To Karen Rudolph, a team victory beats an individual gold medal anytime. In her new book, Sidelined No Longer: The Untold Story of Women’s College Sports, Karen tells the story of female athletic administrators and players who faced the “masculine domain” of intercollegiate sports in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Sex sterotyping, unfair conditions, and insults followed the women’s teams (who drove busses to events while male athletes flew.) The “women libbers,” as they were sometimes called, met challenge after challenge, determined to compete in the sports they loved while maintaining high ideals and goals. Those were the athletic leaders and players paving the way for the opportunities we see in women’s sports today.
Karen is one of those women. As a 16-year-old, she convinced her local school board to fund girls’ sports for the first time. Later, she played on a four-time state championship women’s softball team—followed by a career as a P.E. teacher and coach. Read her book—I think you’ll be impressed. I sure am!
Wow! What a great story! So inspiring; and I had no idea all that women had to endure just to play a sport. I never was athletic in that way, dance was my thing. I was pretty good at tennis during my p.e. class, though. Thank you, Karen, for your diligence and heart for women’s sports.
My Title IX racewalker friends tell me they weren’t allowed to drink water during workouts, and women’s races were constrained to short distances. Sexism and abuse were part of the culture. Even recently, women didn’t have equity in the Olympics; only men had the 50K Racewalk. That became the Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay (42K), so change is continuous.
I played all the sports available to girls in high school and was active in GAA, girls athletic association. As an adult I jogged on a daily basis until my knees presented problems. These days I walk a mile a day and do 30 exercises every morning. I believe an appreciation for women’s sports needs to be established at an early age. Congratulations, Karen, on your book!
I remember “the good old days” weren’t all that good for women. While every little girl dreamed of Prince Charming she also had to have some conflicting ideas about earning the admiration through being a beautiful, sweet, and subservient, Cinderella with the patience of a saint or perhaps dead waiting for the guy to tear through thorn thickets or scale towers by an impossibly long braid of hair. We definitely were ´benched’ from life. So emancipating to see women taking the spotlight in all aspects of life.