Ivy League Sports

Ivy League Women’s History Timeline• The Eastern Association of Women's rowing collegesholds its first regatta. Charter members Barnard,Princeton and Radcliffe participate. Princeton wins theinaugural race, while Radcliffe finishes in second place.• Lawrie Mifflin graduates in Yale's first class to admitwomen as freshmen. Responsible for the promotion of thefield hockey squad to varsity status, Mifflin goes on tobecome one of the first woman sportswriters for the NewYork Daily News and The New York Times, and is the firstIvy League woman to be honored with an NCAA SilverAnniversary Award in 1998.• Radcliffe claims the first official Ivy League championshipin a women's sports, winning the EAWRC Regattain Middletown, Conn.• Three years after Pembroke and Brown unify theirathletic programs, a merger between Radcliffe andHarvard results in the Harvard Department of Athleticsassuming complete administration of women's athletics oncampus. Only the rowing team retains the Radcliffe name,by a vote of the team members.• Princeton wins the first Ivy League title in basketball.The following season, the Tigers win their second of fourconsecutive crowns, and advance to the National SmallCollege Basketball Tournament.• For the first time in history, women are eligible toreceive Rhodes Scholarships. Three varsity letterwinnersare selected among theh 13 women in the inauguralclass, and all three are from Ivy League institutions: AlisonMuscatine and Denise Thal, who both play basketball andtennis at Harvard-Radcliffe, and Princeton field hockeyplayer Suzanne Perles.• Dartmouth's Sandy Helve graduates with a combined11 varsity letters in field hockey, squash and lacrosse, themaximum number possible at the college. EmilyGoodfellow collects 12 letters in field hockey, squash andlacrosse during her four years at Princeton.• Cornell wins the first Ivy league championship in icehockey, also the first title to be awarded in tournamentplay. The Red strings five straight outright titles together,then shares the sixth crown with Brown in 1981.• Yale crew members stage a "Strip-In" in Director ofPhysical Education Joni Barnett's office. Protesting thelack of facilities for women rowers, about 20 team membersstrip off their sweats to reveal "Title IX" paintedacross their bare bodies; the event receives nationalattention and produces an increase in resouces.• Princeton track star Jill Pilgrim became the firstAfrican-American woman to be a Heptagonal Games firstteamperformer and the first black woman in League historyin any sport to be named to first team.• Dartmouth wins the first Ivy League outdoor track andfield championship in a competition held at Cornell. Thatfall, Harvard captures the inaugural Ivy league crown incross country, and Penn wins the first Ivy League volleyballchampionship.• Princeton wins the first Ivy league swimming and divingchampionship, held at the University of Pennsylvania.The format for the championship remains the same until1982, when other schools are added and the EasternWomen's Swimming League Championship begins. IvyLeague schools compete in the EWSLs from 1983through 1997, before the Ivy-only format is restored forthe 1998 championship.• Yale wins the first Ivy League title in gymnastics. TheBulldogs take seven of the next 12 crowns, while Cornellwins the other five, until Brown notches its first title in thefinal Ivy championship in 1990. Beginning the followingyear, there is one fewer gymnastics team than Leaguerules require to declare an official Ivy champion• The Ivy League honors a women's soccer championfor the first time. Harvard wins the title, awarded in tournamentplay, with a 3-0 victory at second-place Brown.• The fall season includes the initial Ivy League crownawarded in field hockey, won by Dartmouth. In a littlemore than five years, the Ivy League has created championshipsin 10 women's sports.• Dartmouth wins its first League basketball title, startinga streak of four straight outright championships thatproduces the League's first appearance in the NCAA tournamentin 1983. The Big Green has won or shared 11League basketball titles, the most of any school.• Three spring sports -- lacrosse, softball and tennis --award Ivy League championships for the first time. Yalewins the softball title outright and shares the lacrosse andtennis crowns with Penn and Princeton, respectively.• Indoor track and field is added as a distinct sport witha separate Ivy League championship. Princeton wins thefirst title.• Yale captures the initial Ivy League crown in fencing,the 15th Ivy women's championship sport, and wins theAIAW national title. The Bulldogs' Andrea Metkus wins theindividual crown at the same competition and is honoredwith the Broderick Award in fencing, awarded annually tothe top performer.• Dartmouth basketball star Gail Koziara, three-time IvyPlayer of the Year and the League's second-leading scorer,becomes the first woman in League history to earn anNCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.• Brown wins its second League soccer crown in thesport's five-year history. This is the first of Brown's nineconsecutive triumphs, which produce four NCAA tournamentinvitaitons and quarterfinal appearances in 1983 and1984.• Princeton Associate Athletic Director Merrily DeanBaker ends her term as the final president of the AIAW,which loses a lawsuit to prevent the NCAA from governingintercollegiate women's athletics.• Ivy League soccer and basketball championships arechanged from tournament play to a full round-robin schedule(double round-robin for basketball). The ice hockeytitle is changed in the same manner the following season.