The Brewer Girls’ Athletic Association (G.A.A.): Historical Legacy Award
The Brewer GAA is the 2022 recipient of the Brewer Athletic Hall of Fame’s prestigious Historical Legacy Award which honors those who have made a historical impact in Brewer Athletics. Over a 32-year time span from 1942 to 1974, Brewer’s GAA made an everlasting impact on women’s sports at Brewer High School and was the foundation for the eventual establishment and success of several interscholastic female sports in the 1970’s and beyond.
In 1942, Physical Education teacher, Miss Lura Hoit (2015 Brewer Athletic Hall of Fame Inductee) set up the Girls’ Athletic Association at Brewer High School offering intramurals in badminton, tennis, bowling, basketball and hiking. Prior to 1942, basketball was the only sport for Brewer girls. The organization began with 17 members and grew to be over 150 by 1973 with other activities such as field hockey, volleyball, soccer, tennis and flag football.
In 1925 the National Association of Secondary School Principals outwardly opposed interscholastic competition for girls. GAA was a national program established to address this view as the GAA philosophy emphasized recreational physical activity rather than competition. Women and girls were not encouraged to exert themselves as such physical activity for a female, particularly competition, was thought to be especially hazardous… negatively affecting their femininity and fertility. Girls had to fund the GAA programs on their own. Schools did not hire coaches, instead relying on faculty. GAAs were typically given little to no access to facilities.
GAA sports were seasonal and intramurals took place during an activity period or after school. Leaders were picked in each sport. Five to ten points were given for each sport or activity. In the beginning, to obtain membership, a girl needed to accumulate 50 points. (This increased to 75 pts. in 1948.) After earning a particular number of points, the girls earned awards:
1st Award: 50 pts earned…Felt Numerals of girl’s graduating class
2nd Award: 100 total pts earned…School “B” letter
3rd Award: 150 total pts earned…State of Maine “M” letter
4th Award: 200 total pts earned…a State of Maine “M” pin and state certificate
By 1945, the Brewer Girls’ Athletic Association was 50-member strong. The number of sports offered increased to include: ping-pong, archery, volleyball, and softball. In just a few years, the interest and success of the Brewer GAA was so great, Miss Hoit (Induction Class 2015) was able to convince the administration to offer softball as an interscholastic varsity team sport and in 1947, Brewer’s first Girls’ Softball Team formed. The softball team, coached by Hoit, went undefeated and were the 1947 PVC Champions. In fact, the Girls’ Softball team were PVC Champs 4 years in a row (1947-1950)! By 1952, out of the 22 schools in Maine that operated under the GAA system, the Brewer GAA was one of the two highest in the state in number of awards.
The Brewer GAA financially supported all the girls’ intramural and varsity sports, as their mere existence depended on it. The GAA raised money through concessions at basketball and football games to fund their programs, buy awards, purchase equipment and uniforms for cheerleaders and girls’ varsity sports. The GAA also contributed a significant amount of money towards equipment that would only benefit boys’ teams, like the flood lights and new bleachers ($500) for Doyle Field.
In the 40’s and 50’s the main purpose of the GAA was recreation focused… to develop friendliness, teamwork and sportsmanship and to develop skills in sports for as many girls as possible. It perpetuated societal expectations that a woman’s place was ‘in the home’ which pushed aside the idea that there were psychological and physiological benefits to be gained from involvement in competitive sport. But in the 1960’s, the social conscience of America was changing. Girls were pushing limits in sport and proving they could exert themselves yet still maintain societal expectations of femininity and fertility. The push for Civil Rights, which culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, helped increase the status of women and minorities. This gave birth to a wave of feminist activism propelling the movement for women’s rights forward and raising the consciousness of those involved in women’s and girls’ sports.
This increasingly positive attitude toward girls in sport, particularly competitive sports, were felt here in Maine and at Brewer High School. The spring of 1964 was the inauguration year of the Olympic Sportsday (OSD), a Track & Field competition for Maine’s high school girls. Through the 1950’s and 1960’s the Bangor Daily News sponsored the Boys’ Basketball Tournament. Wanting to provide a large-scale competition for girls, the Olympic Sportsday, sponsored by the BDN, aimed to include numerous track and field events for hundreds of high school girls. It was the first of its type in the nation. OSD preceded all girls’ competitions even basketball in the 70’s. Girls had to qualify to participate at OSD; schools had limited entries and it was a trials/finals format in 12 events with awards going to the top 5 places (Places 1-3 receiving gold, silver and bronze medals and places 4-5 receiving ribbons).
