05/2/08
Recruiting rostersWhen Congress passed Title IX, athletes were already playing intramural sports at Baker, but intercollegiate play for women, as it’s known today, started with the ambition of two Baker students.
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“I was sitting in my office when two Phi Mu (sorority members) walked in,” Askew said. “One was Kathy Kochersperger, the other was Janet Moore. Those two women started the tennis team. They asked me, ‘Why don’t you come out in the afternoon and let’s play some tennis?’ So, it evolved into a team.”
The year was 1971 and Baker was taking a step to provide women with an opportunity to participate in sports.
“I think the bowling team already existed, but that was all there was,” Kochersperger said. “We weren’t denied, just nothing was available.”
Askew had been coaching the tennis team for four years when Baker, feeling the need to keep up with the trends in women’s athletics, started its first intercollegiate volleyball team. Askew would be the coach of the 1975 team. She coached the two teams simultaneously for years until Irick took over the tennis team.
The same year, Baker University President Dr. Jerald C. Walker announced Baker would drop its men’s track and field program in lieu of a women’s basketball team the next year. The university felt it was necessary to lower men’s numbers in order to balance the women’s numbers.
“Never has Title IX ever asked anybody to do away with a male sport for a female sport,” Askew said.
Shortly after, the track and field program was reinstated when $10,000 was donated for that purpose. This time, however, women would be on the team.
Baker named Emmalie Polen, a 1961 Baker graduate, head coach of the women’s basketball team. Baker was the last team in the Heart of America Athletic Conference to add basketball to the women’s sports lineup.
“I had to recruit the players; there was no team of course,” Polen said. “I found players and developed a schedule.”
After coaching basketball for a season, Polen found many of the top basketball players were also strong in softball. In February 1977, Baker University officials announced the addition of a softball team with tryouts beginning March 1.
“I did basketball for two years, but then I decided I didn’t have time to recruit for softball, so I just did softball,” Polen said.
Recruiting presented a challenge for softball, as it did other sports that lacked adequate facilities.
Balancing budgetsAlthough Baker was getting closer to equality among athletes in terms of the number of sports available in the 1970s, the resources available to each team were lopsided.
“I don’t think (the tennis team) had uniforms,” Kochersperger said. “There may have been a difference there; the boys had uniforms, and the girls didn’t.”
A player’s father funded the softball team’s uniforms.
“I can remember with softball we intentionally patterned our uniform pants to match the basketball and volleyball jerseys,” Polen said.
Travel budgets were also minimal for women’s teams. Askew and her players recalled traveling to competitions in Askew’s personal vehicle.
“We’d hop in my little car and go places and play,” she said. “We would play anyone who would play us.”
Kochersperger remembered team car rides as anything but comfortable.
“I remember piling six people in the car and then trying to peel everyone out when we got to where we were playing and having to work the kinks out of our muscles,” she said.
However, the close quarters provided fun that unified the team.
“As far as trips, we sang a lot and were really noisy,” Martha Harris, former tennis player and current professor of business and economics, said. “We used our tennis rackets as guitars and had contests.”
Coaches were concerned with academics as well as team performance.
“I can always remember Miss Askew leaving the light on in the middle of the night when she was driving so we could study,” Kochersperger said. “She was just as worried to take care of us academically as well as providing us with the skills we need to play.”
Nadia DeMuro, a 1979 Baker graduate, played both tennis and volleyball under Askew’s direction. She remembered her coach as the “jack of all trades.”
“She has a heart bigger than the state of Texas,” DeMuro said. “She’s a great person.”
Polen tried to recruit players with strong academics.
“One year they said the women’s softball team’s recruiting call had the highest GPA of any team,” she boasted. “Enjoying seeing most of the students graduate was important (to me) as well.”
Financing women’s teams was a constant battle remembered by players and coaches alike.
Polen remembered raising money for her teams with the help of alumni.
Harris remembered the team having to pay for its own meals when traveling, while Askew said travel expenses were rarely reimbursed.
“We had a budget, which was falsified in some ways,” Askew said. “I hate to say that, but when I read the budget, they had my salary put as $10,000, which I never saw one red cent of.”
Awarding athletesIn the mid-1970s, scholarships and participation awards for women athletes signified that Title IX had arrived.
“When I was (at Baker) as a student, we didn’t have opportunities to receive scholarships as the men did,” Polen said. “When Title IX occurred, the institution began to award scholarships to women.”
DeMuro was awarded the first women’s athletic scholarship at Baker for the sport of tennis in 1974.
DeMuro, who moved to Belton, Mo., from Washington, D.C., as a high school senior, had her mind set on playing tennis on the East coast. After she received notice that the tennis team she was going to play for had been disbanded, she turned to Baker, which had approached DeMuro with a scholarship offer.
“All I wanted to do was play tennis,” she said. “I had all my stuff sent back east where I was from, and then I realized they didn’t have a tennis team; it had been disbanded. Somehow Baker got my name and kept offering me a scholarship.”
DeMuro said she didn’t feel the impact of the scholarship until she started playing.
“It never really affected me. I don’t let that stuff go to my head,” she said. “Sports are sports. I’m just really glad I played. I think there are some great life lessons in sports, but they’re sports.”
Supporting sportsAlthough inequality existed in many aspects of Baker’s athletics, the women’s teams gained the support of the men’s teams.
“I felt like, that for the most part, the male coaches at the time were very supportive of the women,” Polen said.
She added that Charlie Richard, former football coach, was instrumental in getting a playing diamond for the softball team.
While discrimination may have been present at other universities, Polen said she didn’t feel that way at Baker.
“We had guys who would come and support us and cheer for us,” Polen said.
Title IX opened many doors for female athletes. In one decade alone, five women’s sports teams were added to Baker’s athletic roster. The list has grown since then with the addition of women’s soccer, golf, indoor track, cross country, cheer and dance.
“I think it’s probably getting closer. Women have more opportunities even from an earlier age than we did,” Kochersperger said. “But that’s OK, I’m glad to have been a pioneer.”