A Place on the Team
The Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX
Introduction
Early mornings are a teenager's definition of hell. At 8:30 on a chilly
November Saturday in 2003, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old soccer
players on the Potomac Mischief were having a hard time getting excited
about their first game, against the McLean Mystics in the Bethesda
Thanksgiving Showcase. Sleepy and cold, they made simple mistakes and let
the ball spin crazily off their feet. (Luckily, the Mystics were just as
sleepy.) The summer and fall had been a long haul for the Mischief, a club
consisting of young women who for the most part lived in the affluent
Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. Most of the team had gone to summer
soccer camps at colleges up and down the East Coast. Many of them got
together in July and August to play in seven-on-seven leagues. A few
worked with Terri Beach, their coach and a former University of Maryland
star, in one-on-one sessions. When school started, so did their high
schools' soccer teams, which meant practice every day and games twice a
week.
The Mischief 's own schedule in the Washington Area Girls Soccer league
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