mrs. Scanlan was pulling the whole thing off by herself. We knew for certain that the Malemute boy’s basketball team would never be caught dead in that van

Fortunately for our morale, Sherene was along. A Nordic skier, she ran hurdles, an event that required a fine sense of humor. She thought the van was hilarious, and caught the giggles every time she imagined what our team looked like from the outside. She made up headlines: “Preschoolers Take State Meet by Storm.” “Records Tumble as 4-Year-Olds Dominate the Track.” She joked about strangers looking in at us and wondering how kindergartners got so big and old, asking “shouldn’t they have graduated by now?” Her giggles became infectious, and by the time we reached Paxson, the old roadhouse halfway down the Richardson, the van was our team’s new mascot. No Malemute logo, no purple and gold school colors, but loyal and true to us. For hours and hours, it carried our loud teenage laughter down the highway. If Mrs. Scanlan was bothered by it all, she never let on.

When we finally reached Chugiak High School, we were ushered into the gym and told we could sleep on the tumbling mats. We pulled the bulky pads off the stacks and arranged our sleeping bags and gear into little nests across the gym floor. The lighting was dim – not nearly as bright as during basketball games. The eerie feel in the cavernous space made us question again whether our mission was official.

Again, Sherene got the giggles, offering a tourism commentary on our lodgings. “Welcome to Chateau Chugeaux,” she guided us, “and our luxurious Gym Suite, perfect for the discerning traveler and every single one of his or her best friends!” Again, we all caught the bug, rolling on our little mat nests like they were the funniest things we had ever seen.

Amidst the hilarity, Mrs. Scanlan eventually got serious. Most of us had never run in competition before, so she assigned our distances. For me, she selected the 440, or quarter-mile: one lap around the track. I felt relieved, like I got off easy. Other girls had to run the 880, even the mile. We got to bed early and were rested when we emerged onto the track the next morning. But it didn’t take long for uneasiness to set in

We noticed that some girls on the other teams wore matching colors, even uniforms. We envied their crisp appearance and hid our own outfits beneath our sweats. I had chosen a maroon cotton turtleneck and stiff black boxers for the day’s events, realizing too late that girls on other teams wore thin tank tops and slinky running shorts. My teammates and I shuffled in place, staring down at the dirt, looking for small stones to kick

Mrs. Scanlan either didn’t notice our deflation or ignored it. She sent us out for some warm-up laps, then called us together for our final pep talk before the preliminaries.

“You girls ready to race, show ‘em how it’s done?” she beamed at us. You’d have thought we were at the Olympics.

The great thing about being recruited for a nearly invisible team is the relative lack of pressure. From what I remember, none of us had real rivals to contend with, or even personal best times. None of us had family or friends in the stands to savor our victories or share our disappointments. Only Mrs. Scanlan seemed to care much about how well we did that day. But she created a sense of urgency, a need to do our best. And that was enough.

One by one, we qualified for the finals. One by one, we began to look at each other differently.

“We’re CONTENDERS!” Sherene yelled to our little huddle as only she could do. And the loud, brash way she said it, to our rag-tag group in front of everyone, brought our giggles back, along with our confidence.

In the quarter-mile final, I qualified to run next to the two-time state champion. It was chilly standing in the lanes waiting for the start, and she was shaking out her arms and legs to loosen up and stay warm. Other competitors were shaking out, too, so I mimicked them, feeling like an imposter. I caught the champion’s eye and we spoke a bit, but mostly we laughed nervously. I wondered if she noticed that I was wearing a turtleneck.

Time seemed to move in slow motion. The sun was high but not yet warm, and I could feel the cold on my cheeks and legs. I took deep breaths, trying to remember everything Mrs. Scanlan had told me. Be calm. Breathe. Give it everything. You don’t have to pace for one lap. Then the gun fired.

Another great thing about our team was the shrieking. I could hear them all shouting and cheering for me, Mrs. Scanlan the loudest among them. I could hear the din in the stands for all the other girls sweeping down the lanes. But mostly I listened to the pounding of my feet on the track, the loud beating of my heart, the deep steady cadence of my breathing. I was outside my body, feeling nothing but a strange new exhilaration, as though all the energy in the world was behind me, pushing me onward.

