AURORA – Fifty years ago, the Colorado High School Activities Association had its first-ever state tournament for a girls team-only sport, the culmination of a long road to achieving opportunity.

The first state volleyball tournament was played at Thornton’s old Highland and Mapleton High Schools. Prairie (Class A), Valley (Class AA) and Mitchell (Class AAA) were the inaugural state champions.

“I think the girls are starting to realize it even more now, but even back then we talked about how they were competing for people who hadn’t gotten to compete, and they were competing for the future (generation), too,” said Maggie McAllister Kilmer, then a 22-year-old volleyball coach at Prairie High School, and now the athletic director at that same school. “That was big. At our school, the younger girls watched our first team with big eyes thinking, ‘Hey we’re going to get to do this, too.’

“So our players knew that they were pioneering. It wasn’t that way at our school, but there were places where it was not cool for girls to play. So we feel blessed about that.”

As the 50th anniversary of that tournament is celebrated, players and coaches from those championships teams – as well as from the runner-up teams from Limon (A), and Platte Valley (AA) – will be recognized in an on-court ceremony at the Denver Coliseum, at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 15, just before the state championship matches are played.

Regional tournaments, the first postseason step on the path to the Coliseum, start Friday.

It was a road that wouldn’t have seemed even a few years before that first state tournament.

The 1975 tournament, which took place just over three years after the passage of Title IX – which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school that receives funding from the federal government – signaled a swift shift for girls high school sports around the country.

CHSAA was one of many state associations that was slow to embrace the development of sports for girls.

In 1964, girls were sanctioned by CHSAA to participate in only archery, badminton, golf and tennis. Gymnastics, swimming and track & field were allowed “provided no team scores are recorded.” No formal schedule or championships were permitted. 

Yet, a little over a decade later, players from those first volleyball state championship tournament teams said that they received widespread support from their communities.

“I think we were fortunate because we were one of the few schools that was very supportive of making sure that we were able to get out there,” said Roberta Chacon Caciari, an outside hitter and senior captain of Valley’s state championship team. “All of the schools in our area competed. (Coach) Ann (McKay) came in the middle of our freshman year, and they really pushed to get volleyball sanctioned by CHSAA. We got to reap the benefits of their hard work.”

In the InterScholastic, CHSAA’s old newsletter, the first tournament and its players were praised, saying the tournament “put to rest any notion that girls athletics cannot generate the type of spectator enthusiasm witnessed at boys events. Fans wildly cheered each point, and first-time observers of the sport were in awe of the strategy, teamwork, and individual skills displayed by the competitors. Volleyball’s successful debut is particularly gratifying, as it was the first team sport to be offered for girls at the state level.”

A near-capacity crowd of just under 2,500 was reported to have come for the finals at Highland.

“The thing I remember most was the size of it, just how much bigger the gym was and how many more people were there,” said Jill Miller Artzer, a senior setter for Kilmer’s team at Prairie. “As a team and individuals, we were so excited that we were going to the big city and playing volleyball. I remember how much noise there was in the gym. Coach Kilmer was able to bring us all together and calm us down and tune it out. But our whole community was there. And I remember the intensity of the games.”

It was light years away from just six actual years earlier. Girls skiing was added by CHSAA in 1969 (golf, badminton and archery were eliminated), but still no team scores could be “recorded.”

CHSAA, in the InterScholastic in 1971, said there were challenges in finding “qualified women” to coach and co-signed an editorial from the Wisconsin association saying girls sports “must be conducted as an outgrowth of the intramural program.”

Back then, many younger girls got their first exposure to volleyball from physical education classes.

In the fall of 1974, Mitchell’s Gaby Franzese was asked if she’d be interested in playing while participating in a different sport in P.E. class.

“There were no youth programs back then, and I was recruited by my coach (Kathy Glassman) in P.E. class when we were doing tennis or basketball,” Franzese said. “She said, ‘Would you be interested in playing volleyball?’ And I said, ‘What’s that?’ She invited me to practice that afternoon and I thought, ‘This looks like a fun game.’”

A year later she was the senior captain and a defensive specialist for the Marauders on their trip to the state championship.

If not in P.E., many others often got early volleyball (and softball) experience playing in 4-H programs.

“It’s basically an ag program … you basically had to either raise animals or raise crops,” said Valley’s Chacon Caciari. “I was a town girl ... and I learned how to sew and cook and knit, and that way I could play sports (through 4-H).”

Still, even early in 1972, CHSAA schools were encouraged to promote instructional and intramural girls programs over “interscholastic” ones, according to the InterScholastic. 

But the tide, finally, was starting to turn.

That fall, team sports for girls were approved by CHSAA, though there were to be no district or state championships. Team scores could be recorded in individual sports. A girls swimming state championship was held in 1973, though team scores were not kept.

In the meantime, many were already anticipating that girls would finally find their rightful place in the competitive arena.

“I graduated (from college) in 1974,” said Kilmer, who was from the Prairie area in Sterling, “ … and there were some dads on the school board who also had daughters, and they approached me even the year before that it was going to be sanctioned. They knew it was going to be, and they wanted someone who could be a P.E. teacher and coach the girls.”

