When Girls First Ran: Growing Up with Mary Decker

Photograph: Harry Kran-Annexstein via Flickr

Kevin Hearle, a visiting scholar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West, has written a moving account from his youth, when he attended a Southern California junior high school with the future Olympian, Mary Decker. This excerpt is taken from the website of our collaborators, Zócalo Public Square.

The battle of the sexes came to Portola Junior High School in Orange, California one day in the spring of 1973. When the bell rang for nutrition break in the middle of that morning, the entire student body poured out of the classrooms and marched across the basketball courts and football fields to the track on the far side of campus.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“They’re going to race,” someone told me.

“Who’s going to race?” I asked.

Paul Hargrove, a sprinter and the ninth-grade varsity quarterback, and Dave Galloway, a sprinter and the eighth-grade varsity quarterback, were going to race a mile against a girl.

Read the rest of Kevin Hearle's story at Zócalo Public Square »