By Harry Hall (Special to the Inside Texas Running Web site)

Anne Uhr was shocked at the sight. After a mention on the Irving High School PA system that the school was looking for girls to form IHS's first-ever track team, 250 potential tracksters showed up ready to run, throw and jump.

And the school didn't even have a track.

"We met on a football field behind the school," says Uhr, who also taught physical education at the high school.

"I guess we had so many," she says, "because they were just crying for some athletic pursuits. At that time, the only sports for girls that were offered were volleyball and tennis-and not many could be on those teams."

But the 1970 scene was just the beginning of what would become a dynasty of sorts. Starting that year, Coach Anne Uhr would lead the Tigers girls track team to 15 district championships in 18 years.

Coach Uhr reminisced at Dallas' all girls' Hockaday School on February 6, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the signing of Title IX, which guaranteed women the same educational and athletic opportunities as men.

Even 12 years after retiring from coaching, she speaks with a strong voice and pride regarding the athletes and their achievements-and smiles at the humble beginnings.

"The school let me have a team," she says, "but also said they had no money for us."

On meet days, they would load the girls into two covered pick-up trucks and go. And go and go and go. No Dallas public schools offered girls track, so they had to make journeys to outlying areas, and then some. Says Coach Uhr, "We had to drive to San Angelo for one meet."

They also had to make their own uniforms. "They were black polyester," she says, "with a yellow stripe and an IHS on the front. We had to wear them three or four years. The athletes had to supply their own shorts and shoes."

With a squad of about 35 athletes, the team traveled to Richardson for that first district meet. Led by Freshman Kim Curry, who anchored two relays and won the long jump, high jump and short hurdles events, the squad captured their first district crown.

Coach Uhr says she didn't notice a big immediate impact when Title IX went into effect two years later, but that eventually more schools starting adding girls track, and the team got some of the essentials, like uniforms and the use of a van, for example.

She admits that Title IX implementation would have helped in those early days, lack of resources wasn't a focus.

"The most important thing," she says, "was the athletes doing their best, and acting like ladies in the process."

She says the greatest compliment she ever received about her team came from an administrator.

"We were at the region meet at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M Commerce) in 1974," she says, "and the state athletic director congratulated the girls and complemented them and said, 'I watched you and you not only won, but you are also beautiful ladies who conducted yourselves as ladies.'

"That thrilled me to death," she says "because that was exactly the image I was trying to have, that you could go out and tear up the competition but still be ladies, and that's the way they performed."