Linda Metheny Mulvihill '69 FAA, AM '71 FAA, has a trophy-filled mantle from her tenure as a world-class gymnast.
Diane Kummer Shimmon '74, '77 LAS (UIC), ran her way into the Olympic trials.
Frances "Toni" Stewart Essick '58 FAA captured the 1957 and 1958 National Amateur Athletic Union Solo Synchronized Swimming Championship.
Their successes during their days on the University of Illinois campus went largely unrecognized, a mention here or there in The Daily Illini being the extent of it. Although they toiled largely in anonymity — and competed in the name of a University that provided them with the most minimal of financial or logistical support — all three maintain the fondest of memories of their athletic tenures at the University.
University of Illinois women pose in the 1890s.
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Decades after their triumphs and tears, these women, along with more than 200 of their fellow alumnae, were granted what for some was a wish that could never be fulfilled. During an emotional ceremony on Nov. 23, the women who competed in intercollegiate athletics prior to 1974-75 received a Varsity "I" letter. The "I" presentations culminated the weekend of celebration in honor of the "Illinois 3D — dreams, desire, determination" program.
"We are very proud as an institution to have all you alumni back," said UI Athletics Director Ron Guenther '67 ALS, MS '68 ALS, at the event's opening ceremonies, recognizing the women who had traveled from as far as Hong Kong and the Virgin Islands for the event. Later in the weekend, Guenther handed out the coveted letters.
"I'm really thrilled to come back and get a letter," said Metheny Mulvihill, who came from Eugene, Ore., for the program. "When I was going to the University, I didn't miss getting a letter. You just accepted it. That was the way it was."
Metheny Mulvihill's athletic resume is beyond compare. The three-time Olympic gymnast, who recorded her highest finish — fourth in the balance beam — at the 1968 Games, also won five national all-around titles.
Her accomplishments include two collegiate national all-around titles, earned while competing as a representative of the University of Illinois. But until recently her 1968 and 1969 triumphs lay somewhere in the archives, collecting dust and remaining virtually unrecognized in the University's athletic record.
Like the other 3D athletes, Metheny Mulvihill trained and competed with minimal support from the University — she secured her own coaching, traveled to competitions by her own means and practiced in borrowed gym space. Today, Metheny Mulvihill knows first-hand the benefits NCAA Division I scholarship athletes receive — she has coached more than a few top-notch gymnasts at her gymnastics academy back in Oregon.
Linda Metheny Mulvihill wins the 1968 collegiate national all-around title in gymnastics.
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But if Metheny Mulvihill lacked recognition, she and the others found it as the University rolled out the orange carpet and turned back the clock several decades during the 3D weekend. The alumnae athletes were announced by name at halftime of the Illini women's basketball season opener and were welcomed onto the field during the Illinois football game against Northwestern. At both contests, the crowd offered enthusiastic standing ovations.
"It's so nice to see all the other women who experienced the same thing — trying to compete without a whole lot of support," the petite mother of three said.
That shared bond is what drove Ellen Greaves '72 ALS, JD '93 LAW, to spearhead the movement that persuaded her Alma Mater to entertain the concept. At their 25-year reunion, Greaves and her classmates from the Class of 1972 — aware that other universities had held similar events to recognize the pioneers of women's athletics on their campuses — decided it was something the U of I should do, too.
Greaves got involved in the alumni board of the UI College of Applied Life Studies, the college that housed the Department of Physical Education for Women, where the majority of the women who were honored had studied. When the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics developed and launched the 3D program, Greaves was the alumni representative on the 3D planning committee.
"There were accomplishments by women that we weren't aware of in the University community," said Greaves, who lives in Raleigh, N.C. "I didn't pretend to know all of them, by any means. I just presumed that we had a rich heritage and tradition. I just thought this would make us a better community by getting in touch with the history."
The University agreed, and it jumped into the project in 2001. Tom Porter '63 ALS, director of special projects, along with graduate assistant Chris Shoemaker '02 LAS, pored over decades worth of archives and Illio yearbooks in an attempt to pinpoint all the women who might qualify for the honor. The two also depended on women they had identified to provide them with names of teammates. The search was largely a word-of-mouth process which eventually turned up 2,000 names with 1,100 good addresses.
What Porter and Shoemaker uncovered was the foundation of the historical record of women's intercollegiate sports at the University of Illinois — a legacy that goes back to 1896. During a basketball game at Military Hall, the Illini women defeated Illinois Wesleyan 28-11. It would be nine years before the men's basketball team began competition.
UI softball team, 1974.
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But for the most part, it is a history with gaping holes and little documentation. In 1903, the Women's Athletic Association was founded on campus. The WAA — later the WSA (Women's Sports Association) — provided mostly intramural competition for the women, many of whom had never touched a basketball or hit a softball, since sports opportunities in grammar school and high school were even more limited. But as the years went on, the association served as a springboard for the women to compete with their peers at area colleges and universities. In the late 1960s, the WSA became the Women's Extramural Sports Association and ultimately the Women's Intercollegiate Sports Association just before the University Athletic Association absorbed women's athletics in 1974.
The sports they played were as diverse as the women themselves, and the menu varied by era. They competed in team sports such as basketball, field hockey, volleyball and soccer. Tennis, golf, bowling, badminton, fencing, gymnastics, archery, swimming, horseback riding and riflery were popular. In the early days, baseball was a game of choice before softball gained popularity.
For the purposes of the 3D program, the sports recognized were ones currently in the Illinois Division I women's sports portfolio, such as softball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, golf, gymnastics and swimming. In addition, fencing, field hockey and synchronized swimming were included because of their popularity and the volume of athletes who participated.
"We realize that these women were really valuable," Porter said. "We want to make up for their lack of opportunities. Many of the women I've talked to through this process were [physical education] majors, and they were the first high school coaches. They were important in building the foundation for today's opportunities for women in athletics."
Considering the lengths the women had to traverse just to compete two or three times a semester, the drive to play can be explained in a word heard repeatedly at the Illinois 3D celebration — passion.
"[These women] did things when it wasn't the popular or socially acceptable thing to do, and they persevered," Greaves said. "The beauty of this event is they get to come back and find out that there were other women who did these things, and they will get to bond."
With little money and limited access to transportation, the women's intercollegiate contests were unconventional by today's standards — the 1927 Illio reports a "telegraphic" track and field meet with Ohio State, Northwestern and Wisconsin. The Illini women would compete against each other in person, record the best results and then telegraph them to a central location to be compared with the opposition. This worked, of course, only in sports with measurable results, such as track and field or swimming. In 1930, the U of I sponsored the first Big Ten Telegraphic Swimming Meet and four years later the first National Intercollegiate Telegraphic Swimming Meet. In later days, when mail service had improved, competitions were conducted by mail and therefore named postal meets.
When transportation was accessible, a selected group of women would travel to a central location where several colleges and universities would gather for a day of team sports competition called "play dates" or "playdays." The earliest playdays in the late 1930s revolved around basketball. The tournaments were planned and supervised by student sports managers and faculty advisers from the UI Department of Physical Education for Women.
"The best thing was when we had a girl on the team who was a town girl, because then we had some access to transportation," said 75-year-old Joan Pfau Callahan '49 ALS. A member of Terrapin, the swimming club, she still swims today in the indoor pool of her Waukegan home.
