Illinois H.S.toric

Girls rifle marksmanship in Illinois schools was always marginal. In part, because boys rifle marksmanship largely grew out of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs, and there were no ROTC programs for girls, and in part because the image of schoolgirls handling and shooting rifles did not comport with many educators and parents ideals of American young womanhood. Girls competition in rifle marksmanship began in the Chicago schools in the early 1920s. Because the league did not sponsor a championship competition for the girls, the schools competed largely in dual meets against one another. The girl competitors, like the boys, used 22-caliber rifles and shooting was done at targets 50 feet away from four positions—prone, standing, kneeling, and sitting. This competition involved direct competition at shooting galleries, usually in the basements of the schools. One of the earliest mentions of such competition was in 1923 when Calumet beat Austin. Other early girls teams were sponsored by Englewood, Hyde Park, and Lake View.

Evanston girls team, 1924

Telegraphic meets were also held between schools, competing on their home ranges. Some were held locally, but most were held nationwide. In 1925, Waller High competed telegraphically against national championship girls team at Crosby High, of Waterbury, Connecticut.

The one championship event for girls teams in the 1920s was the National Outdoor Life Exposition held at the Coliseum, which sponsored both boys and girls competitions. The girls teams considered the competition equivalent to the “city championship.” In the 1924 meet, the Englewood girls team won the title against several other Chicago high school teams, in 1925 the Austin team took the title.

In the suburbs the schools with the most advance marksmanship programs were mostly located on the North Shore, mainly Evanston, Waukegan, and Deerfield-Shields (in Highland Park). In the fall of 1923, Evanston began sponsoring a girls rifle team. Some seventy-five Evanston High girls turned out for rifle practice, and girls that were selected for the team were soon participating in open individual competition in local, state, and national events, and also represented Evanston High in interscholastic competition. In the spring of 1924, the team took 14th place nationally in the Winchester matches and qualifying as a “pro-marksman unit” in National Rifle Association matches. Competing directly against the boys team, the girls lost narrowly, 494-491.

The preeminent Chicago public school in rifle marksmanship was Lake View, which by the standards of other public schools in the city was heavily militarized. It had the city's largest ROTC battalion, with four large companies, and its ROTC chapter won all the city's drill competitions. Of the 6,000 students enrolled ROTC in approximately twenty Chicago high schools, 425 of them were from Lake View. Lake View's s military band also won more than its share of league titles. The school's boys rifle team won the city league championships annually, from 1924 through 1929. The Lake View girls squad, unlike that of the boys, did not achieve the same level of preeminence.

Lake View girls team, 1926

An interesting twist to the Lake View rifle teams was that their shooting coach was a woman, Mary Monahan, described in the yearbook as “the only woman rifle coach in the country” [meaning for boys]. Not only that, but she was assisted in the coaching both the girls and boys teams by a student, Mary Ward, who had started her high school career at West High in Minneapolis, but in her sophomore year at Lake View had begun competing in rifle marksmanship. She became the school's best shooter, girls and boys.

Lake View coach Mary Monahan

“Sure Shot” Mary Ward, 1927

By 1926, at least a half-dozen Chicago schools were sponsoring girls rifle teams and drill squads as well. A January 1926 Chicago Tribune photo of Lake View girls marching around with rifles brought up the criticism of “military training” of Chicago high school girls. Opponents expressed dismay at not only young girls handling rifles but also shooting them. A member of the school board's financial committee exclaimed, “I saw, in Germany, military training at its best and worst, But even the Germans never resorted to training their women…Some of the instructions—how to get the other fellow in war—hardly can be read before a mixed group of students. Are we encouraging this sort of militarism and brutality in the schools!” A trustee of the school board, Joanna Gregg, also objected to the expense involved for activities that were “not proper and legitimate features of a girls' education.”

Hyde Park boys and girls teams, 1926

The Chicago Tribune's highly conservative editorial board attributed the opposition to overall pacifist sentiments of opponents who did not even approve the military training of boys. The paper saw no reason at all “why women and girls shouldn't enjoy the thrill of marching in a well drilled group or of plugging away at a tantalizing black bullseye…Why spoil their fun.” The paper in its “Inquiring Reporter” column, which asked persons on the streets questions on controversial issues in the news, asked, “Would you approve of military training for girls?” The response from five presumably randomly selected individuals, male and female, was positive. One of the respondents, a housewife, commented, “I wish I could have had that training when I was in school.” A school official also made light of the criticism, saying “The girls have simply chosen this form of exercise in lieu of basketball or hockey. It is optional with them and their parents whether they take it.”

