Byrne, Julie. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
320 pages, $22.50 (USD). ISBN: 0-231-12749-9 (PB).
[1] Julie Byrne’s story of Immaculata, a small Catholic women’s
college near Philadelphia, and their champion national basketball
team, the Mighty Macs, reads with the intensity of watching a player
score a three-point shot to win the game in overtime, or even more
like an exciting game with expected strategies but also unexpected
twists, turns, and surprises. The basketball players’ narratives
that Byrne includes (gathered from live interviews, written surveys,
and historical archives) generally affirm Catholic social, physical,
and spiritual stereotypes. Nevertheless, the very peculiarity
of an underdog all-female Catholic college contributing to women’s
sports on a national level fashions a nuanced story that reveals
challenges and resistances to broader traditional Catholic expectations
for women.
[2] Byrne sets her study of a nonreligious activity within the larger
framework of lived religion, where the everyday religious lives
of individuals shed light on a larger faith culture in which human
agents creatively work within ideological contradictions and institutional
control. Her work aptly applies to scholars of American religious
history, Catholicism, sports history, as well as those interested
in gender studies. In the scope of religion and popular culture,
Byrne is not concerned with whether the rituals of basketball and
spectatorship are religious in themselves. Basketball is not
a religion for these young players and their fans; however, their
basketball team happens to be funded, supported, staffed, and made
up of a tight-knit Philadelphia Catholic community with a long tradition
of extracurricular sports in which the Might Mac game affected the
religious culture and visa versa. Byrne explores how
Immaculata basketball players “became subjects for whom sports
could provide a resource and strategy within Catholicism” in
the “relationship between the institution and the individual” (13).
[3] Immaculata began its first varsity competition in 1939, and
Byrne traces its basketball tradition from the beginnings through
its victories in the first three women’s national college
basketball championships (1972-1974). She thematically organizes
the chapters according to a typical basketball season ranging from
tryouts to the final game. Chapter 1 explores how Immaculta
players created identities as they made the team. Basketball
dictated their time, who they respected, and their feminine athletic
and religious identities. Byrne posits that the team was a
microcosm of the Catholic community and therefore the molding of
identities was not without conflict.
[4] Next Byrne tells of how the Immaculta community reworked class
status in relation to basketball. Byrne demonstrates how the
tensions between the working lower-class students of Immaculta differed
from their wealthy sister schools; how South American and African
American students influenced the campus environment; how boarding
students’ experiences were vastly different from those of
commuter students; and how players reacted to the class distinctions
that they encountered on road trips. Byrne reveals that the
basketball court had a type of leveling consequence for these tensions
while also melding gender differences.
[5] Byrne argues that Immaculta players remembered the pleasure
of their moving, sweating bodies. The players challenged traditional
notions of femininity while still insisting on their moral status
as “ladies.” Byrne’s discussion
of the slow change in cumbersome female uniforms, and the unhurried
modifications in women’s basketball game regulation, highlights
gender expectations to which Immaculta players conformed and resisted.
[6] The women identified as players but also as serious college
students, but the most recognized aspect of their identity was their
Catholicism. Byrne’s interviewees speak of how basketball
was, for them, religiously infused and had spiritual meaning, whether
that be from attributing their winning seasons to the prayers of
the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to equating a loss
with a religious holiday such as Ash Wednesday, to attending Mass
on game day, or to praying before every tip-off. Basketball
offered these women new ways to explore their faith.
[7] At the same time, their Catholicism distanced the Mighty Macs
from other teams they met on the road whose morals, cultures, race,
and economic status differed from their own. The contrast
between Catholics and non-Catholics was made more evident by the
influence of Vatican II (or lack thereof) on the Immaculta community. Thus
Byrne contextualizes her work within the larger cultural changes
in the Catholic Church, in women’s roles, and in turbulent
American life. Immaculata players never identify as feminists,
but they do enjoy their status as “authority figures and role
models in circles that supported them” (204). They benefit
from the pleasures of basketball and experience no contradiction
between womanhood, athletics, and religion. By retelling their
success story through a refreshing lens, Byrne demonstrates that
the “Cinderella” Immaculta team did much to liberate
national attitudes far beyond that which they recognized.
[8] Byrne leaves readers with more questions than answers, but she
has greatly contributed to the much-needed work on religious practice,
grounded in the belief that experience is both nestled within institutional
religion and separate from it. Readers are reminded once again
of the oft-concluded notion in contemporary studies of women and
religion which suggests that women pragmatically act within the
boundaries of their religious institutions. The Mighty Macs
are no different as they negotiate contradictory ideologies and
resist traditional gender expectations and roles. Yet, Byrne
supplies a discourse of pleasure to add an unexplored theoretical
dimension to studies of historical subjects and the familiar narrative
of negotiation. Further studies and theoretical wrestling with concepts
of desire, emotion, and pursuit can only contribute to the study
of lived religion. For this round, Byrne has scored with an
amazing story, compelling subjects, and a valuable contribution
to the study of American religion.
Howell Williams
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
HowellWilliams@yahoo.com