• Nine years after Radcliffe's victory at the EAWRCRegatta marks the beginning of women's Ivy League athleticchampionships, Yale wins the first League title insquash, the 16th sport to award an Ivy crown.• Penn begins a string of six consecutive Ivy fencingchampionships, winning the NCAA title in 1986.• Cindy Cohen becomes head coach of the Princetonsoftball program after its first Ivy title in 1983 and leadsthe Tigers to 11 of the next 13 Ivy League crowns.• Princeton ice hockey defenseman Syrena Carlbomwins her third straight Ivy Player of the Year award in thefirst three years of the award's existence.• Kate Wiley of Harvard becomes the first -- and stillremains the only -- three-time winner of the HeptagonalCross Country Championships.• he Ivy League sponsors more sports, played by morewomen and more men, than any conference in the country,and the Council of Ivy Group Presidents begins a continuingpattern of increases in Ivy League Office resoucesto support these activities.• Yale wins its second straight NCAA championship inwomen's fencing, and Ivy League athletes take three ofthe four top spots in the individual competition, led bychampion Caitlin Bilodeaux of Columbia.• Columbia advances to the NCAA Division III NaitonalBasketball Tournament in the first year after the Columbia-Barnard consortium is formalized for all sports, thenmoves up to the Division I level in 1986-87.• Yale captures its second of four straight Ivy crosscountry championships, and places third at the NCAAs,the League's best team finish to date.• Penn reaches the semifinal round of the NCAA fieldhockey tournament, the first League member to advancebeyond the first round.• Columbia wins the first of its three straight Ivy Leaguefencing crowns and finishes in second place at the NCAAchampionships.• Harvard becomes the first Ivy member to claim anNCAA women's lacross championship with a thrilling 8-7win against traditional powerhouse Maryland.• Charlotte Joslin, a member of the Harvard nationalchampionship lacrosse team, graduates with a combined12 varsity letters in field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse.Princeton's Mollie Marcoux, graduating the following year,matches the extraordinary total with 12 letters in soccer,ice hockey and lacrosse.• Not only did Harvard's Meredith Rainey score in sixevents at the Outdoor Heps Championship, the New York,N.Y. native capped the season by becoming the firstAfrican-American woman in Ivy history to earn an NCAAPostgraduate Scholarship.• Cornell wins the Heptagonal Outdoor Track and FieldChampionships by three points, the second-closest marginin history. The Big Red's fourth title of the decadecomes in 1997 by an even smaller margin, a slim one-halfpoint ahead of Princeton.• Harvard begins a streak of six consecutive seasonsin which the Crimson does not lose a single Leaguesquash match. During that period, Harvard wins fivestraight Howe Cups, the national women's squash competitionheld at Yale since its inception in 1973.• Two undergraduate women athletes file a Title IXcomplaint against Brown. The ultimate resolution ofCohen v. Brown sets benchmarks for future rulings onparticipation and resource opportunities for women athletes.• Princeton's Kristen Beaney wins the 5,000-meter runand is named the Outstanding Performer at theHeptagonal Indoor Track and Field Championships. Shematches her performance the following year, adding a victoryin the 3,000-meter run, and becomes the first twotimewinner of the Outstanding Performer award.• Cornell wins its third consecutive Ivy League volleyballchampionship and becomes the first League team toparticipate in the NCAA tournament, falling in the firstround to national power Nebraska.• Brown outlasts Dartmouth in overtime in the first-everLeague basketball playoff game and gains the Ivies' firstautomatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Bears thenenter the second half of their first-round contest tied withthe University of Connecticut before falling 79-60.• Princeton wins sole possession of the Ivy Leaguelacrosse crown, the first time in eight years that Harvardhas not at least shared the title. In the postseason, theTigers win a 14-13 overtime classic against defendingchampion Virginia in the national semifinal and then outlastMaryland by a 10-7 count to win the national championship.• Through private donations, the Ivy League enlistssculptor Timothy Maslyn to create a series of new championshiptrophies for several sports. Maslyn constructs hisfirst work of art, the Lajos S. Csiszar Trophy, in the likenessof Penn fencer Mary Jane O'Neill, who won theNCAA individual title in 1984. By 1997, Maslyn has constructedtrophies for four women's sports, including softball,tennis and rowing.• The Council of Ivy Group Presidents approves theappointment of a Senior Women's Administrator to the IvyPolicy Committee. Penn's Carolyn Schlie Femovich is thefirst appointee.• Princeton wins the NCAA Softball Play-In againstRider. The Tigers, who at one point that season won 29games in a row, then earn the right to host an NCAARegional. With a win against Hofstra and two wins againstConnecticut, Princeton becomes the first Ivy League representativein the College Softball World Series. the Tigersmake the return trip to the World Series the following yearas well.• Penn's Barrie Bernstein becomes the seventh singlesplayer in League women's tennis history to be a four-timefirst team All-Ivy selection, but it's Cornell's Olga Itskhokiwho wins the League's inaugural Player of the Yearaward.