Fast-Breaking Moms Do Rugged Battle in League of Their Own

It is 100 degrees in the shade and inside the tiny, un-air-conditioned practice gym a dozen middle-aged women are thundering down the basketball court, soaked with sweat and grim-faced with determination.

Suddenly, a pair of small children dart onto the court and grab a passing player’s legs, foiling her bounce pass. Downcourt, two players collide, sending a pair of eyeglasses flying.

Coach Mike Tacsik, straining to be heard over a toddler squalling from the sidelines, is yelling: “Use the backboard, ladies. Please.”

But these are no ladies. These are the women warriors of the MBL--the Moms’ Basketball League from Mason Recreation Center park in Chatsworth.

Our games may not be exactly what you’re used to seeing at the Forum--we’re sort of a cross between the PTA and roller derby.

But we’ve come a long way in our premiere season, on the court and deep inside.

It began with an impromptu mother-daughter basketball game last spring, pitting the 9- and 10-year-old girls on a park team against their mostly out-of-shape mothers.

With the advantage of height--and the ability to ground our daughters for life if they made us look bad--the moms won big, and before we’d even stopped high-fiving, we were begging their coach for another chance to play.

*

Like many of my teammates, I’m a little too old to have reaped the benefits of Title IX, the oft-maligned federal regulation that requires schools to spend equally on females’ and males’ teams. While I was growing up in Ohio in the 1960s, girls basketball, softball or soccer teams were rare. If you were athletically inclined as a girl, you begged the boys to let you join their games. As a teenager, you settled for a cheerleader’s skirt.

It took the moms only a few weeks to realize what we’d been missing.

We started out gingerly, carefully. We were so polite we almost fell over each other trying to apologize when a player inadvertently got bumped or knocked to the floor.

“Oh, my fault.”

“No, mine.”

“No, I was in the way. I’m sorry.”

No more.

Now, when somebody falls, we leap over the body and make for a fast break. Almost every game, somebody gets hurt.

Where we used to spend valuable minutes at the start of each game removing our jewelry, we now spend that time wrapping our ankles.

We’ve stopped worrying about broken fingernails, and worry instead about broken fingers. And we know now that the jerseys and shorts we wear for our games are not “outfits” or “costumes,” but uniforms.

Outside the gym, you’d never mistake us for jocks. Many of us are carrying a few extra pounds and we get our exercise not in a gym, but hauling grocery bags, laundry baskets and sleepy children.

We are veterans of coed leagues and club teams. We are women who’d never set foot on a court before but now spend our free time studying our playbooks. We are getting used to opening our family’s birthday presents and finding thick white socks and sports bras.

We’re still part-novelty, part-comedy routine for many of the park’s regulars on Sundays. But we play full court, four 12-minute quarters, and make only one concession to gender and age: No backcourt pressure is allowed until the final two minutes of each quarter.

A handful of husbands and children watch from the sidelines--including our daughters--who sound like we do at their games.

“Mom! Bend your knees when you shoot!”

“You call that a block? Get in front of her!”

Ever so rarely, comes praise. “Good shot. Way to go, Mommy.”

*

We ended our season last week, exchanging our last high-fives during an awards dinner at a west San Fernando Valley cafe. Besides the usual MVP and Most Improved awards, we handed out special tributes, like the Ice Pack Award to the mom who was always prepared to treat our banged-up knees and jammed fingers, and the Most Likely to Referee While Playing Award.

But what about my daughters? At a recent school picnic, I watched the fathers play basketball while the mothers unfolded tablecloths and laid out fried chicken, and I wondered: When my girls are grown, will they be women who take to the courts as naturally as today’s men?

In the meantime, the game provides a bond between my basketball-playing 11-year-old and me--a chance for her to comfort me when I bobble a pass or miss an easy layup.

And I confess pride mixed with pain when, one Monday morning, co-workers asked about my limp as I carefully eased my 41-year-old body into my chair.

“Sprained my ankle this weekend,” I replied. “Playing basketball.”