By the final bend, the champion and I were neck-and-neck, and I could hear her breathing, too. But as we emerged from the last curve, she disappeared from view. It was just me and the roar and the finish line.

Mrs. Scanlan hugged me first, then Sherene, then the rest of the team. We jumped up and down until we couldn’t anymore. The Fairbanks newspaper, in a tiny article on the sports page, would later call it “probably the meet’s biggest upset.”

But it was only the beginning. By the end of the meet, our team had claimed two more individual victories and six more individual awards. In the final team scoring, we placed second overall. We returned to Fairbanks triumphant, Mrs. Scanlan leading the way from the driver’s seat, the rest of us beaming proudly from the windows of our lucky Head Start van. We met no official welcome or fanfare when we got back to school, but our world had shifted nonetheless.

It was just a year after our team’s surprise showing at the state championships that the U.S. Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. “Title Nine” prohibits gender discrimination in federally funded educational programs and activities, ensuring that girls have equal opportunity in school sports. In the decades since its enactment, schools have opened their gyms, rinks and playing fields to girls for a wide range of sports that were previously inaccessible to them. Basketball, soccer, wrestling, even football. And girl’s teams now have uniforms and travel widely, just like boy’s teams.

Yet despite this history, it took me decades to appreciate that Mrs. Scanlan’s mission for the 1971 Lathrop High School Girls Track Team may have extended beyond loyalty to the school and faith in our potential. Today, I suspect that her willingness to drive for twenty-four hours on lonely highways through the wilderness, and to sleep on gym floors with noisy teenagers, had to do with being tired. Tired of seeing girls denied athletic opportunities because of their gender. Tired of seeing limited resources showered on boy’s athletics while talented girls stood in the wings. I’ll never know for sure, but I like to think that Mrs. Scanlan’s ultimate goal on that trip was to defend the opportunity for girls as well as boys to be strong, confident, and powerful – for girls as well as boys to know what it felt like to fly.

I never ran another race after that meet. Just a year later, I was diagnosed with a spinal condition that would keep me from running for the rest of my life. Today I consider it an achievement to walk slowly over the flattest trails in Anchorage. But I’ve never forgotten Mrs. Scanlan or the 1971 Lathrop Girls Track Team, or that time when my body was fearless and fast.

A few years ago, my husband and I were visiting with our friend Mike, a Masters runner and Nordic skier approaching his 70s. Mike and I had worked together on many projects over the years, and had celebrated our share of successes. But when my husband happened to mention my state quarter-mile victory, Mike looked at me as though I’d grown wings.

“You were a state champion?!” Mike asked, struggling to reconcile his image of an athlete with the graying sixty-something sitting before him.

“Where’s your medal?” he asked. I explained that if I received one it was buried in a box somewhere.

“That was before Title Nine,” Mike said. A life-long athlete, he understood the significance of 1972 to women’s sports.

“Schools didn’t fund girls’ programs much back then. Maybe you never got one,” he laughed, only half joking.

A few months later, our mutual friend PJ hosted a potluck at his house. As our group mingled and finished our plates, the Olympic anthem suddenly blared through the living room. PJ marched in ceremoniously, holding an American flag. Mike followed behind him in beat with the anthem, carrying a pillow with a shiny red bag on top. The music stopped and PJ called our attention.

“We have a special award this evening,” he announced. The rest of us looked at each other, nervous.

Mike took a large gold medal on blue ribbon out of the little bag. He called my name and asked me to step forward. He read the 1971 newspaper clipping and explained that I was a champion who deserved my award at long last. Then he draped the heavy medal around my neck.

Stunned and blushing, I just stood there. Then at Mike’s urging, I told the story of my old track coach and our long ago road trip in the days before Title Nine. The room was quiet when at last I raised a toast.

“To Mrs. Scanlan,” I said.

“To Mrs. Scanlan,” the room echoed back.

“And to Title Nine!” someone added to cheers and applause as glasses clicked around.

After the ceremony, I pulled Mike aside and examined the medal more closely. Engraved on the back, below my name, were the details: “1971 Alaska State Champ. 440 yards. 66.1 seconds.” Embossed on the front was a lean and muscular runner, leaping from a starting line. I stared at the figure for a long moment, then looked curiously at Mike.

He grinned widely.

“So sorry,” he said, shrugging a laugh.

“The trophy shop only had guys.”