Pre-Title IX female athletes get recognition at Coos Bay high school

Coos Bay resident Mary Paczesniak played volleyball and tennis in high school and college. She was good enough to place at national championships. But she never got a varsity letter from her teams. That’s because her time on the court was all before Title IX changed the rules around women’s sports. Paczesniak has spent years working to get recognition for female athletes from Coos Bay who competed before Title IX. She joins us to talk about her work.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We’re coming to you today and all this week from Marshfield High School in Coos Bay. Mary Paczesniak went here. She graduated in 1968. She was a standout athlete. She played volleyball and tennis in high school and in college. She was good enough to place at the national championships when she was at Oregon State, but she never got a varsity letter from her teams. This was before Title IX changed the rules around girls and women’s sports. Many decades later, after a career as a PE teacher in Roseburg, Mary moved back here to Coos Bay and she set out to change that, to recognize the extraordinary female athletes who never got their due. We met up with Mary in the high school’s gym yesterday which she called extraordinary. I asked her why.

Mary Paczesniak: Well just look at it. It’s all the way around - all four sides. Built-in bleachers and then fold-out bleachers on the floor.

Miller: The wooden bleachers up above, all around, are those the originals?

Paczesniak: I believe they’re the originals, yes.

Miller: Beautiful and old.

Paczesniak: Built in 1952.

Miller: Now when you played, you played volleyball and tennis at Marshall High School?

Paczesniak: I played about everything you could play, but the only OSAA sanctioned sport that I played was tennis. I played volleyball and basketball but they were not sanctioned by the OSAA, so…

Miller: When you played, so who would you play against when you played basketball?

Paczesniak: The Coos County high schools, Coquille.

Miller: The local high schools?

Paczesniak: The local high schools with the exception of North Bend, they didn’t have any girl’s sports, except swimming. And they were the only other school that was anywhere near our size. So, and they didn’t have basketball or volleyball for girls.

Miller: And at that time when you were just stuck in an unsanctioned basketball or volleyball ball or whatever against not evenly matched high schools in the region, who were the boys playing against?

Paczesniak: The boys were in the Midwestern League. That was Marshfield and North Bend and Cottage Grove and all the Eugene schools.

Miller: Would they play games in this beautiful arena?

Paczesniak: Absolutely.

Miller: And when, where would you play?

Paczesniak: We would play in a gym over there that now is called the West Gym. But when I was in school, it was called the girl’s gym and this was called the boy’s gym.

Miller: So when you come, I mean you brought us here because you wanted us to see this, admittedly beautiful, high school arena. It looks sort of like what you might find in a very small college as opposed to a high school. But this isn’t where you could play. I’m just curious what it’s even like just to see this gym. And I should also note that right now, as it’s ending, but I imagine this is a PE class, a coed class with girls and boys who are now filing out, but you weren’t allowed to play here.

Paczesniak: No, absolutely not. It was kind of like, it was just the way it was and so we were, we were in the girls gym, but we were happy that we got to play. That was just the way it was. We understood the difference. I can tell you a little later, a few differences when I was a female athlete at Oregon State, that was even more obvious.

Miller: Well let’s turn to those now because you went from here and then you became an athlete playing volleyball and other sports. Right, at OSU?

Paczesniak: At Oregon State, yes.

Miller: What were those experiences like? And where are you taking us right now?

Paczesniak: I’m taking us to Heritage Hall which is kind of, it’s kind of a museum of the entire history of Marshfield High School. It demonstrates the entire heritage of Marshall High School and Marshall High School is old, in this location that goes back to 1908. I went through all the yearbooks which, they’re called Mahiscans, beginning with the first one in 1915 and I took notes and I picked out pictures that I thought were significant and important to whatever decade we’re talking about.

Miller: And I’m looking here. This isn’t just about athletics.

Paczesniak: Absolutely not.

Miller: So for the 1900, it looks like people in like the fanciest kinds of wedding gowns you can imagine, that the graduating class of 1900, the graduating class of 1898.