The Lake View High student newspaper in March 1926 vociferously defended the rifle team:

"Most readers of Chicago newspapers have, undoubtedly seen much discussion during the past few months concerning rifle practice for girls. Lake View's name has been noticed in this connection because of the great successes of the girls on the Red and White team. The majority of criticisms have been of the destructive type and have been written by people who know nothing of the subjects and have no grounds on which to base their articles. They have criticized the training of girls in this line. Rifle practice, as taught at Lake View, is a sport, pure and simple. Some of the critics cannot seem to grasp the idea of anyone taking up a sport just for the love of the sport. Because of no knowledge of the play they do not understand how a girl can aim and hit a target for pleasure."

The Lake View paper went on to explain how safely the sport was conducted and how it benefited the girls in developing coordination and control of muscles and eyes.

The critics of girls shooting rifles won the cultural war. There was a huge retrenchment of girls sports activities in Chicago schools in 1926, with the abolition of league sponsored golf, tennis, and swimming competition, and the clampdown on illegal basketball and track and field competition. Chicago school authorities were responding to the ideology of the physical educators of the day that disapproved of interschool competition for girls. That there was a budget crunch as well in the school system probably helped kill sports and military training for girls. Thus, the annual mass drill of ROTC units in June of 1926 saw the last participation of girl units engaged in the drills, and after that date the girls' rifle and drill teams eliminated from Chicago schools.

The dispute over the girls' participation in military training was in part a proxy battle by many opponents in the school system towards all military training in the schools. The Chicago Tribune quoted a spokesperson for the teachers that most of them “deplore, oppose, and would prevent military training in the schools.” These opponents scored an easy victory on the girls, but the boys program was too popular and too well entrenched to terminate.

Lake View was left without a girls rifle team in the 1926-27 school year, but that did not stop the school's star shooter, Mary Ward. That year she achieved national fame as “Sure Shot Mary” for her perfect scores in both high school and national contests. Ward helped coach and competed on the boys' team, helping them take the 1927 league title in February by scoring 500 out of 500 bulleyes. For this achievement she was written up in “Ripley's Believe it or Not.” "Sure-Shot Mary" in 1929 fired as a member of the Dewar Team (the Davis Cup of riflery).

After the suppression of girls rifle marksmanship in the Chicago schools in 1926, it came quietly back a few more times, first in the late 1930s. In 1936, Morgan Park Military Academy began hosting the Midwest Interscholastic Rifle Meet under joint sponsorship of the Illinois Rifle Association and the National Rifle Association. The school opened the meet to both girls and boys teams. Most of the girls teams represented private clubs and organizations, but some represented high schools, notably Quincy High (a downstate school), Loring High (a Catholic school), and Hyde Park High (a Chicago public school).

After World War II, rifle competition in the Chicago Public High School league continued to thrive. Girls rifle teams seemingly appeared to be a thing of the past, but in the 1947-48 school year both Waller and Taft initiated a girls rifle marksmanship program. By early 1949 there at least five schools--Waller, Taft, Von Steuben, Lake View, and Steinmetz—that were sponsoring girls rifle teams. The Taft team beat Lake View and Von Steuben in a three-way match, and beat the Taft boys team in a match 443 to 440. The Chicago Tribune, for example, ran features on the teams, for their novelty value, captioning one photo of the Steinmetz girls team, “80 Annie Oakleys at Steinmetz.” The schools also competed in the telegraphic National Rifle Association competition. But by the 1950s, apparently, girls rifle teams disappeared from Chicago schools, judging by the absence of any more reports of their activities.

In the early 1970s, rifle marksmanship for girls reemerged in the Chicago public schools. The admission of girls into ROTC in the early 1970s put them in the position of taking rifle marksmanship classes and of competing on teams. By the mid-1990s, Chicago with more than 7,000 participating students enrolled in 33 Army units, two Navy units, and one Marine unit had the largest ROTC program in the country. The rifles were now air-powered and shot pellets. Rifle marksmanship competition had returned, and in the 1990s more than 30 Chicago schools and a somewhat smaller number in the rest of the state were competing in marksmanship competition. This would end in 1999, when Superintendent Paul Vallas in the wake of the Columbine High shootings in Colorado terminated the rifle marksmanship classes and competition.