Written by Zoe Deal
BREAK POINT
Top: Toni St. Pierre as she appears in her Eisenhower High School yearbook in 1973. Bottom: Peggy Brenden playing tennis. (Photo was originally printed in her school newspaper.)
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In tennis, there is a point at which the momentum of the game swings. A player receiving service is one point away from a win, with the opportunity to turn the tide of the match by winning the server’s game. It’s a defining moment, a crossroads that can change the course of the match and set. This is the break point. “It really fit,” says Minnetonka resident Sheri Brenden of the title of her debut book, Break Point: Two Minnesota Athletes and the Road to Title IX. “It just felt like it gave a sense of what the book was.” Though the former research librarian began writing this book in 2005, it has been in the works for a lifetime—or at least since a young Sheri watched her older sister, Peggy Brenden, file a lawsuit in 1972, so she could play tennis with the boys at St. Cloud Tech High School. Break Point dives into Peggy’s journey—and that of Hopkins track and cross-country runner Toni St. Pierre— as they pushed the gender barriers that kept girls and women off the playing field. The book recounts the circumstances around the landmark case Brenden v. Independent School District 742 as it made its way through the courts and became the first case ever to reference Title IX. The decision of Judge Miles Lord was upheld in the Eighth Court of Appeals, setting a precedent that, in tandem with Title IX, would pave the way for generations of student athletes. “Like many girls in athletics, [the case] was glossed over in a lot of ways,” Sheri says. “Women are powerful athletes, and they are part of our history. These kinds of stories are what give all of us
inspiration to continue in that.” University of Minnesota Press associate editor Kristian Tvedten commends Sheri’s “considerable skills” as a storyteller and researcher, describing the book as “a story that is as timely today as it was in 1972.” While Break Point relies on extensive research on the legal case, newspaper coverage and interviews with key players, it’s the author’s connection with her subject that makes all the difference—turning what could be a technical recounting of a legal case into a story that touches on what it felt like for the individuals involved—before, during and after. “Being her sister, it gave me a certain empathy—also because it’s part my history, too,” Sheri says. Though Sheri is five years Peggy’s junior, she recalls the lawsuit in broad strokes, as a period that her family lived through but that she viewed then simply as “Peg’s lawsuit.” Yet, by the time Sheri stepped onto her high school campus, much had already changed. “[The case] just created this kind of mindset for me that nobody could tell me that I couldn’t be playing a sport, that I didn’t belong on the field or on a court,” Sheri says. “By the time I got into high school, there were all kinds of sports for girls, and I was certain that I was ready to try most any of them because I didn’t think there was any reason why I shouldn’t.” Sheri speaks about her sister’s story with pride, remarking on the role sports and law played in Peggy’s life (She went on to become an attorney, then judge and has never stopped playing tennis.) and that of St. Pierre, who, after a remarkable athletic journey throughout school,
December 2022
lakeminnetonkamag.com
Photos: Hennepin County Library; Sheri Brenden
Book shares the story of two Minnesota athletes’ fight for equality.