Paczesniak: It depicts what the students looked like, what activities were offered, what the facilities looked like. Look at the Cooking Department, that would be Home Ec.

Miller: Above us is a capstone for maybe the most famous alum from from this school, Steve Prefontaine, class of 1969. And now we skip into the 1960s. Wait, is that you?

Paczesniak: That might be me.

Miller: Can you describe this picture?

Paczesniak: Like we were saying when we were in the gym, sports were different for girls, when I was growing up. In junior high, there were no sports for girls at all. In high school we had a girls athletic association and we discussed, like volleyball and basketball and there were play days and playing the local teams. Tennis was sanctioned by the OSAA. So our girls tennis team actually played basically the same schedule that the boys tennis team played. We played against the Eugene schools, we had a district tournament and we had a state tournament and my junior year, 1967, our girls team tied Perennial Power, Roseburg, for the team state championship, which was the first team state championship for any girls team at Marshfield.

Miller: How did you do in that tournament?

Paczesniak: I played number one singles and I lost in the semifinals, which actually scored half of the points for our team.

Miller: Wow. So I wanna zoom forward from your high school times, because you were, it seemed like there were some stories you needed to tell about your time at OSU.

Paczesniak: OK.

Miller: So when you were on the women’s volleyball team at OSU, your first couple of years, what was it like? And what were the differences between your experiences and what the men dealt with?

Paczesniak: Well, first of all, I will explain that all women’s sports when I was in college were organized the same way. And I went to Oregon State. We would play all the schools regardless of size in the state of Oregon during the regular season. And then at the end of the season, all schools in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana would gather together and play for the Pacific Northwest Championship. And so all the sports were organized that way. I played two years of tennis, and both years Oregon State won the Pacific Northwest Team Championship and one year I played doubles. One year, my partner and I won the Pacific Northwest Doubles Championship. The other year we were runners up. In volleyball, my freshman year at Oregon state was the second year that Oregon State had a women’s volleyball team. And then by my sophomore year we went 21 and 0, won the Pacific Northwest Championship and qualified for the very first ever national volleyball tournament for collegiate women. And since we were undefeated, the men’s athletic department, of course there were no scholarships, but the men’s athletic department said, “Okay we’ll pay your expenses to the national tournament.” The following year we went 17 wins and 5 losses, still qualified for the national tournament. But Oregon State said, “Well you’re 17 and 5, you’re not outstanding. We won’t pay your expenses,” to the tournament. So to go to the tournament, we had to fundraise and we did lots of different things, but that was also the first year of the Portland Trailblazers and we were playing what in those days was called power volleyball. And that was different than how we grew up. We grew up playing volleyball, just slap volleyball, jungleball. This was, nowa `days the way volleyball is played, was how we were learning how to play, the power.

Miller: More athletic.

Paczesniak: Yeah. And so it was an up and coming sport, so we went around to high schools in Corvallis, Albany, Salem, even up to Portland a time or two and put on exhibitions to high schools, because we were promoting this new sport, power volleyball and it wasn’t being taught in high schools. So our coach called the Portland Trailblazers, it was their first year, and she asked, are you looking for halftime entertainment for your games? The answer was yes, we are. And she said, do you pay? Yes, we do. How much do you pay? Depends on who you are and what your entertainment is. So she explained, and we’re experienced putting on exhibitions, and we’re fundraising to represent Oregon State University in the national tournament and they got back to her a few days later and said, okay, if you do your exhibition the way you always do it, wearing your uniforms, the way you always do, we’ll pay you $200. If you do your exhibition the way you always do it, wearing bikinis, we’ll pay you $500. So our coach said, “Ah, no thanks, we won’t do an exhibition.” So we had to fundraise a different way and we ended up making it as far as the Elite 8 that year. And U of O, who had beaten us in the Pacific Northwest Championship, made it to the Final 4. So there were actually, even though the Oregon State Athletic Department didn’t think we were outstanding, there were actually two outstanding teams from the state of Oregon that year.

