Tough Competition

Ivy League schools grappled with the introduction of women's sports during the early years of coeducation. Getting to the point where someone like Coach Kelly Blasius Knudsen '91 could lead her soccer team to the 1998 NCAA quarterfinals wasn't simple or easy.

A new book, Silver EraGolden Moments: A Celebrationof Ivy League Women's Athletics (Madison Books, $41.95; 187 pages), details the growth of women's sports in the Ivy League, which today sponsors more than 16 women's teams that attract 3,000 athletes annually. The book recaps athletic achievements by decade and in chapters on each school. The book highlights such poignant images as the photograph of Dartmouth's first women's basketball team and its coach, Doug Bate '73, a senior at the College. Silver Era also retells old stories that evoke the confusion and turmoil introduced by Title IX as the Ivy schools tried to balance student demands with budget and tradition. As many will recall, it was an era in which students were unabashed about questioning authority. In 1976, for instance, the Yale women's crew entered the office of the director of physical education, stripped and displayed the words "Title IX" they had written on their chests and backs in protest over the lack of showers in their locker room. Within 20 minutes TheNew York Times had the story. And the women got their showers.