Coach Carroll recalls years of change

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Coach Carroll coaches the Dalton Lady Cats in this file photo from 1998.
Jeanette Carroll at Dalton High Track this past week. Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen

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June 24, 2012

Coach Carroll recalls years of change

Rachel Brown rachelbrown@daltoncitizen.com The Dalton Daily Citizen Sun Jun 24, 2012, 06:38 AM EDT

Janette Carroll has seen a lot of changes since she entered public education in 1962.

Retired after 25 years at Dalton High School where she coached girls track and basketball, was girls athletic director, and eventually athletic director for the whole school, Carroll was witness to a sea of changes gradually brought about in girls sports by Title IX.

Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of the congressional legislation that, among other things, mandated equal opportunities for females in sports. Before its passage, sports were male-dominated, and there were significantly fewer opportunities to play competitively for females, Carroll said.

“Girls had a hard time competing in anything other than cheerleading,” she said. “That was about it ... Without Title IX, we probably still would be having cheerleading and maybe tennis and swimming.”

Girls in high school when she was a student did play what she called “old-time basketball” — three on three, then five players and one was a rover — nothing full court. She too played basketball and was in band.

“I guess the feeling was that girls could not play full court, they didn’t have the stamina to,” she said. “Over the years with Title IX, of course, you had to have the equal opportunities for them.”

The law’s advent gradually brought about more teams for women. As more girls began playing sports in high school and as colleges expanded their offerings, more opportunities for athletic scholarships became available.

Carroll said she started her teaching career in Savannah at a high school there.

“At that time, we didn’t have anything for girls in that school system,” she said. “In fact, they started girls basketball much later than any other system in the state.”

By the 1970s, they had girls volleyball.

“No one really knew what to expect (after the law passed), and I think girls were a little bit tentative at the time,” she said. “It was like one year you add this and then you add something else (the next year).”

Carroll said she would like to have played softball had it been available. She would have tried tennis, too.

“I think the main thought (on limiting female sports before Title IX) was they just didn’t feel like girls could do some of the sports,” she said. “There were no pro sports either.”

Yet when sports did start being added, she said, the community was receptive in Dalton, “especially parents who probably had aspirations themselves to play sports and didn’t get an opportunity.”

So when Carroll was promoted to coach some of those sports, she didn’t have the experience of having played them herself. Instead, she “just kind of picked it up as something I was told I pretty much had to do,” she said.

“When you teach at a high school, sometimes you do things that you had no idea you would ever do,” she said. “I had never coached a day of basketball in my life.”

It was the same way with track. Yet she dubbed her career in that area as “fairly successful,” noting her teams won several region championships.

In some cases, she said, the girls drew larger crowds at their games and competitions than the boys teams did.

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