They wore jumpers and bloomers and played in a cramped gym in the basement of the school, except when they had one of those Saturday morning games at ancient Fournier Hall in Wilmington.

That was girls high school basketball in the mid-1970s and, in this particular case, Ursuline Academy basketball when the Raiders were just starting to win state championships.

Ursuline and St. Elizabeth will play today for the state title, and each has worn the crown many times in the past. For Ursuline, it started in 1974 with the late, great coach Laura Capodanno. Bachmurski was one of the Raiders' aces, and she scored 20 points in their 54-23 victory over William Penn in the second girls state championship game played in Delaware. She led the Raiders to a repeat in '75, scoring a game-high 12 points in a 31-29 victory over Mount Pleasant.

"When you see how skilled the girls are today and how well they handle the ball and the kind of athletic plays they make, it's really amazing," said Bachmurski, who later played at Immaculata College. "The way boys played and the way girls played used to be completely different, and now it's the same game, except the boys play at the rim. But as far as basketball skills, there really isn't much difference now."

Bachmurski and other members of those early Ursuline and St. Elizabeth teams have stayed in touch with the game over the years -- Bachmurski was a referee for 30 years -- and they're thrilled with the progress they've seen. They're a little jealous, too.

"It boggles my mind to see how athletic the girls are today compared to when we played," said Mary Malone Reinhardt, who played on a St. Elizabeth team that reached four straight state title games in the early 1980s.

Reinhardt, who later played at Rhode Island, is assistant athletic director at Cecil Community College, so she's had an up-close look at how the girls game has evolved over the years.

"Especially in things like ballhandling, it's like night and day," she said. "Back in our day, you had maybe two or three girls who could handle the ball, and they were all small guards. Now, you have girls 5-[foot-]10 and 6-2 handling it like an NBA player."

That's mainly because girls today start playing at a much younger age, and there are many more opportunities for them to play and develop their individual skills.

"Today, they start playing when they're 4 years old, and we really didn't have organized basketball until we were in the fifth or sixth grade," Bachmurski said. "And we didn't have AAU ball or offseason programs or the kind of conditioning programs they have now. We had some very good athletes on our team, and I have to think that someone like Karen Conlin would have excelled in any era."

It's Dr. Karen Conlin now -- she's a dentist with a private practice in Brandywine Hundred. After graduating from Ursuline, Conlin went on to play four years at the University of Delaware. She admits she's envious of the opportunities girls have today.

"More than anything, it's been an acceptance of girls as athletes," Conlin said. "It's socially acceptable for girls to play sports these days, and they're even looked up to as role models. But when we were growing up, you were called a tomboy if you liked to play sports, and that kept a lot of girls from playing them.

"I think that's the biggest difference, because all of the other stuff -- AAU ball, the different training programs -- wouldn't be available if it wasn't for that acceptance."

Jen Russell Tetrick was a teammate of Reinhardt on those great St. E teams of the early '80s that were coached by Frank Aiello, and she regularly attends Vikings games now. She can't imagine what a player like St. Elizabeth's Khadijah Rushdan or Ursuline's Elena DelleDonne would have done against teams of her era.

"You look at the way we played the game and the way they play it, and it just makes you wonder what girls basketball will be like in another 25 years."

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