Former Player's Novel Inspired by Effort to Bring Girls Basketball to Wilson and State Championship First Season

By Paul Danzer

The 1974-75 season for the Wilson High girls basketball team at Wilson High was a storybook one.

The Trojans fought off challenges from Lincoln and Marshall to win the city title in the first season the Portland Interscholastic League sanctioned girls basketball. Wilson then won three games over two days to win a “state” invitational tournament title (read an account of it here).

For one of the players, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, the Trojans’ success was the culmination of her year-long effort to compel her school to comply with recently passed Title IX legislation and establish its first girls basketball team. And nearly 50 years later, it inspired Bledsoe to write a young adult novel based on the experience called “No Stopping Us Now.’

The author of 17 novels and one work of nonfiction, Bledsoe says she had long thought about writing herstory as a nonfiction book. But she decided that the process she went through in 1974 – lots of meetings and letter writing – wasn’t the best fodder for a riveting real-life read.

She also wanted to include some personal experiences she gained from playing college basketball, so she pivoted to telling her story through a character named Louisa.

“I'm real interested inthe kind of friendships that happen on teams,” Bledsoe says. “And I wanted to write dialog to give it more of an emotional punch.”

Still, Bledsoe says, 90 percent of “No Stopping Us Now,” published in 2022, is true.

In the book, Bledsoe uses the real names of her Wilson teammates and several teachers and mentors wh ochampioned her cause, while changing the names of coaches, teachers and administrators who she says tried to intimidate her into giving up.

One of Bledsoe’s key supporters was Stan Stanton, then Wilson’s varsity football coach. He had coached her older brothers and knew the Bledsoe family, and when the new girls basketball team was formed and needed a coach, Stanton stepped up. In one scene in the book, he encourages Louisa to keep fighting for a girls basketball team.

“That actually happened in the hall at Wilson,” Bledsoe remembers. “He put his arm around me and said, ‘I’m with you all the way girl.’ That was just so moving to me. Who would expect that from the football coach?”

Bledsoe was primarily a role player for that Trojan team, which was led by PIL Hall of Famers Wendy Peterson Ingraham and Pam Mollet. But, she says, the practices and camaraderie were the highlight of her experience.

“I just loved sports, andI really wanted to be on a team,” she says. “To me, the friendships and all the humor and the music and the bus trips were as much fun as the basketball.”

 Looking back, Bledsoe saysshe was a pretty naive teenager when she decided to take on the Title IX cause at her school.

 “I thought, Oh, there's this new law. Cool. Well, now we need to get it implemented. I mean, I was so naive. The blowback that I got just absolutely shocked me.”

 Bledsoe says fighting for the opportunity to play high school basketball taught her things that have helped her career as an author and social justice champion. Five decades later, she says her role in helping bring girls basketball to her school and the PIL remains immensely satisfying.

 “You don't very often in life get that kind of satisfaction,” Bledsoe says. “I mean, to actually have the change you’re seeking happen, and then to get to play on that first team and win state was so satisfying and fun.”

 "No Stopping Us Now” is available at Powell’s Books, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

 Learn more about the author and her other books at lucyjanebledsoe.com

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