Here's to you Mary Garber

Do you remember recess as a child when the boys would be playing football and there was always that one girl that got to play with them? It was always a mystery as to why she got to play with hot Johnny while you played four square and hoped that the football would be thrown in your direction and hot Johnny would be the one to retrieve it. With your luck it would probably be stinky farts Frank anyway so you should be thankful that ball was never thrown your way.

Stink Farts Frank

If you are still wondering how that lucky lucky girl got to be the one to play with the boys it's because she took the chance. While you and Susie sings a lot just accepted that your place was on the black top with the jump ropes and the variety pack of sidewalk chalk, that girl decided to walk onto unknown territory and find out how far the skills she knew she possessed would take her. You go girl. Mary Garber would have been proud.

Who was Mary Garber you ask?

She was living proof that women can succeed in the world of sports journalism.

 

Lookin' good Mary

According to American History t.v, Garber played football for the Buena Vista Devils in Winston-Salem, North Carolina as a young girl. That was back in 1924 when Garber was only eight-years-old. Can you imagine? Hot Johnny getting schooled by a girl. He would definitely lose some playground credibility.

Garber grew into a young lady who had a passion for sports as well as journalism. She attended college in Virginia and in 1940 became the society editor at the Twin City Sentinel. World War II gave Garber her big break. It was her time to leave the jump ropes and step onto the big boy field. With many of the men away, Garber had the opportunity to do general assignment reporting. Then the high school sports reporter graduated and the five-foot ninety pound lady stepped into his over sized shoes. When the war ended Garber was sent back to general assignment reporting. She was back on the metaphorical black top playing four square with the other little girls and she wanted badly to be back on the football field. A year later, after loads of persistence, Garber was back on the sports beat. For good.
In an article published by the New York Times, Garber started writing about sports when "the craft was essentially a man’s domain."

" Coaches often treated her with condescension, fellow sportswriters ignored her and professional associations kept her out."




“When I first started, in the ’40s, I went to one of the local colleges and I had press credentials, and they wouldn’t let me sit in the press box because women were not allowed to sit in the press box,” Miss Garber told National Public Radio in 2000. “And while I was talking with the sports information director, there was a little boy hopping up and down in the aisles in the press box, and he could sit there, but I couldn’t.”

This didn't stop Garber. She kept reporting and eventually recieved the recognition she deserved. Today The Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) has the Mary Garber Pioneer Award. The award "annually recognizes those who have paved the way and serve as role models for women in sports media."

Garber's role in the world of sports journalism has helped aspiring journalists like myself. Reading stories like hers adds fuel to my flame of dreams.

If you are happy singing "Down by the Valley where there green grass grows" while throwing your body into two ridiculously fast moving ropes then stick with it; be the best double dutcher out there. But, if you are sick of getting hit in the face because you can't figure out how to anticipate that second rope getting added to the mix and you want a change of pace, take a page out of Mary's book. Take a chance.

This will never be me.