BY RICK WRIGHT / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
The year was 1972, and 10-year-old Olivia Jones was growing tall, strong and well coordinated. She’d watch the boys play basketball and think, “I really like that.”
But would she ever get the chance to play the game herself? Opportunities for girls in team sports were rare, especially in schools.
Fortunately for Jones — though less so for her older sisters — along came Title IX.
Jones, nicknamed “O.J.,” wasn’t among the very first Albuquerque girls to play high school basketball. But, as the city’s most accomplished player during her three years at Sandia (1976-79), she and Manzano track athlete Val Boyer were the first breakout stars to make headlines in the city’s newspapers and bring girls’ scholastic athletics into the sunlight.
TARYN BACHIS: A star on coach Steve Silverberg’s first Eldorado state championship girls basketball team, Bachis went on to play at UNM and Kansas State. She coached a state championship volleyball team at Moriarty High School before moving to Albuquerque Academy in 1987. She has spent 35 years at Academy as a coach and administrator.
ELLEN HART: An outstanding age-group track athlete, Hart won the 1974 girls mile run for Albuquerque Academy at the second-ever New Mexico state girls track meet. Hart also starred in basketball for the Chargers, then participated in three varsity sports — basketball, soccer and track and field — at Harvard.
After a long and successful career as a runner, Hart, a Boulder, Colorado resident, later transitioned to triathlon.
Hart was the subject of a 1996 TV movie, “Dying to Be Perfect,” dealing with her real-life struggles with eating disorders. She has served on the President’s Council on Fitness and Sports.
