Ivy League Sports

A turning point in the history of Radcliffe athletics occurred in the early 1970s, when responsibility for its administration was transferred to the Harvard Department of Athletics for what seems to have been two primary reasons. First, Harvard was looking ahead to future coeducation, by merging Harvard and Radcliffe admissions from 1973 to 1975, and hoped to benefit from Radcliffe’s experience with women’s programs. Second, Radcliffe — spurred by student interest — wanted to offer its women a more comprehensive intercollegiate sports program, but lacked the resources and facilities required. Consequently, Mary Paget, coordinator of sports, dance, and recreation at Radcliffe, persuaded the college’s Trustee Executive Committee to expand sport opportunities. The transition to Harvard’s administration of women’s athletics occurred by the 1972-73 academic year, and Paget continued her Radcliffe position half-time while also serving as assistant to the director of the Harvard Department of Athletics.

Indeed, scheduling seemed the part of program administration that Radcliffe most wanted Harvard to handle. In her 1974 report on “Athletic Opportunities for Women at Harvard and Radcliffe,” assistant dean of freshmen Susan W. Lewis explained:

Given the uncertain nature of women’s intercollegiate scheduling (in which postponed games are always a possibility and outside Radcliffe’s control), the administration of women’s intercollegiate sport is logistically complex. The situation is further complicated by the fact that scheduling (of competitions and practice) has to be arranged around the competitions of the men’s varsities which are scheduled many years in advance.

Coordinating the ever-increasing practices and competitive events in limited facilities was, she said, “the most difficult issue posed by the development of a serious competitive women’s program.” Lewis’s conclusion states an enduring theme in collegiate women’s athletics:

The most important contribution that a university … can make to the area of women’s sports is an unwavering commitment to the principle of equality for women in athletics through the creation of an environment sympathetic and responsive to the aspirations and needs of women in sports. Merger in athletics should not represent imposition of one system upon an additional group of people, but a genuine cooperative effort to blend two systems to create the most beneficial and economical environment for all.

The next year, Harvard President Derek Bok, a strong advocate of equitable programs for women, announced a major long-range plan for the entire athletics program, including a $17 million building plan to renovate buildings at Soldiers Field Athletic Complex and construct 250,000 square feet of new facilities. The catalyst for this project, reported in News & Views: Harvard Sports Review, was “increased female involvement, plus the rapid growth of recreational participation by undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and employees.” On May 15, 1976, ground-breaking ceremonies inaugurated the “Sport for All” project. The plan represented “a significant financial commitment to participatory athletics as opposed to the priority status traditionally accorded revenue-producing intercollegiate facilities which benefit only a select number of student-athletes.”

Concurrent with the building program, other changes were taking place. A December 1975 progress report included such improvements for women’s athletics as locker rooms and exclusive use of two of the six lanes in the Olympic-sized pool in the Indoor Athletic Building, a tennis court building, squash facilities, better practice schedules, more experienced and better-paid coaches, preseason training for the field hockey team, and winter and spring break trips for the tennis, lacrosse, and swimming teams. Just as important, one student noted in the 1976 sports yearbook, was “a change in the attitude toward women’s intercollegiate competition, not only in coaches and the Department of Athletics, but more fundamentally in the way the women themselves view the program.”

In 1978, Jack Reardon, the newly appointed director of athletics, reported that phase one of the construction project had made it possible for women to benefit from new locker, team, and visiting team rooms to accommodate a program that had grown to 13 sports. Both men and women enjoyed new indoor track and field and tennis facilities, as well as a new state-of-the-art aquatic facility that tripled the available water space.

These facilities improvements benefited women athletes who had started to attain significant accomplishments following the initiation of the Harvard-Radcliffe program. In 1973, Betsy Inskeep became the first woman athlete to earn an “H,” as a member of the Harvard varsity rifle team. Also that year, Radcliffe rowers claimed the U.S. Women’s Open Championship and thus earned the opportunity to represent the United States at the world championships in Moscow. The next year, the crew won the first official Ivy League championship in a women’s sport, with its victory in the Eastern Association of Women’s Rowing Colleges’ Regatta in Middletown, Connecticut. The crew is the only Harvard team still to use the Radcliffe name after the merger of Harvard and Radcliffe admissions, as determined by vote of the rowers in 1976.

As the decade passed, individual and team honors mounted. Harvard’s runners won the first Ivy League cross country championship, held in the fall of 1977. Anne Sullivan led all runners with a time of 17.41. The 1978 women’s soccer team also won the first Ivy League championship in that sport and repeated as champions in 1979.