Chicago Sun-Times - January 25, 1998 The Nancy Drew of Sports Ex-NU player writing books for preteen girls By Leslie Baldacci There is crying in basketball.  There is sulking.  Also, eye-roling, glaring, pony-tail flouncing and a move in which players ignore an open teammate to pass to their best friend, who is standing in a swarm of opponents. That style of basketball is played by girls in fifth, sixth and seventh grades, a strange back country of life often difficult to navigate, where team sports can be a girl’s salvation. Maureen Holohan, a three-time All-Big Ten guard at Northwestern, knows the lay of the land.  She lived it, and as an author, she revisits it in Friday Nights, by Molly, the first of her new Broadway Ballplayers book series. “To me, the most important things you can learn in life are how to get along, how to accomplish things,” Holohan, 25, said.  “That’s the reason I did my books this way.”

Each story is told by one of the ballplayers and revolves around a different sport.  The main characters come from different ethnic backgrounds and live on Broadway Avenue in a city neighborhood.  They plan in their neighborhood park and their public high school gym.

The second and third books in the series—Left Out by Rosie and Everybody’s Favorite by Penny—come out this week.

“It’s much more than a book,” Holohan said.  “It’s a concept.  It’s about building self-esteem and giving them characters they can strongly identify with.”

Stubborn, determined, defiant, “Molly is pretty close to me,” she said.  “though I never fought as much as Molly does.”

Just like the fictional Molly, Holohan’s father was her first basketball coach and biggest fan.  Like Molly, Holohan has two brothers and a little sister.  Molly’s dad is a police officer, but in Holohan’s real family, her brother is the cop.

Holohan graduated from Northwestern in 1995.  The 5-11 native of Wynantskill, NY then played pro ball in Israel for a year.

A journalism major at Northwestern, she started writing her first book two years ago.  When she read the first six chapters to a group of students at St. Athanasius School in Evanston, “the response was unbelievable.  That told me right there I had to do something.”

Five publishers rejected it.  One told her it would take one book not a series, especially a sports-oriented series for pre-teen girls, even one that touches on such off-court drama as friendship, rivalry, parents, race, divorce, gender discrimination and social status.

“Sports is an indirect way of dealing with issues of stereotyping or prejudging, of making sure you learn how to treat each other fairly,” Holohan said.  “When I speak, I tell boys and girls, white and black, that when the game’s on the line with five seconds left, isn’t it the same shot and the same feeling?  It doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you have or where you come from.  I try to stick to that theme.”

“Sports as a metaphor for life is a literary staple, but the overwhelming majority of stories have been by boys and about boys. Holohan loved Nancy Drew as a kid and read Sports Illustrated from cover to cover, “even if I didn’t understand it.” As one of the first generation of female athletes to benefit from Title IX, and aware of the growing body of research about the self-esteem crisis among preteen girls, Holohan pressed on despite the rejections. “One thing I noticed—and the reason I wrote for this age group—is when I talk to third and fourth-graders, they are overflowing with self-confidence, raising their hands and asking me questions,” Holohan said.  “When I go talk to older grades, fifth is hit-or-miss, but the sixth-seventh-and eighth grade girls don’t even ask questions.  They sit on their hands and are not excited.  This is no revelation.  Studies show something happens.  But to see how hard it is for some of these girls with my own eyes, I see the book as a weapon to help break it down.” Her target audience is fifth and sixth-graders, with a stretch from fourth through eighth grades. “Once they get past the cover,” boys also enjoy the books and even attend signings, Holohan said.  Male characters in the books are supportive friends, parents, coaches and educators.

To finance the initial run of 3,000 books, Holohan got a co-signer on a loan.  Those sold out in eight weeks.  Meanwhile, three couples—parents of girls she coached—invested to publish more copies of the first book and the next installments in the series.

Holohan has an assistant who works part time while training for the U.S gymnastics team.  Her sister, Meghan, 20, an English/education major and Rider University basketball player, is her editor and “biggest critic.”

“These books have taken over my life,” she said.  “I have devoted all my efforts, all my time, to the books, especially the next four to five months.”

A good memory can be a writer’s greatest asset, and Holohan clearly remembers—and admits—crying in her early years in basketball.  She also remembers a girl on her team “who wouldn’t pass to me because she didn’t like me.  It drove me nuts.”

“You definitely grow out of that,” said Holohan, who earned a full scholarship to Northwestern.  “By high school, your coach will pull you out and scream at you if you don’t start passing to the right people.”