A Slam-Dunk for Girls : Maureen Holohan had to push to play pro basketball. Now she’s publishing sports books to encourage female athletes.

While Maureen Holohan’s neighbors in upstate New York were dreaming of debutante balls, she was dreaming of basketballs. But it’s hard to be like Mike when everyone expects you to be like Michelle. Or Mary.

“My biggest worry during those tough years . . . was not over who was going to ask me out. I didn’t sweat it the way other girls really worried about it,” she says. “My biggest concern was what we were playing in gym class. I looked forward to that every day.”

She didn’t look forward to what happened after gym class, however. That was when the boys came back on the floor. Never mind the fact that Holohan could dribble rings around all of them. They made it clear that, in junior high at least, a girl’s place was on the sidelines.

So she sought solace--and change--in her second-favorite pastime, writing.

“When she was a little kid--true story--she used to go around and write these notes that [said] girls can do anything that boys can do,” Maureen’s father, Ed Holohan, remembers with a laugh.

Turns out she was selling herself short. That’s because, at 26, she’s already achieved things few boys will ever match, having played professional basketball on two continents and embarked on a writing career that, after just 14 months, is already challenging traditional views of children’s literature.

Her “Broadway Ballplayers” series of self-published sports-themed books, each featuring female athletes, has proved a surprising success, with more than 45,000 copies in print. They’ve become so hot, in fact, the online book service Amazon.com listed three of the five books among its most popular titles in their category earlier this year.

But more important, they’re teaching kids that girls can play too.

Let’s see Michael Jordan try that. Beating up on the Orlando Magic is one thing, but staring down the Hardy Boys? That takes real backbone. And perseverance. Both of which Holohan needed in spades because each of her triumphs was preceded by humiliating rejection.

Years before she became a three-time All-Big 10 basketball player at Northwestern University, for example, she had to wage a one-girl crusade just to get a chance to play the sports her brothers took for granted. Her reward? She was cut from one of the first teams she tried out for.

And with the rejection letters her first book received she could have papered the walls of the tiny room she rented in an Evanston, Ill., apartment house. But instead of giving up, she chose to work harder; to Holohan, “no” wasn’t an answer, it was a challenge.

“People kind of push you aside and tell you you’re not good enough, and you have a choice between going home and sitting on the couch and going home and going out in the backyard and teaching yourself how to make the team,” she says. “And that’s pretty much what I chose to do.”

On a sunny fall morning, she shared that inspirational message with a surprisingly rapt audience of grade-school kids at Thomas Jefferson School in Burbank. Dressed in sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, and with her curly, shoulder-length auburn hair pinned back with a white barrette, Holohan worked the crowd enthusiastically. For 45 minutes, she talked about basketball, business and a little about life.

“The kids just loved the idea of sticking with something until you’re successful. That’s what she did in both ends of her career,” says fifth-grade teacher Joe Reed. “They were excited [by the idea] that they could go out and do the kinds of things she did in sports and in the literary area.”

It’s a practiced presentation, one Holohan’s given in schools, hospitals and bookstores in more than 85 cities during her current promotional tour. In theory, the talks are supposed to sell books. In practice, however, they wind up selling a bigger concept.

“When there are five seconds left and the score is tied and you’re at the free-throw line,” Holohan says at one point, “does it matter if you’re a boy or girl, black or white or American or Russian?”

To the students at Thomas Jefferson-- and everywhere else Holohan has spoken-- the answer is apparent. But things weren’t always so clear in Wynantskill, N.Y., where she grew up. Holohan was born four days before Congress enacted Title IX, which sought to end gender discrimination in school sports. At the time, just one in 27 girls participated in high school sports; today the figure is one in three.

But it wasn’t just an act of Congress that changed those numbers. It was the determination of people like Ed and Maureen Holohan.

A former college basketball player and the cousin of former Los Angeles Ram standout Pete Holohan, Ed got his two sons involved in sports at an early age. Soon little Maureen was tagging along to practice, and when one side was a player short, she usually found herself in the game.

“She was just another kid playing,” Ed says. “We never looked at her as a girl. But we started realizing even though we felt that way, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for girls.”

So he created some. With Maureen as the catalyst, Ed got his local parish to support a youth basketball program for girls. Soon other parishes were following suit.

“It was just hugely successful,” he says. “And then we got involved in girls softball, which is hugely successful. So a lot of kids have sort of benefited from it.”

None more than Maureen. In high school, she led her basketball team to a state championship, winning most valuable player honors and a college scholarship along the way. At Northwestern, she set a record for steals and became just the third player in school history to score more than 1,600 points. That got her a $50-a-game job with the Chicago Twisters of the ill-fated Women’s Basketball Assn., and equally ignominious stints with professional teams in Greece, Hungary and Israel.

In Israel, where she played for a team sponsored by a kibbutz, she lived on a farm far from the relatively bright lights of Tel Aviv.

“That was the hardest thing, I think, about being overseas. You feel like your country has let you down; that they’ve kind of forced you out of here to do something that your male counterparts can easily do in front of his family and friends.”

In the last two years, however, women in the U.S. have finally gotten a league of their own. Two in fact. But neither the WNBA nor the ABL, which folded last week, came along quickly enough to save Holohan--torn arches in both feet forced her to retire shortly after returning from Israel.

After doing a little research, she realized there had never been a sports-themed book series for girls. So, just as she and her father had once created a place for girls to play, she was determined to give them something to read as well.

“I believe in this so much, that it’s more than a series of books,” says Holohan, who was also a prize-winning college journalist at Northwestern. “It’s my passion.”

Channeling the determination and energy she once used on the basketball court, Holohan revised her first book, “Friday Nights,” 14 times before offering it to publishers--only to have it rejected out of hand. Backed by a loan from friends, she printed 3,000 copies herself and sold them all in eight weeks.

In less than a year, she turned out four more books and says she sold 40,000 of the 45,000 copies she’s printed. Three more titles are planned for next spring.

“I think she’s helping a lot of kids,” says Peg Holohan, Maureen’s mother, who admits she longed for the chance to play ball when she was in school. But in the 1960s, girls’ basketball was a half-court game, and the gym uniforms featured uncomfortable long-sleeved shirts and knee-length bloomers.

“They really didn’t admire kids playing basketball--or any sport,” says Peg. There was little she could do to change that, she says. But her daughter’s writing, she insists, is having an impact.

“It perpetuates kids learning and . . . maybe thinking, ‘Maybe I can do this too.’ Maybe the books are the answer.

“There’s a whole world out there for girls now. It’s just wonderful.”

For more information on the “Broadway Ballplayers” books, call (888) LETMEPLAY, or on the Internet, go to https://www.bplayers.com.