Interviews

With P.V. Beck

Author Peggy Beck Speaks With It Takes A Team! Director Pat Griffin

PG: How did you decide to write a young adult novel about a high school lesbian basketball player?

PVB: The project began as my “what might have been” fantasy. As a kid I played every sport, ran track, and swam, but basketball was my passion. Unfortunately this was at a time when there were very few high schools with organized sports for girls, including my own. Being gay was not even on peoples’ radar screens. So I wanted to write about a girl, who like myself, was a basketball fanatic and who was also dealing with other issues that ultimately had an impact on her game and her dreams. When I actually began writing the book it quickly became Janey Holmes’s story, not mine. Also, during the early phases of researching the novel I had watched high school girl basketball players trying to come to terms with their feelings towards other girls as well as kids’ and adults’ prejudices about being gay. I identified with these girls and wanted to turn their struggles into a dramatic sports novel. In the novel the players deal with abusive and over-zealous parents, jealousies over boys, homework anxiety—and face the unique problems of young lesbians.

PG: Are any parts of the book autobiographical?

PVB: The fact that the novel takes place in the upper Midwest, and a few little things like shooting for hours at a neighbor’s hoop, shoveling snow so I could shoot in the winter, and asking for a basketball for my birthday.

PG: How did you research the book? Did you talk to any high school athletes or coaches?

PVB: For one year I watched almost every practice and all the games of a local team. That summer I went to the AAU 15's Nationals. There I interviewed coaches and observed different coaching styles. I met a team and followed those players through another national tournament. The following year I went to Colorado Springs to the USA Basketball Youth Development Festival and interviewed players, and continued to interview players and coaches from several high school teams in New Mexico and Colorado. Then I became an assistant high school coach for players I had observed the year before, and the next year I coached a seventh grade girls’ team for the entire season. I also read lots of X’s and O’s books, watched lots of X’s and O’s videos, and broke down games on TV.

PG: Are the characters in your novel based on players you met or coached?

PVB: No, they are all made up. Of course, things I observed over the seasons show up in the novel. One example is the theme of Janey’s temper. There was a player on a team I followed whose mother never came to her games. I didn’t know the back story, but I knew (because she mentioned it a few times and would get in a funk about it) that it got to her. It didn’t matter how many people told her she was great if her mother wasn’t there to see it. This girl used to throw tantrums and go off on the refs. She was a naturally gifted player and had a charismatic personality, but there was always a hole in her happiness. Another example in my novel is the character, Penny. She is always “injuring” something in practice. Her injuries aren’t real or at least they are not out of the ordinary. I’ve seen that syndrome, particularly in perfectionists or kids who are under pressure by their parents to excel.

PG: Was being a lesbian an issue for teams you followed or coached?

PVB: It was an issue for athletes who identified as lesbian, or were exploring lesbian relationships but who had no support networks, or mentors with whom to talk when things got hot and heavy. Identifying as lesbian becomes an issue for a team when there is drama (maybe two players are seeing each other, they break up, or someone complains to a parent, or another player is jealous). The same thing happens to non-gay kids, but it isn’t a big deal. If a coach is clueless about gay issues, or is afraid to discuss subjects like racism and homophobia with his/her players and their parents before the season begins, then these things may end up becoming issues.

PG: How do you see the experiences of young lesbian athletes differing from the experiences of young gay male athletes?

PVB: The conventional wisdom seems to be, “there is no such thing as a gay male athlete.” For girls, the stereotype is, “if you are an athlete you must be a lesbian.” For boys, being gay is more personally threatening and taboo. For girls, anti-lesbian talk is insidious and sexist, but in many cases there is more tolerance towards lesbians. Sadly, both gay boys and girls are forced to suffer the effects of ignorance and bigotry in silence.

PG: How have parents, especially parents of a gay child, responded to the book?

PVB: I am just beginning to get feedback from people who have read the book, and so far it has been really great. People really like the kids on the team. People into basketball also appreciate that the game of basketball isn’t shortchanged in the book. It will be interesting to hear from parents. Knowledgeable parents are the key to successful and healthy players and their teams. It still shocks me the way many parents behave at games, the pressures they put on coaches and kids, and the prejudices they instilled in their daughters. I wish there was a standard curriculum, such as those It Takes a Team! promotes, to counter negative attitudes and behaviors around high school sports. When I was researching my book and coaching, I met several parents of gay athletes who didn’t know their kids were gay, but I didn’t feel it was my role to tell them. I hope my book will open a dialogue between gay high school athletes and their parents.