Lura Hoit was one of the founding organizers of the OSD and the coach for the Brewer Girls’ participants. She was known in the professional community as a “mover” in the girls athletic/equal rights movement. The 1st Annual Olympic Sports Day, held at the Garland Street Field in Bangor, included 350 girls from 53 schools. Of the 53 schools that participated, Brewer scored more athletes in the top 3 than any other school in the state. The success of the 1964 Brewer OSD participants got their photo in the 1965 Trident but little else. The girls did not have uniforms… they had to wear their gym clothes, a white button-down blouse and gym shorts with Velcro straps tightened around the thigh. The girls had to pay for their gym shirt/shorts ($2.25 for the shirt/$3.50 for the shorts) and warm-ups ($5) while the members of the boys’ track team were supplied uniforms and warm-ups by the school. The girls had little access to equipment always having to wait until the boys were done and for several years, they merely practiced in preparation for OSD with no other competitions.
Despite the lack of access to equipment and facilities, Brewer girls had immense success at OSD. In the nine years it was known as OSD, Brewer won 16 individual events, setting 6 individual state records and won 7 relay events setting 3 state relay records. Girls could qualify for Regionals (NE, NY, NJ) and then top athletes at Regionals went on to Junior Nationals in Knoxville TN. Two of Brewer’s best track & field athletes, Darlene Ford and Wanda Kirkpatrick, proudly wearing their “BREWER” warm-ups, were among the qualifiers representing Brewer on the national stage.
For the Girls’ Outdoor Track & Field “Team”, there were no competitions and no monetary support except what was provided for by the GAA. Because the physical education teacher was the track coach AND the softball coach, by the late ‘60’s the girls were lucky to have three meets a season, again all in preparation for OSD. Although the Brewer girls won events and set state records, they received little to no recognition for their efforts…no parades or lavish banquets. In 1973, the name of the event changed from Olympic Sportsday to what it is referred to today: the Maine State Championships for Girls’ Outdoor Track & Field.
The new wave of feminism within the larger social reforms sought by the Civil Rights movement moved women closer to legislative action for greater equal treatment in athletics. By the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s, Brewer girls demanded less “recreational” participation and more competitive opportunities. Athletic Directors, countless advocates and coaches on staff at Brewer High School, like Phyllis Worthley and Jim White, lobbied on behalf of the female athletes at Brewer. But it was the girls themselves who stood up to shine a light on the inequities between girls’ and boys’ athletics…from equipment, uniforms, access to facilities and coaches…it was the girls who fought for change and to balance the athletic scale. By the early 1970’s, the GAA was having competitions with other schools in a few activities: Track & Field, volleyball, and flag football. Even the girls’ basketball team, after over 50 years of half-court six on six basketball (where no one could cross the centerline for the belief that running full court would exhaust the girls), began playing full court 5 on 5 basketball during the 1971-1972 season!
In 1972, Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments was passed into law. This landmark law essentially made it illegal to discriminate against a person on the basis of sex in any federally funded activity and is famous for its impact on expanding opportunities for women and girls in sports. As a result of Title IX and the firm foundation laid for interest in sports and competition through the Brewer GAA, six of the nine interscholastic varsity sports introduced at Brewer High School between 1970-1989 were women’s sports: Girls’ Indoor Track, Field Hockey, Tennis, Swimming & Diving, Girls’ Cross Country and Soccer. Even today, girls’ sports at Brewer High School are still emerging. Since 2018, over the last 5 years, volleyball, lacrosse and ice hockey have been added to the girls’ varsity offerings. In 1942, there was only one varsity sport offered to girls at Brewer (basketball)…today there are 17 sports with girls having equal opportunity to participate in sports like football and golf.
As a result of the GAA at Brewer, nearly 900 girls between 1942 and 1974 had athletic experiences that were previously unavailable to them. As more varsity opportunities were established for girls in the years following Title IX, the Brewer GAA came to an end in 1974. The year 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Brewer GAA and the 50th anniversary of Title IX. The impact the Brewer GAA had on the establishment and success of girls’ sports at Brewer HS was profound. It is for these reasons the GAA is bestowed the prestigious Historical Legacy Award and inducted into the Brewer Athletic Hall of Fame!
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INDUCTION PRESENTATION VIDEO OF THE BREWER GAA
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE SPECIAL PRESENTATION OF THE OLYMPIC SPORTSDAY FINALISTS-GAA
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH KATHRYN HIGGINS PATISTEAS (Class of 1973)
TO SEE THE LIST* OF NEARLY 900 GAA MEMBERS, CLICK HERE
*The GAA Member List (alphabetized & year of graduation) was compiled using senior bios and GAA photo captions from the Trident yearbooks. Please contact Kathleen Cahill at halloffame@breweredu.org for any errors/omissions. We'll be happy to update the list!
Members of the Brewer Girls' Athletic Association at their Induction Ceremony 2022