Girls Got Game: Sports Stories and Poems

by Sue Macy

In A Whole New Ball Game (Holt, 1993) and Winning Ways (Holt, 1996), Sue Macy wove... read more

In A Whole New Ball Game (Holt, 1993) and Winning Ways (Holt, 1996), Sue Macy wove her passion for women’s athletics and her research skills into compelling nonfiction narratives about women and girls in sports. Girls Got Game goes beyond facts to emotional truths in nine short stories and nine poems by different women. Each story features a young female protagonist involved in athletics, from softball to synchronized swimming, horseback riding to tetherball, basketball to soccer. They are girls with struggles many young readers will recognize, whether or not they are sports-minded themselves. Sometimes that struggle is highly personal, as in Virginia Euwer Wolff’s short story “Water,” in which a young athlete is drained by the endless quest for perfection. Sometimes the struggle resonates with broader social issues, such as the age-old strains of sexism that are played out to subtle and infuriating perfection in Felicia E. Halpert’s “Summer Games.” In that story, the sweetness of a young girl’s first love grows bitter after she beats the boy in a camp tetherball tournament and he turns his back on her. The nine poems in the collection also cover a range of sports and offer sweat, grit, and celebration at the thrill of doing something well or courageously. A brief biography of each contributor describes her experiences with athletics. Sue Macy’s introduction is a marvelous personal essay on growing up as a sports-loving girl with little outlet for her enthusiasm in the days before Title IX. (Ages 11–16)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2002

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