Ivy League Sports

A quarter of a century ago a lifelong dream came true for me. In an age when women were desperately struggling for recognition in the world of athletics, when the game of basketball for women was more highly recognized within the Amateur Athletic Union than within the colleges, when there was no recognition and very little attention paid to women playing sports, I had the great fortune to be the first woman to receive an athletic scholarship at UCLA. We had no trainer and we practiced in a secondary gym next to Pauley Pavilion, but I was thrilled nevertheless to have the opportunity to represent a great institution, with a rich basketball history for men, on the court.

At the same time, a continent away, dreams of the same sort were coming to fruition as the women of the Ivy League struggled to place their athletic imprint on a century-old rich history, written to that point almost exclusively by their male counterparts. This book is their story — a story about how the women of the Ivy League helped to forge a pathway, fraught with challenges along the way, but which now provides an open thruway for today’s women to navigate toward almost any athletic goal that they choose.

Much has changed for women athletes during the past 25 years. The growth of sports opportunities for both girls and women is today far beyond what was available to me as a youngster. However, growing up in a large family as one of 11 children taught me from an early age that competition was key to survival. Playing with my brothers and sisters, learning to stand up for myself and how to win and to lose, was a natural part of my daily life. I aspired to have in sport what my brothers had. My teachers would say that playing football or basketball with the boys was too rough and not lady-like, especially when they observed me wearing shorts under my skirts to school, but, with the support of my parents, I played with the boys anyway in the after-school sports programs.

By the time I reached high school I was playing seven different sports and dreaming of becoming an Olympian. Amazingly, after an incredible experience at UCLA, the Olympic dream and a brief chance to play with the pros, both women and men, both became reality for me. I owe these successes to the support and dynamics of my family which provided a context for me to achieve athletically, despite the odds. My mother never missed a game of any of her 11 children, and my siblings were always there for me as role models and fans.

As a mother and sports commentator today, I can now better appreciate the values that I learned from my sports participation and the balance that those pursuits lent to my life. My three children are as actively engaged in sports activities as I was — only their opportunities are now socially accepted and based in school and community programs. The values that my parents and athletics taught me are what I am attempting to instill in my own children. Ironically, instead of fighting for more sports opportunities for my children, I find myself working to help them achieve a balance in their lives as they are now pushed by society to specialize and spend inordinate amounts of time in their sport. So much has changed in 25 years.

I believe that as a society we currently stand at a crossroads in terms of the professionalization of all levels of sports including age group kids programs on through collegiate athletics. I applaud the Ivy League for its courage historically to strive for athletic success while preserving the goals of achieving first and foremost a college education. For over 40 years the Ivy League has provided a model for the rest of college athletics; this year again it has established a milestone for institutions around the country to emulate. Celebrating 25 years of Ivy women’s championships and marking it with the publication of this book truly are inspirations for all of us. I am honored to have been asked to write the foreword for Silver Era, Golden Moments, and I salute the early Ivy pioneers who seized an opportunity at the beginning of an incredible movement that today offers our daughters untold possibilities. As Ivy women athletes continue to make headlines, I only hope that I have the opportunity to continue to cover their remarkable successes for another 25 years.