CITY WISE BY KELLY BLEWETT
Moving the Goalposts KELCEY ERVICK EXPLORES HOW TITLE IX EMPOWERED HER AND OTHER FEMALE ATHLETES.
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DURING MEDIA INTERVIEWS IN 1987, WHEN KELCEY ERVICK’S CINCINNATI-BASED GIRLS’ soccer team made it to the national finals, players were asked, Who will be the first to get pregnant? Who will be the first to get married? Who will have the most kids? Reflecting on the moment in her new graphic memoir The Keeper, Ervick writes, “It makes me wonder: Can different questions conjure different futures?” She imagines empowering alternatives: Who will be the first to play on the Women’s U.S. National Soccer Team? How many gold medals do you want to win? Who will be the first woman president? The Keeper is an opportunity for Ervick, now an English professor at Indiana University South Bend, to do some investigating of her own. The book, published last fall by Penguin Random House to help mark the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX legislation, explores her memories of playing soccer, first with the Cardinals club team, 3 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M A P R I L 2 0 2 3
then at Anderson High School, and finally during college at Xavier University. “From grade school to grad school, Cincinnati has been central to who I am and to my artistic sensibilities,” she says. “I love its rolling hills and roiling river and old brick buildings and flooded soccer fields. I value the communities and friends and teams I had and still have there.” Her words and full-color illustrations follow each other in quick succession throughout The Keeper, offering a kaleidoscopic richness that draws in the reader. The format allows her to play with pacing, point of view, and emphasis in ways that feel more vibrant and immersive than paragraphed prose. I read the book in a single evening, absorbed by the visuals, many of which recreate primary documents and images from her past. To create the book, Ervick went deep into her personal archive. She spent hours watching videos of the Cardinals that were meticulously filmed by a devoted father. She was struck by the parents’ commitment. “I’d forgotten how central they were to all of our trips and games and experiences,” she says. “As a parent myself now, I could appreciate them in a new way.” After watching the videos, she turned to her adolescent diary, a process she refers to as “painful, cringe-y, and unpleasant.” “I’d wanted to find a smarter, cooler, better self,” says Ervick. “It wasn’t until I was working on the end of the book that I could see how I was using writing to process my experiences.” That trip through her old diary reminded her of the songs and routines of her teenage years, from driving to school blasting her The Best of the Doors cassette to yanking the curly cord of the home phone down hallways and into the bathroom in order to get some privacy. Friendships and funny hairstyles, nights playing Pictionary, and long bus rides with her teammates—her reminiscences will resonate with anyone who came of age in the 1990s, especially if they were part of a sports team. THE FINISHED BOOK IS MORE THAN NOStalgia, though. Ervick investigates and reports on the messages she received about girlhood itself—and what she reveals is telling. According to a set of surveys she kept in another childhood journal, in grade ILLUSTR ATIO N BY J E SSI C A D U N H A M