Miller: Do you remember what it was like to hear that, the objectification being just lumped on top of the existing injustice that, I mean, OSU would have paid for the men’s volleyball team that was 17 and 5, to go to Lawrence, Kansas. So then the entire enterprise at this point was already unfair. And then to be told, if you wear bikinis and we can just watch you jumping up and down, we’ll pay you 2.5 times as much, for the money you shouldn’t have had to raise in the beginning? I’m just, do you remember what it felt like to hear that?

Paczesniak: We were upset, but we knew another example of differences between female and male athletes when I was in school was, at Oregon State, female athletes were required to work at a couple of football games each season, a couple of men’s basketball games each season. And work means selling programs or ushering or selling concessions in the stands. And we had to be there an hour before the game started and we had to do our job until halfway through the second half, or the end of the third quarter, at which time we could go to the concession stand and get 80 cents worth of concessions, which in those days would buy a hot dog, a bag of popcorn and a pop. If we didn’t want the concessions, we could not keep the 80 cents. Male athletes who were in non-revenue producing sports, they were not on full scholarships, were given the option. Now, we were required, they were given the option to do exactly the same job, for exactly the same amount of time, which was about between three and four hours and at the end of their time, they were given $5 an hour that they could keep.

Miller: Actual money, as opposed to just a voucher for a hot dog?

Paczesniak: They got, so that was between $15 and $20. We got 80 cents worth of concessions and couldn’t keep the 80 cents. So, we were used to that, we knew that, but still we were able to compete in real competitions, which is more than we could do in high school. And so we were thrilled that we were able to do that. We knew it was very unfair, but it was a whole lot better than we ever had before. My senior year at Oregon State, I took an athletic training class and the athletic training class was taught by the men’s athletic trainer. Women didn’t have an athletic trainer. And anyway, in the first class, he said something about, he took out a roll of adhesive tape and he said Oregon State Athletics spends $3,000 a year on adhesive tape for the men’s athletic program.

Miller: For ankles or whatever.

Paczesniak: Yeah, yeah. And us girls in the class looked at each other and said, they don’t spend $3,000 on the entire athletic budget for all the sports for the women. So we knew, we knew it wasn’t okay.

Miller: You knew there was nothing you could do about it?

Paczesniak: Right, and again, we were thrilled for the opportunities that we did have. And I graduated in 72 and two or three weeks after I graduated Title IX became a law and it took a while to implement. But at least it did. But it took a federal law for it to become a little bit more equal between males and females.

Miller: Alright, what’s next?

Paczesniak: Okay, alright, let’s go back out into the lobby. So another thing, in high school and in college and it didn’t matter how successful we had been, girls didn’t get athletic letters. And so when I retired in 2003 and moved back here, I taught here for two years, right out of college, and then I thought there must be more to life than Coos Bay, Oregon. So I got a job teaching at Rover Middle School and I taught and coached there, for PE, and coached there for 28 years. So I came back here in 2003 and in 2004, Oregon State had a ceremony to award athletic letters to female athletes. And so of course I was very proud of it and it came in a plaque with a certificate and the letter and I didn’t really know Greg Mulkey, the athletic director very well yet, because it was my first year back and I said, “Greg isn’t this cool?” Yeah, yeah, Mary, very cool. And I go, “With your permission, I’ll do all the work. Can Marshfield have a similar event and award varsity letters to pre-Title IX female athletes?” And he said, “Well, if you do all the work, you go girl!” So then we had to decide who deserved a letter and I just went back to my experiences in high school. Volleyball, basketball, eh, wasn’t any big deal for girls. Tennis was because it was sanctioned by the OSAA, there was a state tournament, and so Greg and I called the OSAA and asked for a list of what year each sport became sanctioned by the OSAA and it was like 1949-tennis, 1952-swimming. Then nothing was sanctioned until 1965-gymnastics, 1966-track and field. You notice these are all individual sports and then nothing sanctioned until ‘74-cross country and volleyball. So ‘74 was the first team sport sanctioned by the OSSA for girls.

