Ivy League Sports

Coeducation began at Dartmouth in the fall of 1972 with the arrival of the first women students -- 250 freshmen and 130 exchange and transfer students. The intramural sports and intercollegiate athletic program in which they would participate was directed by Agnes Bixler Kurtz, who also taught racquet sports in the physical education department and coached field hockey, squash, and lacrosse. Based on findings from questionnaires and meetings with faculty and students, Kurtz decided that women in that first year would play field hockey in the fall, basketball and squash in the winter, and tennis and lacrosse in spring.

This first generation of Dartmouth women athletes had no trainer, no budget for uniforms, and a locker room accessible only through a back door in the parking lot. Yet these students and their coaches approached each new obstacle with considerable verve and courage. When the college’s first women’s intercollegiate team traveled to Keene (N.H.) State College in October 1972 to compete in its first field hockey match, five of its members were playing in the first game they had ever seen outside of practice. Dartmouth scored only one goal in its loss that day, but with little more than grit and determination, the team had embarked on what would become a competitive program. As in field hockey, nearly half the 13 women on the first lacrosse team had never played the game before, and four of the eight on the first gymnastics team had not competed previously.

Further constrained by a $2,500 budget (excluding coaching salaries), Kurtz wrote in her report that first year: “No one traveled by bus. Very few teams even ate, let alone at McDonald’s. The sole weekend trip had four people to a room. The members of the teams were provided with equipment, but had to buy their own uniforms.” Yet by the end of that academic year, women athletes -- though playing a limited schedule -- had compiled an overall 15-10 record, and the tennis team had produced an undefeated season, with victories over four opponents.

Notable improvements occurred in the second year. Full-time coaches were hired for tennis, basketball, and gymnastics, while crew, track and field, and swimming and diving were added. By the end of that year, Kurtz was promoted to assistant director of athletics and, with her rapidly expanding administrative duties, decided to relinquish her field hockey coaching responsibilities.

In each succeeding year throughout the decade, Dartmouth continued to improve facilities and other support and to add sports to the women’s options, thus increasing the number of women involved. Meanwhile, teams were compiling a respectable list of championships. The outdoor track and field team achieved a significant victory when, only two years after the program had started, it won the first Ivy championship in the sport, held at Cornell in 1977. At that event, Dartmouth’s Jill Eilertsen won the shot put, Kerstein Sonnerup the 880-yard run, and Joan Clements the 440-yard hurdles. Earlier in 1977, the ski team won the AIAW championship at Stowe, thus launching a proud, decorated tradition at both the NCAA and Olympic levels. And, despite its inauspicious beginnings, the field hockey team became dominant in the Ivy League, winning the sport’s first Ivy championship in 1979.

Other individual athletes marked significant victories in this decade. Sandy Helve, a player on that first field hockey team, became the first Dartmouth student, male or female, to win 11 varsity letters when she graduated in 1976 (the maximum number possible in a varsity career under Dartmouth’s academic calendar). Helve earned four letters each in field hockey and squash and three in lacrosse. Another squash player, Barbara Sands, was ranked second nationally by the Women’s Intercollegiate Squash Racquet Association (WISRA) by the end of the 1973-74 year. She was undefeated that year and placed second in the WISRA tournament. Crew member Judy Geer became the first Dartmouth woman named to a United States Olympic team when she was selected to row in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. And at the first Ivy League swimming and diving meet, held in 1977, freshman Maja Wessels won the 50-yard backstroke with a time of 29.681 seconds.

When Kurtz resigned her administrative position in 1979 to coach lacrosse and squash full-time, she could point with pride to her role in establishing the program. She had reviewed her goals in 1976:

The major concern in establishing an intercollegiate program has been and remains a program which gives students what they want and what they need. The design of the program has been to consider the interest factor of women on campus, and the specifics of a Dartmouth education, combined with knowledge of existing women’s programs on other campuses. … there has never been any intention of merely duplicating men’s athletics at Dartmouth. They have a fine program … but that does not mean the women would fit into the same niche.

Kurtz’s final annual report specified challenges that remained. Many coaches were still part-time and thus not readily available to students outside of practice, and the lone athletic trainer was overwhelmed with responsibility for all the women’s teams. And although attitudes, particularly among the men’s coaches, had become more positive, “it is not yet natural,” she wrote, “for some people to think of athletics as a coed term. It is still men’s athletics.” She closed by expressing her hope that someday “this barrier will be broken through completely.”