Glenbard East's Rebecca Deluca-Lane scores an IHSA first

Like other Glenbard East football parents, Colleen Lane was milling around in the tent behind the north end zone last Friday when there occurred something relatively ordinary yet totally unique.

The Rams completed a pass deep in East Aurora territory that was fumbled. The football bounced off an East Aurora player and was recovered in the end zone by another Ram for a Glenbard East touchdown.

That will happen. The player who scored is what made it special.

"When I heard the referee yell, ‘Let go of her!' I'm like, ‘I know that her. That's my kid,'" Lane said.

Her?

Yes. Her.

Senior Rebecca Deluca-Lane recovered that fumble in the end zone to record a touchdown. According to an unofficial state media survey conducted by Illinois High School Association assistant executive director Matt Troha, who also asked around the IHSA offices in Bloomington, it's the first known touchdown scored by a female varsity high school football player in Illinois. Read the story in the Daily Herald.

#GirlPolitics: Meet Political Activist Rebecca Sive

Rebecca Sive is Academic Director of the Women in Public Leadership Executive Education Program, Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she has taught classes on women in politics. She was among Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson's inaugural appointees to the Illinois Human Rights Commission, on which she served for eight years. She is a contributor to The Huffington Post and a speaker on women and politics. She is the author of "Every Day Is Election Day: A Woman's Guide to Winning Any Office from the PTA to the White House."

How and why did you become a political activist?

I was born in New York City and my parents were very political, but I went to college at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Do you remember Paul Wellstone [progressive Minnesota Senator from 1991 until his death in 2002]? He was my college advisor. That was an era when there was lots of campus political activity. The women's movement was getting going. One of the things Paul organized, along with colleagues at other schools, was an urban studies program in Chicago for people interested in urban affairs, political science and sociology. I came to Chicago for that program and fell in love with the city. The politics were endlessly fascinating.

 Read the entire interview in the Huffington Post.

Women Firsts in Illinois Government

In 1922, just two years after women were given the right to vote, Lottie Holman O'Neill was the first woman elected to the Illinois State legislature.  She continued to serve in the Illinois House and Senate for 40 years.

Two years later, in 1924, Florence Fifer Bohrer, daughter of Governor Fifer, was the first woman elected to the Illinois Senate.