Finally, for the 1974-75 school year, team scores and team championships were allowed by CHSAA, and it was determined that state championships for volleyball and basketball would be held beginning in 1975-76.

The state’s first girls team champions came in 1974, when Bear Creek (gymnastics) and Cherry Creek (swimming) were named winners in their sports, and in early 1975 state titles were handed out in skiing, track & field and tennis.

Kilmer said she didn’t know that much about volleyball at the time, but got herself up to speed by talking to coaches, reading books, whatever it took. She coached the first team – playing “nine or 10” matches – in 1974, and was in her second season in 1975.

Said Miller Artzer, her setter: “Maggie was so smart. We practiced so many different plays and strategies.”

Franzese also praised Glassman’s coaching acumen at Mitchell.

“She came out of tennis, but her knowledge of volleyball was over the top,” Franzese said. “She had so many fun drills to do. She would stand up on a table and spike it at us – hard – she had a great serve in tennis. She didn’t want a ball hitting the ground – defense, defense, defense.”

At Valley, a high-level player in McKay helped take her team to the next level as a coach.

“We played in P.E., so we knew the game,” said Sue Ley Kitchell, the AA player of the year in 1975. “But it was kind of primitive compared to what Ann brought in – the power plays – she knew more stuff. I think Ann was the right person at the right time. It all came together and it was just amazing.”

At the state tournament, Mitchell surprised many with its run to the AAA title – after outlasting Loveland in three sets, the Colorado Springs school took down Denver North 15-1, 15-0 before defeating Columbine in three sets, including 15-3 in the third in a match that lasted over two hours, according to the InterScholastic, to finish 16-2.

“Anything south of the Denver area wasn’t considered to be as competitive,” Franzese said. “So it came as quite a surprise.”

Hitter Kristi Pearson was the tournament’s MVP, leading a roster that also included Kathy Anderson, Nancy Cole, Terri Craft, Kathy Gould, Lori Hendrickson and Sheryl Schmitt.

In AA, Valley rolled past Roaring Fork and Crowley County, winning the semifinal match without surrendering a point, before defeating local rival Platte Valley in a three-set final to finish 23-0, including five wins over Platte Valley. The Vikings lost the first set of the championship match 17-15 – the only set they had dropped all year – before coming back to win.

Ley Kitchell, Chacon Caciari and Kay Hungenberg were all-state selections, and Marci Baker was on the all-state second team. They led a roster that also included Darla Bedan, Joanna Craven, Lucy Jasso, Maureen Leaf and Lorene Zamora.

“We were very tight,” Ley Kitchell said. “We played together well, and we had amazing athletes. Many of us became teachers and coaches after we got our degrees. That shows how much we enjoyed playing.”

In Class A, Prairie swept Aguilar, Dolores and pre-tournament favorite Limon in its run to the championship to complete a 16-1 season.

“We had an amazing team, and we couldn’t have asked for a better coach,” Miller Artzer said. “We grew up together and had respect for each other, and we had so much fun.”

The top hitters on the Prairie team were Lou Piel and Susan Northrup and the rest of the roster included Cindy Bornhoft, Deb Bornhoft, Marilyn Box, Deb Dupont, Miko Hayaski, Jackie Hoozee, Mary Lynne Joska, JoDell Littlefield, Sandi Littlefield, Kathy Miller, Annette Piel, Toni Northrup and Barb Schmeckle.

“We weren’t a very tall team, but we had a couple of tall girls,” said Kilmer, who then laughed and said. “Therefore, sometimes I say instead of running a 6-2 (six rotating as attackers, two as setters), we ran a 2-6. We had two girls who could hit the ball really well, and we tried to get them the ball a lot when they were in the front row.

“Those girls really did pass well, and that was a big key to it. And they served well. Those were big keys for them.”

Looking back, the development of the sport has been impressive and gratifying for all. These days, rally scoring is the rule, rather than teams scoring only when serving. Other rules changes – including the implementation of the libero, allowing the ball to be played with any part of the body, back-row attacking and more – have made the game faster.

“Volleyball was different then,” Kilmer said, who coached four years in her first stint at Prairie and came back as the athletic director three years ago after coaching multiple sports for most of the last 45 years. “The overhead set was really hard to pull off – the officials did not like it. It sounds funny now, but we really worked a lot on a bump set. The overhead sets, receiving with a two-handed set … play at the net has loosened up.

“It’s much different and it has progressed. It’s a much faster game now. It’s amazing how much the tempo of volleyball has changed.”

And as time has passed, the contributions of these pioneers for girls sports in Colorado has continued to crystallize.

“I’m probably going to start crying, but you just don’t realize … my daughter played and went to state for three years in volleyball, and we paved the road,” Ley Kitchell said. “I didn’t realize until later in my life how big that was.

“When it happened, we were kind of in shock. We had never had that amount of attention on a sport. It’s grown on me through the years that, ‘Wow, that was huge.’ … I’m in awe of how big it’s gotten and that we were part of it.”