The picture sits on the mantelof my parents' home.
Taken in 1978 by The Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Stan Grossfeld, the stunning photo captured a young female gymnast doing a backward somersault on the balance beam on the way to winning a state championship.
My mother, Rosemary Fahey, never could watch when my sister Ellen was attempting that maneuver on the four-inch-wide beam, even when she was competing for Randolph High in the championship meet.
"I always closed my eyes," she explained to me. "My eyes never saw her actually do it. I think she landed OK."
"I vaguely do remember it," said Grossfeld about the photo in question. "She was good, and I was lucky." This is a tale of two sisters, about opportunity lost and opportunity gained because of Title IX.
Title IX was a federal law that prohibited gender discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving any type of federal financial aid. A Feb. 17 story in Globe South ("For female athletes, honors come due") described the gains made by female athletes under Title IX and how more females are starting to show up in high school halls of fame.
Title IX took effect in 1972. Three years later, regulations pertaining to high school and college athletics were issued.
One of the first female athletes to get a chance to shine at Randolph High - and one of the first females to be inducted into the Randolph High Athletic Hall of Fame - was my sister, Ellen (Fahey) Ciabattoni.
In both 1977 and 1978, she was named the Boston Globe gymnast of the year. As a junior, she had the highest all-round average in the state (34.225) and a third place in the state individual.
As a senior, she won the balance beam and vaulting events, placed second in the all-around, captured a third in the uneven bars, and was fifth in floor exercise. The reporter who covered the 1978 state championship meet for the Globe was a young Lesley Visser, one of the first prominent female sportswriters and a pioneering female sportscaster.
Ellen represented the US twice in international competition under the coaching of former Olympians Jim and Kathy Corrigan. Her résumé allowed her to get an athletic scholarship at the University of New Hampshire.
And then there is my other sister, Rosemary Fahey-Burlingame. She graduated from Randolph High in 1971, before Title IX, and has a much different story to tell.
"To this day, when I tell people about the absence of women's sports (while I was in high school) and our thwarted efforts to start sports for high school women, people can't believe it and say, 'You must have had field hockey at least; every school had a field hockey team.' Alas, we did not.
"I'm pretty sure that if you check into RHS sports history, there wasn't much happening for the females until Title IX forced things to happen."
Cheerleading was about the only thing even remotely athletic offered to female students. Fahey-Burlingame said she and others tried to get a basketball team established, and there was also support for softball. She played some CYO basketball and youth softball but once young girls reached the junior high age, there was nothing for them in town.
"I think without sports we missed the satisfaction of working as a team and becoming better, the excitement of participating and representing our school," Fahey-Burlingame said. "You also had the camaraderie and the friendships you make. And the joy of doing something physical that you're good at."
Female athletes have made amazing strides since I started covering school sports in the mid-70s.
Recently, I watched as the daughter of my neighbors in Milton competed for Milton High against Hingham for the Division II hockey championship.
Young female athletes of this generation have pretty much taken for granted that they will have every opportunity to be the best they can be, and that is how it should be.
The Milton girls lost the game that day against Hingham, but they rightly regarded it as only a speed bump on the way to greater athletic successes, if not in high school, then beyond.
Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com.
