Females Cite Benefits of Training With Males

To play or not to play.

That is the dilemma faced by female athletes in high schools that do not field girls’ teams in their sports and, therefore, are eligible under California Interscholastic Federation rules to join the boys’ programs at their schools.

The catch, of course, is talent. Not all girls can realistically compete with boys. On the other hand, some female athletes not only could compete, but fare remarkably well.

But would they be willing to try?

“I would have loved to,” said swimming champion Janet Evans, a sophomore at Stanford. “Swimming against them (high school boys) in the meets would have been more challenging.”

In Evans’ case, the boys are probably the ones who would have been pressed to beat her. The former El Dorado High School star won three events at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, all in world-record time.

“When I trained in high school, I trained with the boys,” she said. “It really motivated me to work hard.”

That view--with some reservations--is shared by Joni Easterly, the 6-foot USC sophomore guard who led Katella High School to two Empire League basketball titles.

“Yes and no,” Easterly said. “Yes, because it would have made me a better player. No, because basketball is a physical sport and the guys are that much stronger. I could have been hurt.”

Someone who could have inflicted a lot of hurt--to the boys’ egos, that is--would have been Easterly’s teammate at USC, Lisa Leslie.

Leslie, a 6-foot-5 forward/center, scored 101 points in one half for Inglewood Morningside High School against South Torrance in a game last season. She’s arguably one of Southern California’s all-time best high school girl basketball players.

“I think the girls should be given a chance to play with the boys if they’re good enough,” Leslie said. “I played with (the boys) after my practices ended and I scored just like they did. I played defense just as well.”

Ditto for Amy Jalewalia.

The 6-foot-1 freshman forward at UCLA, who averaged 31.2 and 34.3 points per game during her junior and senior years at La Quinta High School, and whose 2,205 career points were 71 short of the county girls’ record set by Paula Tezak of La Habra in 1980-84, agreed with the others.

“If they want to do it, more power to them,” she said. “Maybe the girls who want to do it feel it’s more of a challenge. We (UCLA players) go out and play pickup games with the guys in the gym. It makes you a little tougher.”

And perhaps it makes the girls a bit more aware of how the boys might handle the situation on a regular basis.

“Because you are a girl, the guys play harder against you,” Easterly said. “That’s what they do when I play against them in a gym. They slack off on defense against other guys and they stay in my face.”

But what if the roles were reversed? What if boys wanted to play on girls’ teams?

“I don’t think they’ll want to relinquish their superiority,” Jalewalia said. “From what I’ve seen, most guys in high school feel they are better than the girls.”

Said Easterly: “If guys went down to girls’ teams, it would be like going down the ladder. I can’t see any boys wanting to do that.”