Departments
Sports
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Week of 4 December 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 16 |
Sports
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BU athletes dominate first New England Women's Sports Hall of Fame inductionBy Amy Dean Four out of eleven ain't bad. Neither is sharing the limelight with Olympic swimming gold medalist and first female network television sportscaster Donna de Varona; ESPN and ABC broadcaster Robin Roberts, who also calls WNBA play-by-play; five members of the Wheaties-fueled 1998 U.S. Olympic gold-medal ice hockey team; Jane Blalock, the first woman golfer to earn more than $100,000 four years in a row; Ernestine Bayer, who started the first U.S. women's rowing organization in the late 1930s and rowed despite being told she would get tuberculosis (male rowers were somehow immune); and spark plug Mary Caron Armstrong, who sprinted onstage at a youthful 84 to accept the Trailblazer award, replicating her gold-medal performance as anchor in the 4 x 100 relay at the 1932 Olympics.
The fact that BU shared in the lives of nearly half the New England Women's Sports Hall of Fame inductees is astounding. Each of the BU-linked fabulous four female athletes who took to the stage to be inducted in the first wave on September 23 in front of the crowd of 800-plus at Boston's Roxy nightclub was honored for the incredible and indelible mark she has made on the pages of sports history. Dr. Tenley Albright, who served on the Board of Visitors of Sargent College and whose surgeon father joined the BU School of Medicine in 1937 as an assistant in surgery and taught from 1942 to the early 1980s, strapped on silver skates at the '52 Olympics at the age of 16 and then four years later laced up gold at the '56 &emdash; after being stricken by polio at 10 and using skating as a form of rehabilitation. Albright, herself a surgeon, draws upon her training and experience as a world-class skater in the operating room. "When I was competing, we were outdoors," she says. "So despite all my preparation, I never knew whether I would be skating in a snowstorm or whether it would be raining or windy. I've learned to expect the unexpected. You don't always know what you'll find when you open a patient, and you have to be prepared." She was represented at the induction by daughter Erin Schran, also a skater, who voiced what it was like to have a gold-medalist mom. "My mother wouldn't let me see her old skating films until I was 16 years old and I already loved skating," she says. Today Schran runs a Learn to Skate program in Boston, helping inner city kids have fun on the ice while building self-confidence. Track and field inductee Joan Benoit Samuelson, BU track and field coach from 1981 to 1983, is best known for her gold-medal triumph in the first running of the women's marathon, at the 1984 Olympics. Also a two-time winner of the grueling Boston Marathon and the current guardian of the U.S. women's marathon record of 2:21:21, which she set in Chicago in 1985, Samuelson began running at a time when the longest distance thought safe for women was 800 meters. In her junior year of high school, that distance was increased to a mile, but it was believed that "anything further would do bodily harm, and I couldn't have kids," Samuelson says. Now a proud mother of two &emdash; Abby, age 10, and Anders, age 8 &emdash; Samuelson dedicated her award "to all the young women who follow in our footsteps and inspire us day in and day out." The most resounding applause of the evening was for All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-1954) players Mary Pratt (SAR'40), on-the-mound southpaw for the Rockford Peaches, and Madeline "Maddy" English (SED'57), who hugged third base for the Racine Belles. Pratt and English have done what no other women have done before &emdash; and perhaps never will again: they played pro ball, were paid for it, and are now inductees in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
After the creation of 10 categories of sports and the nomination of two athletes in each sport, over 3,000 members of the public voted on the winners through the Internet, the Boston Globe, and by balloting at the Square One Mall in Saugus, Mass. The New England Women's Sports Hall of Fame is a joint project between the New England Women's Fund and Square One Mall. For more information, con-tact the New England Women's Fund, Box 41, Brookline, Mass. 02446; 617-731-5600; e-mail newfund@aol.com; or visit its Web site at www.newfund.com. |
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