Philadelphia Boy Redefines `Skirting The Issue' -- Field-Hockey Garb Sparks Debate

PHILADELPHIA - The Central High School girls' field-hockey team trots onto the turf, feet jog-jog-jogging, ponytails swinging. Hockey sticks are clicking against the ball when, suddenly, shouts erupt from a small gauntlet of teenage boys hanging on the fringes of the field behind Roxborough High.

"Duuu-uuude in a skirt!"

"Yo! They got a dude playing field hockey!"

"I'm gonna beat that boy up!"

The object of their derision, 17-year-old George Zameska, hoists his shoulders in a determined shrug of indifference. He is the first and only male to play on a girls' field-hockey team in the School District of Philadelphia.

He is, unmistakably, the dude in a skirt.

"I just put it on and take it off," Zameska says resignedly of the skirt, a maroon, kilt-like affair with a slit in the front. "This is the toughest part of the whole thing."

On an autumn-gold afternoon, No. 28 is sitting out much of the first half. He lounges on the grassy sideline and stretches his knee-socked legs, as the girls from Central begin their game against Roxborough. He has close-cropped brown hair, piercing blue eyes, a strong jaw, a lanky but forceful build. In short, utterly guy-like.

Except for the getup.

The international rules for field hockey say: You play the game, you wear the uniform. Zameska wears the uniform with his white polo shirt pulled as long as it will go over the pleats. Sometimes he has waited until the last minute, after the starting whistle has blown, to suit up.

Even so, it takes a tough hide. Unless you're Scottish or Mel Gibson - and Zameska is neither.

"I don't think I'd be able to put up with it," says Bob Dintino, one of the team's three male managers, referring to the hecklers who often greet Zameska at other schools.

Of the abuse he must endure, Zameska is nothing if not understanding. "I'd be the first one out there doing the same thing," he says.

Had Central's football coach beckoned Zameska with open arms and promised to make him a star last year, history might have been different. Had the school district been rolling in enough dough to offer a plethora of sports at a variety of skill levels, that might have made a difference, too.

Alas, neither happened. So Zameska took action.

A junior at the time, he wanted to play a sport. Besides the fun, it would look good on a college application. Football was a bust. So what would be better, he reasoned, than to get involved in a sport not unlike the street hockey he so loved as a kid?

"I grew up with a hockey stick in my hands," says Zameska.

But the hockey team was a female stronghold. Zameska, an earthy kind of guy who doesn't speak in sound bites, wasn't looking to be a poster boy for a cause. He just wanted to play.

In these times of enlightened gender-bending, where girls play in Little League, and boys dress up as girls and make mucho bucks in the movies, there has been precedent in Philadelphia the other way. Robin Selbst became the first female to play on a city high-school football team five years ago when she kicked as backup for the Washington Eagles. Girls in Philadelphia have also wrestled on boys' wrestling teams.

In general, attorneys say, courts have been more permissive about girls playing on boys' teams than the other way around.

After studying case law, the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment and other state and federal regulations, school district lawyers felt "it was appropriate" to let a boy play field hockey.

And so, last fall, Zameska donned the maroon skirt of the fighting Lancers.

It has not been easy on anyone - least of all, himself.

The taunts aren't the half of it. Referees are tough on him. He doesn't get to play as much as he'd like to, and often isn't called into the starting lineup.

His coach, Janice Evans, says she feels like she's been put "between a rock and a hard place." Imagine:

If she plays Zameska a lot, and he plays well, and the team wins, people will say Central won because there was a guy on the team. Moreover, some girls might get upset because they didn't get to play. And what are they going to do? Play football?

On the other hand, if she doesn't play Zameska, she's depriving him of an opportunity and possibly hurting the team.

On top of that, there is the ambivalence of some of Zameska's teammates about having a guy in their midst.

Not that they don't like George.

"George is great. He encourages us," says Nakia Merriweather, 16.

"George is an excellent player," adds Shayla Person, 16.

Last year, Zameska scored a goal at a critical time during a playoff game. "Some don't like to admit it," he says, "but I'm pretty good."

But to some of the girls, his presence is an eternal reminder of the proposition that all men and women are not created equal.

When Zameska scored a goal recently in a scrimmage against Northeast High School, he got out of position to go after the ball.

"He does a lot of guy things," one of his teammates said ruefully.

Cory Caswell, senior co-captain, is careful to explain that her reservations about a guy on the team have nothing to do with George personally. "Since this is the rule, we think he should be treated fairly. . . . I think he should have an opportunity to play field hockey," she says.

Deborah Cornine, the other senior co-captain, agrees - notwithstanding the fact that she is a member of the Central boys' wrestling team.

That's different, she contends, because she is the one at a disadvantage in wrestling, the one who has to work harder. Besides, wrestlers are classified by weight, which presumably evens up the odds.

Zameska says that if the field hockey team were made up only of guys, the game would be "a little rougher, a little faster. There'd be a lot more injuries. A little more showboating. More fighting, too."

Like in the game against Roxborough. As the Central players tell it, one of the Roxborough girls started trash-talking about Zameska, right out on the field. A Lancer tried to stop her, but when the war of words escalated, Zameska entered the fray. A Roxborough player went after him, and cuffed him.

No one got hurt. Central won the game.

At the end, Zameska quickly unhooked his skirt. He slid jeans over the black cotton track shorts he had been wearing underneath the skirt. As the girls climbed onto the yellow school bus, Zameska trudged toward them - just another guy, gym bag in hand, ready to go home.

Next spring, he said, he's going to play golf.