{"id":15,"date":"2011-11-28T18:07:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T18:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2013-08-12T15:12:48","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T15:12:48","slug":"athletics","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/athletics\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Women\u2019s athletics at Bowdoin have a long history, one that begins with the intrepid athletes in the first classes of women at the College. <a href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/category\/athletics\/\">Want to learn more about how it all started?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_354\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-354\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-354\" title=\"document-jh-60.23\" src=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/files\/2011\/11\/document-jh-60.23-300x229.jpg\" alt=\"document-jh-60.23\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/files\/2011\/11\/document-jh-60.23-300x229.jpg 300w, https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/files\/2011\/11\/document-jh-60.23.jpg 650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-354\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">1976-1977 Tennis Team<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Women\u2019s sports at Bowdoin began within a year of coeducation. In the 1972-73 academic year, the College fielded two varsity women\u2019s teams, field hockey and swimming (women were members of the men\u2019s swim team). By the 1978-79 academic year the College hosted ten women\u2019s teams. Sally LaPointe, the first female coach and overseer of women\u2019s athletics, played a large role in encouraging and in tracking the development of women\u2019s sports. The President also invested in this process, including a special segment on women\u2019s athletics in the June 1, 1972 Report of the President\u2019s Commission on Athletics.<\/p>\n<p>The progress did not come easy for all women athletes or all sports, however. In one example of the challenges, volunteer women\u2019s basketball coach Richard (Dick) Mersereau had to request that his team play full-time in Morrell gymnasium, where the men played, rather than in Sargent, the older, more run-down facility, where women were placed. In the same year, the women\u2019s indoor track team brought \u201cattention [to] the fact that the Women\u2019s Indoor Track Team is [sic] not adequately coached.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Overall, embodying the identity of either a female athlete or a person connected to women\u2019s athletics at Bowdoin in the 1970\u2019s involved great opportunities and some significant challenges. To hear and see the documented history of a program that is one of the most successful in Division III athletics today, <a href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/category\/athletics\/\">delve into our athletics documents, images, and interviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Women\u2019s athletics at Bowdoin have a long history, one that begins with the intrepid athletes in the first classes of women at the College. Want to learn more about how it all started? Women\u2019s sports at Bowdoin began within a year of coeducation. In the 1972-73 academic year, the College fielded two varsity women\u2019s teams, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-15","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}