Delaney: Do they know?

I went to a girls soccer game the other day, Herkimer at Clinton. And there were two girls on one sideline working as ball girls. I'd say they were each about 6 or 7 years old.

They both wore shorts, an oversized Clinton soccer jersey and cleats. Sometimes they juggled the soccer balls as they roamed the sideline. Always, they were enthusiastic about their responsibilities. Both were johnny-on-the-spot with a ball when the game ball went out of bounds.

Watching them, each with a ponytail bobbing behind, I wondered if either girl has heard of Mary Hopsicker. On Tuesday, the day before the game I had a phone conversation with Mary who started the field hockey program at New York Mills about 40 years ago.

I doubt the girls know of Mary, and it really doesn't matter. That's not the point. Before Title IX, Hopsicker and other pioneering women like her did what they could to give a generation of female athletes the chance to play sports.
The Clinton ball girls don't know any other way. That's the point.

Thanks to Hopsicker, there is a thriving field hockey program at New York Mills - the sport's smallest Class D program in the state. There have been multiple levels of field hockey at the school since the mid 1970s. The school does not have soccer, and the field hockey tradition is not likely to be threatened by the demand to add it. We'll look deeper into this in Tuesday's edition of the Observer-Dispatch.

Whether the Clinton ball girls read the story is not important. They can be ball girls, or they can play the game as I suspect they already do. But thanks to Hopsicker, and women like her, they can do so much more.