An Illinois girls basketball team has made its way to the top in an all-boys league, and as the wins stack up, they are also gaining national media attention for their success.
The Illinois Central Xpress is a team of nine girls aged 10 and 11 years old based in Springfield. They are the only all-girl team in the intramural league, and they've been playing together for four years. They were featured in a story on the Today show on Tuesday, just two days after the New York Times ran a profile on them.
Most of the time these girls beat the boys, as evidenced by their current record of 8-2 this season.
The team's coach, Tariq Toran, prepares the girls for games the same way he prepares men's teams, he told Today.
"I just wanted to teach them the right way to play basketball," Toran was quoted on Today. "Not the separation from girls versus boys, just basketball being played in its purest form, and that's the correct way."
Toran is also an assistant coach for the men's basketball team at Benedictine University at Springfield. He also used to be the assistant coach for the Springfield Xpress, a semi-pro men's team, during the 2010-2012 seasons. His own daughter Kaleah, who is 10 years old, is on the Illinois Central Xpress team, according to Today.
His coaching technique has won the team many games, but it has also shaken up the league's other players as the boys must accept defeat by the girls, who say some of their male opponents take it pretty hard.
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"After we beat them, some of the boys cried," Anne Rupnik, the team's point guard, told Today.
