Ivy League Sports

Fifty years ago last fall, I became a freshman at Penn, and it seems like yesterday. Athletes are notorious for remembering and talking about “the play,” “the game,” “the rivalries,” “the season.” Perhaps this is because every athlete focuses her entire being — her talents, skills, mind, body — to each task, practice, game, or match and that intensity indelibly imprints those moments in memory. In my 50 years of Ivy involvement, first participating, then watching and cheering for Penn’s women athletes, I have seen this focus, this total commitment, reveal itself as the common bond among Penn’s women athletes and their Ivy counterparts, from team to team, class to class, and generation to generation. Dedication, courage, teamwork loyalty, self-reliance, integrity, directness of purpose: these qualities embraced and shared by wearers of the Red and Blue, and by women athletes everywhere, became the foundation for progress in all of women’s athletics over the past 80 years.

Earlier in this century, athletic participation by young women was discouraged, frowned upon, and considered socially suspect. Society erected myths about the dangers of athletic activities for women and pronounced woman’s role to be spectator only. Not every family agreed. While I was still quite young, my grandfather (Yale 1892) gave me insistent encouragement in areas academic, while my father (Penn 1927) was my champion, chief supporter, and teacher in areas athletic (even though I had two brothers). Later when I was at Penn, my future husband (Penn Law 1951) spent many hours helping me to become a better athlete. All those expected me to be the very best I could be as student, athlete, and person — a pursuer of excellence. What made them unique is that they encouraged and supported me in ways that, for their generations, were usually reserved for sons and grandsons. My own family continues to hold that philosophy.

My daughter Cindy (Princeton 1982) has been able to pursue athletic opportunities that were never open to me. The preparation to take advantage of any opportunities that did come to her and to me came from family members who, from the beginning, expected, encouraged, and enabled us to participate. Today, as mother and daughter Ivy athletes, Cindy and I share that special bond of having played varsity basketball and softball in two different generations and we share the Ivy imperative. In 1995, we donated the Johnson-Crowley Ivy League Softball Team Championship Trophy to honor the Ivy League and the three family members who made our Ivy careers possible. We believe, as they did, that every young woman who wishes to, should be able to pursue an athletic career just as far as her talent and desire will take her. And we believe the opportunities must exist for them to do that.

We have come a long way from the Dark Ages of women’s athletics. Those were the years of navy blue wool serge tunic uniforms shared by the field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse teams according to season. We wore our own blue shorts and white shirts for softball, and supplied our own tennis “whites.” We bought our own hockey, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, and softball shoes; we used our own golf balls and clubs, softball gloves, hockey sticks, tennis racquets; we rode in school buses made for children or caught rides with teammates to the campuses of away games. We loved every difficult moment of it. We played for the love and challenge of the sport, for the pride of playing for Penn, and we dismissed the hardships as part of the game. It never occurred to any of us to quit, not even the lowliest scrub on the team. What we lacked in facilities and equipment we made up for in skill, determination, team spirit, and winning seasons. Fifty years later the spirit of those competitions is an unbreakable bond among team members, though we seldom see each other except at reunions. The positive experiences at Penn so far outweighed any negatives that it is hard for me to recall anything but productive, happy times. I am continually grateful to my professors, coaches, classmates, and teammates for the sound education, academic and athletic, that became the foundation and never-ending resource of my life.

Fifty years ago, as athletes we knew we could perform as today’s women athletes do, if just given the opportunities and facilities. Today, we watch these fine young women live out our dreams as we cheer noisily from the sidelines. I pray they know how truly blessed they are. Never would I give up what I had as a Penn student athlete — for we were pathfinders, as is each generation for the next, and that is a noble calling in itself. Yet even now, a still, small voice whispers, “What might have been.” Immediately another voice quietly commands, “You create what is to come.”