PG: Thanks for doing this interview. I read the book and loved it. I think it provides a wonderful way for young lesbian athletes to see their experiences reflected back to them in a positive way and can be one part of breaking down the isolation many of them feel.

Sweet turnaround for Peggy Beck
By Dan Woog

The OutField

Stereotypes have long held that there are no gay male athletes - but most female athletes are lesbians. However, ever since "The Front Runner," authors have tackled the theme of gay male athletes far more often than females.

"Sweet Turnaround J" changes all that.

The second novel by Peggy Beck, it explores the life of 16-year-old Janey Holmes after her old school closes, and she joins a team that has not won a game in three years. Along the way she confronts her own temper, and falls in love with another girl.

Like Janey, Beck was a sports fanatic. Her father encouraged her love of athletics; her mother, concerned about raising a tomboy, was less enthusiastic. Growing up in Minnesota in the 1950s and '60s, Beck played every game imaginable -including football. But as she grew older, social strictures made coed play impossible.

With no real sports available, she went through "bad emotional stuff," Beck says. Recognizing her attraction to women made life even tougher. She gravitated to politics and folk singing. At Sarah Lawrence College, she wrote but did not show her work to anyone. "My whole life was secret," she says.

After earning a Ph.D. in the history of consciousness, she wrote fiction, poetry, articles and essays covering mythology, folklore and history. In middle age she recalled that she once wanted to be the best female basketball player in the world and decided to revisit that dream.

"I wanted to write about a girl obsessed with basketball," Beck says. "But I realized I didn't know anything about it anymore." She spent a year watching every practice of a team in New Mexico, where she lived. She went to the Amateur Athletic Union 15-year-old Nationals where she interviewed coaches. She attended other tournaments, and then became an assistant high school coach and a seventh grade girls' coach.

She studied videos, read coaching books and interviewed plenty of players. "I wanted to get it right," Beck says.

She got it so right the first draft of her novel was 1,000 pages.

The lesbian element is important. Janey falls in love with her new best friend. The chapter where they kiss and make love is implied. Over the next two chapters, the reader agonizes as the girls can't deal with what is going on. Janey goes through hell when Alejo won't talk to her.

During her long research, Beck had watched girls trying to figure out their feelings for other girls. She'd also heard the anti-gay remarks so typical on teams and in high schools. Because Beck had felt and heard the same things, her writing is strong and real.

But it did not become truly powerful until Beck changed the narrative from third person to first.

"Sweet Turnaround J" is not, however, only about lesbians.

"It always comes back to basketball," Beck says.

"The gym is like the theater - every day is a rehearsal for a play." The novel includes alcohol abuse, parental issues, coaching issues - all the things teenagers of every sexual orientation deal with regularly.

But sexuality is often part of high school sports, and Beck does not shy from it. When Janey finally talks with a teammate, the other girl asks, "How did you know you were gay?"

"I always was," Janey says.

The coach encourages Janey and Alejo to follow their feelings. That doesn't always happen, Beck knows, but through her research into coaches and coaching styles, she realizes that the best coaches are supportive of all their athletes, whatever their personal feelings may be.

Like many young adult novels, "Sweet Turnaround J" is making its way slowly into libraries and onto suggested reading lists. Bloggers who discuss homophobia in women's basketball have been positive and helpful.

One reviewer said that the author's "depiction of relationships is often missing in the male sports books, which focus more on narrative action. Beck's portrayal of a multicultural team with all the signifiers suggests an observant eye and much research ... . (We) discover the important lessons and human strength that basketball or any sport can teach in the drive toward winning games and learning life's lessons."

"I live in a complete fantasy world, where everyone will want to read it," Beck admits. While she has heard nothing negative so far, she understands that a gay protagonist may cause some young readers to steer clear.

Beck hopes that does not happen. "I'll feel really badly if it gets pigeonholed. I think girls who aren't lesbian can find a lot in the book to enjoy and learn from," she says.

"There are no sports books for girls, gay or straight," Beck says. "They're the lowest of the low on the totem pole. Hundreds of thousands of girls play sports. They need to read about their world."