HOOPS

Girls’ basketball gets off to a rocky start at an Indiana high school in the wake of Title IX.

Basing his debut graphic novel on a true story, Tavares follows a small group of enthusiasts and their resourceful art teacher who moonlights as the girls’ basketball coach, from tryouts that are shuffled off to the elementary school’s gym through dogged practices and hard-fought games all the way to the 1976 state championship. Both the art and the plot are spare and cleanly drawn—the former featuring spacious compositions and easy-to-follow action both on and off the boards. The latter focuses on the friendship that develops between Judi and her teammate Lisa as the Lady Bears (“Why is it always Lady Bears?” a teammate complains, “nobody ever calls the boys’ team the Gentleman Bears”), lacking even jerseys until late in the season and riding to away games in their coach’s uncle’s RV because no bus has been authorized, gradually build a following. They ultimately earn a public apology from the dismissive athletic director and, reuniting during a college break three years later, have the satisfaction of seeing the bleachers in their old high school well filled for a girls’ game. Like the overtly sexist attitudes, which get light but firmly visible exposure, the artist suggests his cast’s racial diversity rather than highlighting it through differences in skin tone and hair texture.

A winning tale, all the more exhilarating for its links to history.