Miller: I mean, a couple of years after Title IX?

Paczesniak: Yeah, ‘75-golf, ‘76-basketball. So then I went through all the Mahiscans. And so Greg and I decided, okay, a girl has to have participated in a sanctioned sport in order to deserve a letter. And I went through all of Mahiscans beginning in 1949 with my list. Okay, now, I’m just looking at tennis. Then in ‘52, now I’m adding swimming, I’m looking for. So with my list and I came up with, oh gosh, 150, then we had to look up addresses for them. And of course not all the addresses were right, so probably half of them came back. Anyway, the end result was about 40 women came back to get their high school letter and I thought, well, if you’re a woman in your 50s and it’s important enough to you to go back to your high school to get your high school sports letter, you were probably pretty good. And anyway, we had a really nice event and this is a full page in The World newspaper about that event.

Miller: So you got your letter too. I imagine that, that’s not, that’s not why you did it for yourself, but what did it mean to you to finally get that letter almost 40 years later?

Paczesniak: It was important, it was really neat. This gal, Fran Worthen, she graduated ‘72, she was probably, I mean undoubtedly she’s the best female athlete ever. She’s the Steve Prefontaine, the female version of Steve Prefontaine, she’s just three years younger than he was, she won 10 state championships when she was in high school and she was the first female in the nation to compete on a men’s community college track team, because she went to SWOC and they didn’t have a girls team, so she was on the boys team and you know, she was, she made it to like the finals of the 100. She would beat a lot of the guys and she told me once, finally getting her letter was equally as important as when she was inducted into the Hall of Fame, finally getting a letter. This is a little story, that’s me and that’s me, I was co-editor of the Mahiscan my senior year and the Mahiscan room was, it’s now the principal’s office, but that was the Mahiscan room. Nothing went on in that room except the Mahiscan staff worked on the Mahiscan and in that room, there’s a closet and in that closet there’s a bunch of cubby holes and one of the cubby holes had a, stuffed in it, was a banner and you open up the banner and there’s like 10 Marshfield letters and each one has a different sport. There’s an M with a football, an M with a basketball, sometimes we would take that banner out and we, we all had good school spirit, we would ooh and ahh, isn’t that neat? And I would look at that and I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s very neat, but I don’t have one of those. And so when I was in there all by myself, I would think, I went to state all four years, I was on a state championship team and I don’t have one of those and I figured nobody knows that banner exists except the Mahiscan kids. And so I took the boy’s tennis letter and I borrowed it and anyway, I had it in my house all those years. So here it is in 2006, so I took it in 1968. In 2006, I gave back to Greg Mulkey, my borrowed boy’s tennis letter because he finally gave me my very own. So it was important to me, you can tell.

Miller: Thank you so much for giving us this whole tour.

Paczesniak: You’re very welcome. It’s my pleasure.

Miller: Mary Paczesniak graduated from Coos Bay’s Marshfield High School in the class of 1968. Thanks again to Principal Eli Ashton and to IT guy Brandon Waite, who helped us to get set up here at the high school. Tomorrow, on the show, we’re going to take you on a hike in the dunes outside of Florence and we’ll hear about the history of the Coos Bay Wagon Road, which connected the city to Douglas County at a time when it had more ties to San Francisco than to the rest of Oregon. If you don’t want to miss any of our shows, you can listen on the NPROne app, on Apple podcast or wherever you like to get your podcasts. There’s also our nightly rebroadcast at 8p.m. Our production staff includes Elizabeth Castillo, Rolie Hernandez, Senior Producer Allison Frost and Managing Producer, Sheraz Sadiq. Nalin Silva Engineers the show. Our technical director, Steven Kray and our Executive Producer is Sage Van Wing, and I am so excited to be able to say that Gemma DiCarlo started this week as our newest Producer. She previously worked at WVPE in Indiana and WUGA in Georgia, but she grew up in Harrisburg, Oregon. Gemma, welcome. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller. We’ll be back tomorrow.

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