SC Celebrates Half aCenturyof Women’sVarsityAthletics
50 HERE WE ARE AT Part one of a two-part series. By Marty Dobrow
It bEGIns, of coursE, wIth thE tunIc. As fashion statements go, the gray one-piece outfit that female
athletes at Springfield College wore in the early-mid 1960s was not terribly fashionable, nor particularly functional. “It was a one-piece that went over a blouse,” recalls legendary
Springfield College athlete and coach Dottie Potter Zenaty ’65 with cringing laughter. “You had bloomers that went underneath. It flowed like a skirt.” The tunic was at once a chain to the past and a key to the future.
It was the mandated outfit in physical education classes for women, often covered hastily by trench coats as students then dashed to academic classes, not wanting to be disciplined for violating the dress code of skirts. (“We couldn’t even wear slacks to football games,” Zenaty recalls.) In 1963-64, those dreary gray tunics doubled as uniforms for pioneer athletes in field hockey, basketball, softball, and tennis, which
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debuted as varsity sports for women at Springfield College. In a sense, it was just one small step for women on a campus that once was all male but had become fully coed in 1951. But in another, it was a giant leap toward living up to our finest values as an institution. You would be hard-pressed to find a more dramatic academic year
in Springfield College—or, arguably, even American—history than 1963-64. It was a year circumscribed by seismic events in the civil rights movement: the March on Washington on August 28 (attended by several members of the Springfield College community) and the signing of the landmark Civil Rights Bill on July 2. It was a year of shocking loss and vulnerability after that dark day in Dallas when President kennedy was slain. That loss was felt personally here on campus. kennedy had been a corporator of the College, as well as a graduation speaker in 1958. The graduation speaker that year in June 1964 was none other than Martin luther king Jr., sprung freshly from a jail cell in Florida, and arriving on campus to challenge and salute
TRIANGLE 1 Vol . 84, No.3
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