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Closing the gender gap important to ex-Illini coach Ellis

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

As a schoolgirl growing up in southern England, Jill Ellis couldn't play competitive soccer.

It wasn't that girls weren't allowed. It was just that, given the attitudes of the 1970s, no one had thought to organize teams for them.

It wasn't ladylike, Ellis' mother, Margaret, once explained.

That changed when Ellis moved with her family to Virginia as a teenager, where she not only joined her high school's team but led it to a state title.

The victory was just a partial one, though, because, decades later, Ellis is still hemmed in by societal norms.