Last week, I discussed a game the Romeo High School (RHS) boys' varsity basketball team played in 1966. This week, I'll cover a match the RHS girls' varsity team (aka the Juliets) took on against Eisenhower High School in 1979.
The photo seen above first appeared in the October 10, 1979 issue of The Romeo Observer. Taken by Sharon Trigilio, it shows Juliet player number 32 shooting for the bucket with two Eisenhower Eagles members either falling away or waiting for the rebound. The former's name wasn't mentioned in the paper, but I found that she was Jane Kulman, who was a junior at the time according to the 1980 RHS Yearbook.
This is one of the first pictures depicting a RHS girls' basketball game in The Romeo Observer. Why did it take so long to show this? Well, there are some possible reasons. One is them is that girls' sports wasn't taken as seriously in the past. For a long time, the only sport girls could play at RHS was basketball, but people looked down upon it. In the 1938 RHS Yearbook, it contained the following lines about girls' basketball: "Romeo High School should consider itself fortunate because girls' basketball is allowed in Romeo" and "One of the main purposes of basketball is to encourage good sportsmanship. The girls learn how to lose and also how to win gracefully and how to play for enjoyment."
In other words, while Romeo permitted girls' basketball, it didn't see it as important.
Even when girls' sports was taken more seriously after Title IX in the 1970s, there was still a lot of interest in boys' games. Although The Romeo Observer covered both, there were more photos of latter playing football, basketball, baseball, etc. than the former.
In addition, even when writers like Trigilio took a lot of pictures, the paper had to consider whether or not to include them, especially when it came to space.
Trigilio was the sports writer for the paper in the mid-to-late 70s, so she covered every possible game RHS played, including the one the Juliets had against the Eagles in 1979. I wonder if this photo was used to display how the former fought hard despite losing that match. In the accompanying article, Trigilio brought up that the final score was 48-39. She also lists the players who scored for the team, including Jane.
The story can be seen here.
After that, The Romeo Observer made more of an effort to show pictures of girls' sports games.
To learn more about RHS girls' varsity basketball team, you can contact the Romeo Community Archives at rca@romemodistrictlibrary.org or call (586) 690-4890. If you want to search for articles on that topic, you can find the Romeo newspapers like The Romeo Observer on the Suburban Library Cooperative's Local History Digital Collection website.
Images and sources courtesy of the Romeo Community Archives; Melvin E. and Joan D. Bleich Collection, The Romeo Observer, October 10, 1979, p.9-A and 1938 and 1980 Romeo High School Yearbooks
