Ivy League Sports

Brown’s women’s athletics program in the 1990s was characterized by expanded schedules, national rankings, postseason play, and elevated criteria for success. Accomplishments ranged from the highly public — 27 Ivy League titles in 11 sports — to the distinctly personal, as basketball player Shonica Tunstall ’92 recalls:

To play on a team with 15 others who are motivated by their love of the game is bliss. To compete at a Division I level is ideal. To be part of an institution which for 200+ years has dedicated itself to higher learning is special. To be awarded all three opportunities is a dream come true. . . . I realize being part of this experience raised my expectations of who I want to become and how I want to contribute to this world.

The basketball program of which Tunstall was a part achieved notable success early in the decade, with teams taking the Ivy League titles in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, the team was Ivy co-champion with Dartmouth, and the two met in a playoff game at Harvard to determine which would receive the League’s first automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Led by the play of Martina Jerant, the dominant Ivy player of the time, and with the assistance of players like Kathy Hill and Michelle Pagliaro, Brown defeated Dartmouth, 72-62, and made its first appearance in the NCAA tournament.

The soccer team, coached by Phil Pincince, continued its remarkable run by winning a ninth straight League championship in 1990 with a victory over Dartmouth in a hard-fought, double-overtime game. After coming in second in 1991, the team repeated as Ivy champions in 1992 and won its 12th title in 14 years in 1994. That year, the Bears also notched their first win in an NCAA championship game, 2-1 against Ivy rival Dartmouth, since 1984. With the victory against the Big Green, Brown advanced to the quarterfinals of the Division I championship, losing to the University of Connecticut by a score of 1-0. Pincince called those players, who ended the 1994 season with a 12th League championship and ranked 12th in the nation, “the best team I had put together in my 18-year tenure at Brown.”

Pincince also had continued his head softball coaching duties at the beginning of the decade, leading the team to the Ivy League championship in 1990. Deb Carreiro succeeded Pincince as softball coach in 1993, when he turned to coaching soccer full-time, and her team claimed the Ivy title in 1997.

Prospects for ice hockey developed instantly in 1991 with the arrival of coach Margaret “Digit” Degidio-Murphy, a former standout player at Cornell who had won four varsity letters, earned All-Ivy honors four straight years, led her team to two League championships, and shared the inaugural Ivy League Player of the Year award in her sport with two other women in 1981. She immediately placed her stamp on the Brown program by changing the mascot from the historic “Panda” moniker to that of the Bears, in order to eliminate any differences between her team and the other sports at the school. The program improved each year under her guidance, and in 1994, when the team included five seniors — all of them her first recruits — Brown won the Ivy championship. One of the seniors, Chie-Chie Sakuma, a future Olympian, spoke for her classmates when she said, “Ever since we were freshmen, we’ve said, ‘This is the year.’ Finally, it happened.”

The ice hockey program went on to additional success later in the decade. The 1997 team — outscoring its opponents by a total score of 217-31 — won the Ivy League title and its third consecutive ECAC regular-season title with a perfect 22-0-0 record. In 1998, the squad toppled New Hampshire to become the first Ivy school to win an ECAC championship in tournament play. With that victory, the Bears received an automatic bid to the inaugural American Women’s College Hockey Alliance (AWCHA) national championship, where they beat Northeastern in the national semifinals before falling to New Hampshire in the championship game. Brown returned to the AWCHA championship the following year and finished in fourth place after narrow losses to eventual national champion Harvard and host Minnesota.

Brown also had important accomplishments in track and field. The 1993 team won its first outdoor Heptagonal title by scoring 187 points, a total that remains unsurpassed in the 23 years of the event. Outstanding individual performances in the record-setting meet came from Susan Smith in five events, including a hurdles victory for the fourth straight year; Kimani Paul-Emile, who won the 200-meter dash and finished second to Teri Smith in the 100-meter race; and Margaret Crumety, who won the long jump and placed second in the triple jump event. Overall during the decade, Brown won indoor titles in 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1999 and outdoor championships in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, and 1999.

In 1996, the crew claimed the “triple crown” of intercollegiate rowing for the first time in the program’s history by winning the Eastern Sprints, the IRA championship, and the National Collegiate Rowing Association championship. The NCRA victory marked the first national championship for the Brown crew and ended Princeton’s three-year dominance of the event. The following year, Brown finished third overall in the inaugural NCAA women’s rowing championship, and just two years later, on May 30, 1999, the varsity eight won the national championship in convincing fashion, pulling away from the crew from the University of Virginia. That victory propelled Brown into a tie with the Cavaliers for the overall team title, and when the Bears’ top varsity eight finish resulted in a favorable tiebreaker for Brown, the institution officially had secured the first NCAA championship of any kind in its men’s and women’s athletics history.

Senior Jen Boyd completed an outstanding collegiate swimming career at the 1990 NCAA swimming and diving championships. In addition to becoming the first Ivy League swimmer to earn All-America status in three events, Boyd’s performance earned Brown a 19th-place team finish: her second-place finishes in the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, and 100-yard butterfly races were the highest to date by an Ivy swimmer at the Division I championships. The swimming and diving team hosted the 1996 Eastern Women’s Swimming League (EWSL) championships, winning the event and then taking its second consecutive EWSL crown the following year. In 1998, the eight Ivy swimming and diving programs withdrew from the EWSL event and changed from the round-robin dual meet format employed since 1993 to an Ivy-only competition to determine the League champion. Brown continued its streak with victories in the Ivy championships in both 1998 and 1999.

When financial pressures required cutbacks early in the decade, the volleyball and gymnastics teams were reduced to club status in the spring of 1991. Both sports were reinstated, following a class action lawsuit filed against the school, alleging noncompliance with Title IX. In dramatic fashion, the volleyball team won the Ivy League title in 1996 and 1999, earning trips to the respective NCAA tournaments at Louisville and Hawaii.

Brown’s Olympic athletes of the period included ice hockey players Katie King and Tara Mounsey, who were members of the U.S. team that took the first-ever gold medal in the sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. King graduated in 1998 as a three-time Ivy Player of the Year in ice hockey, as well as being named Ivy Player of the Year in softball in 1996 and Pitcher of the Year in 1997. Mounsey, who has two years of eligibility remaining, is a two-time first team All-Ivy player and a former Ivy Rookie of the Year. Other Brown ice hockey players included in those Games were Becky Kellar, who was on the silver medal-winning Canadian team, and Chie-Chie Sakuma, who was on Japan’s squad. Swimmer Nikki Dryden competed for Canada in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; and sailor Kristina Farrar Stookey, basketball player Martina Jerant, and track and field competitor Susan Smith all competed in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — Stookey for the United States, Jerant for Canada, and Smith for the Republic of Ireland.