Blue White Illustrated

training program, and in the fall of 1926, the team became the first one to compete against other colleges. Riflery is still con- sidered the first official women's varsity sport. However, it was classified in school records as a "minor sport," and the athletic department interpreted minor sports as being a level below full varsity status. The early riflery teams rarely traveled, instead using the telegraph to trade scores with opponents. In 1935, Dorothy "Dot" Anderson became first woman to earn a varsity letter. An- derson had transferred from Carnegie Tech, and Penn State's tennis coach, Harry Stover, put her on his team after a tryout. She won six of her seven matches that season, her only year on the team. Nineteen thirty-eight was a milestone for the 1,150 women attending Penn State. (By comparison, male enrollment was about 6,570.) In May, the Women's Athletic Association was reorganized, expanded and renamed the Women's Recreation As- sociation. The WRA, as it became known, was run by the students and included in- tramurals and club sports like badminton and fencing. There were also social ac- tivities, such as bicycle trips, hikes and overnight cabin parties on Tussey Moun- tain. When the women returned for classes in September, they had their own new ac- tivities and sports building. It was called Mary Beaver White Recreation Hall but would later come to be known simply as the White Building. The facility included a gymnasium, swimming pool, bowling alleys and a rifle range. Through the late 1930s and into the '50s, many of the WRA clubs were primarily sports teams with intramural competition built around what became formally known as "play days." In the modern era, it's hard not to laugh at the name, and Durant and Adams smiled when they related the evo- lution from the early play days to varsity sports. "I was hired full-time as a teacher in 1956 and I became the advisor to the Women's Recreation Associ- ation," Durant said. "It had two facets: intramurals and club ac- tivities. Each club team, like bas- ketball and fencing, had its own advisor, but [that person] wasn't exactly a coach. "Play days were special. We would have intramural competi- tion on campus and then we would take our teams to Wilson College [in Chambersburg] or other col- leges. But we wouldn't compete against each other as a Penn State team against another school. We would take two girls from Penn State and two from other schools and form teams that would have informal competition. It was more social than anything." In the early 1960s, play days transformed into occasional "sports days" in which some Penn State WRA club teams scrim- maged against other college teams with the faculty advisors as coaches. "The Women's Recreation Association was funded out of student funds," Adams re- called, "but the student funds office would This year, Penn State is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its pioneering varsity athletics program for women. Contributing writer Lou Prato tells how it all began in the spring of 1964 and about the foresight of the women and men who made it happen. lmost a decade before the historic law Title IX was implemented in 1972, forcing colleges and uni- versities that used federal funds to allow women to play varsity sports, Penn State had its first intercolle- giate women's varsity program. However, women's sports were so in- significant on most college campuses be- fore Title IX that when Penn State's first varsity women's teams – field hockey and golf –began in the 1964-65 academic year, only a few of the school's top athletic of- ficials knew it. One year later, Penn State was also field- ing women's varsity teams in basketball, fencing, gymnastics, lacrosse, riflery, soft- ball and tennis. Bowling in 1968 and swim- ming and diving in 1970 made it 12 varsity teams before the enactment of Title IX, with track and cross country added in 1975 and volleyball in the next season. "We had nine teams ready to compete in 1964, but we couldn't find enough teams to play us," Della Durant told me a few years ago. Durant, who died this past August, was in charge of that pioneering women's varsity program and held the bizarre title of director of extramural sports for women. Durant reported to Martha Adams, the chairperson of the Women's Physical Ed- ucation Department. They were the leading figures in achieving varsity status for Penn State's women and then helped lead a na- tionwide struggle for acceptance by the NCAA. "In that first year, our golf team com- peted once against Bucknell and twice against the women in the Centre Hills Country Club because some of the other schools didn't have teams available," Du- rant said. That Bucknell golf match was on May 5, 1965, with Penn State winning, 4-0. The field hockey team's first game had been months earlier, a victory over Susquehanna at the women's athletic field on Oct. 13. Coached by another professor, Pat Seni, the team went on to defeat Bucknell and Lock Haven at home and Juniata away and then competed in the annual Susquehanna Field Hockey Association Tournament, which included intercollegiate club teams. How Penn State women reached that point is an intriguing story that is a mi- crocosm of the women's rights movement of the 20th century, and the effort would not have succeeded as quickly as it did without the full support of two enlightened university male administrators. Informal competition among Penn State women in various sports had been going on since the turn of the 20th century when fewer than a dozen females were enrolled. Photographs from the early 1900s show women playing basketball in the college's all-purpose activity building named the Armory. In 1919, women's sports were formally organized within a new Women's Athletic Association that was supervised by faculty and students. Five years later, a women's riflery team was started as part of the college's military H I S T O R Y Penn State was at the forefront of the women's sports movement A AHEAD OF THE GAME Penn State University Archives ENDURANCE RACE Women's sports at Penn State began with informal competitions that in- cluded footraces (above) and other sports. By the mid-1960s, intramurals and club sports had given rise to varsity programs for women, includ- ing golf, field hockey and lacrosse (right). Penn State University Archives

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