DULUTH — Goalie Rachelle Francisco was used to playing high-level hockey growing up in Hermantown, having played with the boys for years.
That was until she joined the Proctor/Hermantown/Marshall Mirage, a girls program formed in 1998 in a move sped up by a parental complaint filed just a year earlier.
This? Think of the Bad News Bears … on ice. And that didn’t sit well with the goalie.
“Rachelle didn’t get much support,” said longtime Mirage coach Glen Gilderman. “Our very first scrimmage we went up to, I think it was Grand Rapids, and it was really bad. The Proctor girls soccer team had gone to state that year, so we didn’t have some of our best players and it was brutal. She was yelling at the players, ‘Get out of the way! Just move, just move out my way’ (he laughed). She knew they were not very good. They didn’t know how to play like a team yet or anything like that.’”
Gilderman told her not to worry, it would get better, and it did get better. A lot better. Gilderman quickly helped build the program into a winner and in 2021, with Emma Stauber at the helm, the Mirage reached the pinnacle, winning their first Class A state title.
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Hard to believe now, years later, it was a bit of a fight just to get the thing started. Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation that opened the way for girls sports by prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any school or program receiving federal funding.
While Francisco, then known as Rachelle Hernesman, initially regretted her decision to join that team, she no longer does now.
“A lot of people to this day don’t realize I played at Hermantown that long,” Francisco said. “I played for the boys junior varsity and then went over to be the first goalie on the girls varsity. That is pretty special, because for so long they said no, you can’t have a team. I just think about the girls that are playing now. I’ve watched a lot of their games, and they’re excellent hockey players. It’s just come so far. It’s neat to see that and it’s more fair now for girls and boys.”
The original complaint
According to a Duluth News Tribune article dated Sept. 18, 1997, Hermantown’s school board appealed a state order from earlier in the month to add a high school girls hockey program to satisfy Title IX gender equity laws. The Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning found that girls had 20% fewer opportunities than boys to participate in athletics at Hermantown.
A low level of interest and potential lack of numbers were cited in the appeal.
“That didn’t turn out to be as big of a problem as they thought because we worked really hard to get kids out,” Gilderman said. “You had some girls who were really serious and you had a group that was just happy to be playing hockey and then you had a group that I had to go recruit out of the halls. That first year I just needed kids who could skate — and stop.”
According to the article, the department’s order came in response to a complaint filed in February 1997 by Hermantown hockey parent Dan Harvieux. While the likes of Angela Harvieux and Sheila (Radzak) Johnson never got to realize the dream of being part of that team, the complaint got the ball rolling.
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“And the Mirage was born,” Gilderman said.
Gilderman heard the news the team was forming and it piqued his interest. He was working in Proctor as a middle-school teacher at the time and had some experience as a goalie coach. He went into the office of Proctor athletic director Jeff Caywood in the spring of 1998 to tell Caywood about his interest in being an assistant coach.
“I don’t think he looked very hard,” Gilderman said. “A couple days later he said, ‘Hey, we can’t find anybody. Would you be interested in being the head coach?’ And I said ‘Nah, I don’t want to do that. You need to find somebody.’ But like I said, I don’t think he looked very hard.”
Perfect person for the job
Gilderman, 57, a 1983 Proctor graduate, is about as mild-mannered as it gets. He understood the importance of what they were doing, the importance of equality and the importance of what it means to treat everyone the same, boy or girl.
The program was under scrutiny the first few years. Gilderman remembers people standing in the windows above the rink with clipboards taking notes, making sure they weren’t “stealing ice time” from the boys.
“It was weird,” he said. “But we ran a very efficient practice, so they got bored and left.”
Another time in those early years the Mirage were up on the range and Gilderman was taken aback by what he heard before a game as the opposing coach told him they didn’t flood between the first and second periods for girls games.
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“And I said, ‘Really?’’’ Gilderman recalled. “And he said, ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure for ice time, and I said, ‘You know what, you have to start battling here for these girls because do they do that for the boys?’ Well, no. And this guy was a great coach and a great guy but he was new and didn’t really know. That’s the bottom line: everything is the same.”
Gilderman told his athletic directors what was going on and the next time up there the Zamboni made the rounds between the first and second periods, as it should.
Gilderman also remembered not even having pregame introductions with the starting lineups.
“They treated the girls varsity team like a youth program, like peewees or bantams,” Gilderman said. “All these programs all over the place have earned an equal status. It’s treated equally now but there’s still … there’s still a battle that has to happen sometimes.”
Gilderman remembers another time as recently as about seven years ago. The new practice schedule came out and the Mirage were scheduled to practice at 8:30 p.m., after boys peewees and bantams.
“In 2015 … I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Gilderman said. “The scheduler was new and she didn’t know any better. She was like, ‘I just figured.’ Well, you figured wrong. These girls work just as hard if not harder than the boys. They shouldn’t be treated any less.”
Duluth Marshall eventually broke off and formed its own successful program. Gilderman retired as Mirage coach in February 2019 with a 322-219-22 record in 21 seasons with the Mirage. He said they finished close to .500 that first year in 1998-99, when they were still considered club level, with early standouts such as Amy Kachinske, who went on to play at Wisconsin-Superior.
The Mirage went 9-9-2 the next season and 15-8 in 2000-01 and were on their way.
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“No regrets,” Francisco said. “Glen was a great coach and (assistant) Bruce Bordson was another great coach. They taught me a lot about life other than just hockey.”
Francisco likes to joke she was just born 10 years too early. She was too competitive and skilled and talented to be part of that hodgepodge first unit, no doubt, but there she was, seeing 75 or 80 shots some nights.
She was asked if she ever thought about quitting.
“I never would have quit. I’m not a quitter,” Francisco said.
Despite all those differences, Francisco discovered she belonged with the girls. Playing on boys teams, and being a goalie, she always felt a little bit like an outsider looking in. She even had to dress for games in broom closets because there were no locker rooms for one person.
Francisco said in just two short years playing with the girls a camaraderie formed — even in spite of her yelling.
“I was vocal,” Francisco said. “I’m sure I made some of the girls on the team cry, but I was used to playing on the boys teams. They would tell me what they thought, and I would tell them what I thought, but girls are a little more emotional (she laughed). It was kind of funny. We had a reunion a few years ago and I did apologize to a few of the girls like, ‘Sorry.’ We just laugh about it now.”
No hard feelings.
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“Definitely,” she added. “That first year was tough but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
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