Lady Streaks- No Thanks!

I feel strongly that referring to the Galesubrg girls basketball team as the Lady Streaks is demeaning, condescending, and sexist. I realize that most of the people using the phrase “Lady Streaks” don’t have the intent to demean the female athlete, but the phrase is still demeaning. 

When girls basketball was first started in 1972, many were not sure exactly where girls sports and female atheletes should fit into the existing scheme of things. Boys sports were long established at that point, male athletes had played in the YMCA, JH, and had done numerous camps by the time they got to GHS. For most if not all the female athletes, their actual first team experiences were in 1972. 

No matter how well intentioned the “powers” were in the 1970’s thru the 1990’s- girls sports were second class citizens. This was true of all girls sports not just girls basketball. 

Many administrators, coaches, fans, athletes, and parents did not know exactly where girls sports should fit into the picture. Even if people felt there should be equality for girls sports, their vision of what equality meant was not close to ur vision to today. The most common that was that schools wanted females to get opportunities in sports, but not at the expense of boys sports. In other words,”We do what we can but it better not hurt our boys sports.”

When I first took over as girls basketball coach, I was told by an administrator that I needed to change the culture. According to this administrator, female athletes just had three questions on game day,”What are we wearing? How will we get there? Will we get to eat after the game?” 

Sadly, I initially bought into what this administrator told me. The message was girls just weren’t competitive athletes. 

Soon I realized why the girls were asking these three questions. Girls had initially worn t-shirts while boys had uniforms with their name on the back. Girls bought their own shoes while boys were supplied with two pairs of free shoes. Before I started coaching girls, the girls had to car pool to games. Then eventually got school buses while the boys traveled for all games on charter buses. The boys were fed after games. 

When the athletes had been asking those three questions, they were just trying to point out the inequity in the situation. It had nothing to do with their competitiveness. 

In terms of facilities, girls initially practiced at Hitchcock school. Later the girls were moved to GHS to practice, but anytime there was a conflict, the girls were sent to Churchill or Lombard after supper to practice, and the boys stayed at GHS in Thiel. 

Initially female athletes had to raise money to earn a letter after their season. There was a sentiment that what the boys had to do to earn a “G” was much greater than what a female had to do to earn a letter. People with that belief felt females should not be given a “G.” 

Once they began to be given letters, the girls still were not admitted into the G Club, they had to have a separate club for female athletes. Evidently some thought to put girls in the G Club would diminish the value of what the male athletes had done. 

Awards that were established for the male athletes such as Budget Memorial and Phillips Award for Academics never have included female athletes. The girls had to eventually establish their own awards. It was not until almost twenty years after the start of girls sports that females were finally allowed to be members of the G-Club. 

Change is tough. Some people are more accepting of change while others are more resistant to change. Some believed girls march toward equality in sports was going too fast, while others would say it went too slow. 

One of the most fundamental questions dealt with what girls sports teams should be called. Initially some felt they should not be called “Silver Streaks,” as that would tarnish the rich tradition of male sports. Male athletes on the sophomore level were not called Silver Streaks. Silver Streaks had to be earned so on sophomore level, they referred to as Ponies. Looking at early publications, one name chosen for the female sports teams was the “Streakettes.” 

A player on one of the first teams at GHS was Molly Smith. When she described her experience, she talked about the struggles for respect for girls sports. Maybe there couldn’t get the same quality uniforms or free shoes, but people couldn’t stop the female athletes from calling themselves the “Silver Streaks.” That was a source of pride. 

In the 1980’s, it became common for media to refer to the girls teams as the Lady Streaks. It was a convenient way to differentiate that an article was about the girls rather than the boys. This had been done many places. So you come up with things like Lady Streaks, Lady Rocks, Lady Maroons, Lady Rams. 

I will be ok with using “lady” in front of a nickname as soon as you also go with- Gentlemen Streaks, Gentlemen Rocks, Gentlemen Maroons, and Gentlemen Rams. 

I personally saw how it impacted females to be treated as less than equal in the infancy of girls sports. Without realizing it, when people refer to athletes as “Lady Streaks,” the message is clear- you are not the “real” Silver Streaks. 

Maybe it seems like an insignificant issue, but for the athletes and coaches who went through the early years and the push for equality, it is both important and significant. It doesn’t matter the sport, it doesn’t matter the gender- when any student at GHS competes- we are Silver Streaks!!

The following was an article by Jay Redfern on the subject. It was written in March of 1996.

The following are some thoughts from Sara Wood. Sara was a Silver Streak, who graduated in 1996. 

Silver Streaks or Lady Steaks or Lady Silver Streaks? While the official name is Silver Streaks Girls Basketball and the uniforms say Streaks or Silver Streaks, many often refer to the team as the Lady Streaks. Likely not meant to be demeaning, the term “Lady” is not viewed positively by most female athletes with the small exceptions of the Lady Vols of Tennessee due to Pat Summit’s work distinguishing the program from the men’s and all the success she received. The rest of the women’s program at Tennessee are only referred to as the Volunteers. 

Most programs in the NCAA do not distinguish programs by gender in their team nicknames. For example, men’s and women’s teams at UCONN are referred to as the Huskies, same with the Duke Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels.  Penn State refers to their women’s basketball program as the Lady Lions but all other teams are just the Lions. This is strange because a “lady lion” is actually a lioness so….

So why bring this up? I was asked what I thought about people referring to the team as the Lady Streaks and did I feel like this was demeaning or just a way of people distinguishing the girls and boys programs? Lady Streaks sounds proper and dainty to me and I believe our basketball program is anything but those things. I also feel it subconsciously draws a difference between what it is to be a Streak based on gender when you refer to one team as Lady and the other as just the Streaks. I can’t recall any male teams being called the Gentlemen Blue Devils or Gentlemen Maroons. All the programs at GHS are Silver Streaks and that means something to the players that put on the uniform regardless of sex. My college team was called the Lady Ravens and we all hated it, it felt like we were less and different then rest of the teams in our league that were not distinguished by gender. So I guess what I am saying is: It’s just Silver Streaks