COMMUNITY: Another Panthers tale

From Tonya Slezak Arnold on last week's feature on the Cedar Rapids Panthers girls' basketball team. Slezak Arnold played for the Cedar Rapids Panthers from 1985 through '87, was a four-sport athlete at Prairie, graduating in 1991, and played basketball at Mount Mercy and Coe.

I was fortunate to be a member of the first Cedar Rapids Panthers team. Reading the Cedar Rapids Gazette Sunday (May 19) article, “Proud Panther tradition ends,” I reflected on a piece of my adolescence that provided me more than just an opportunity to play basketball. I am confident that being a Panther allowed me and my teammates to dream and achieve what few girls did before us.

The Panther's early years provided many young girls with an opportunity to play competitive basketball at a time when club teams were not common. Today, our children have a variety of club teams and sports to choose from. In 1985, a girls' club or AAU team for 5-on-5 basketball was unprecedented (most of the state of Iowa was still playing 6-on-6 basketball).

The ‘first Panthers' were born in 1971 or 1972. Title IX was passed in 1972. With dedicated coaches and supportive parents, we took full advantage of Title IX and blazed the trail for the next 25-plus years of Panther basketball. While Title IX gave us the opportunity to play basketball in high school or college, it also allowed us to learn important life lessons through competitive athletics. The Cedar Rapids Panther's taught hundreds of young girls: Confidence, commitment and hard work, achieving and setting goals, sportsmanship, overcoming obstacles and building lifelong friendships.

Many of my Panther teammates and those girls who followed us had wildly successful careers on the basketball court in high school and college.

Today, we are college graduates, have successful careers and are supportive mothers and wives. We are using those important life lessons as productive members of our society, while raising our families.

In 1985, we were a group of young girls just doing what we loved. But in the end we helped to create a piece of history and build an organization that would touch and shape the lives of many young girls in our community.

I am forever grateful to the coaches, my teammates and the parents. Thank you for creating an organization where young girls could learn to dream and achieve their goals. As a mom of two young girls, the value and importance of an organization like this is tremendous.

Go Panthers!