When they did have transportation, it usually came in the form of rented station wagons or vans. The women were home-housed or would pack as many as eight into a motel room. The coaches were volunteer; with no money for officiating, the players doubled as referees and officials when not competing.

Most often, the opponents were within driving distance — Southern Illinois University, Millikin University, Purdue, Northern Illinois and Eastern Illinois. The biggest rival, however, was Illinois State.

"They didn't like for us to call them 'Normal,'" said Joan Walk Loftus '66 ALS.

The play dates wouldn't necessarily have women representing their individual schools in team games; sometimes, they would take the entire pool and pick players for teams without paying attention to who came from where.

UI 'girls track meet,' 1910

The playdays evolved into "Sports Days," athletic field days where many sports could be played at once, depending on the season. As women's athletics grew in sophistication, the women participated in national golf and tennis meets; sectional and regional meets became available in some sports.

Of the team competitions, Loftus remembers practicing three times a week, for an hour or so each time. Many other women recall their frustration at having only three sports days per semester.

At the sporting events, a typical uniform — provided by the women themselves — consisted of a white blouse, pressed and starched, along with black or green shorts and white Converse shoes. When traveling, the competitors wore skirts, sweaters, heels and nylons — although they were athletes, they were constantly reminded that they were ladies, too.

One of those ladies was Bunker, a pioneering sports psychologist at the University of Virginia, who had never seen a field hockey stick until she arrived in Champaign. An eventual recipient of an Alumni Achievement Award in 2000, she played many sports, including field hockey, but tennis was her first love.

Bunker particularly recalls the life lessons the experiences provided. She remembered several games when, if a score was too lopsided, the teams would change players at halftime — after eating sliced oranges together — to provide a more competitive atmosphere. After the games, the players would head into the locker room to get changed. Instead of heading their separate ways for a post-game meal, they would stay together for tea and cookies.

"It was about the activity of competition," Bunker said. "It wasn't about who wins or loses; it's about the process. For women in my era, I think part of what we learned was that phenomenon — that you could win or you could lose, and then walk out and be friends with your opponents."

The most recent crop of Illini letterwinners joined an elite club that includes athletes across generations. It even includes members of their own families.

Essick, the synchronized swimmer, has bridged a gap within her own family. Her husband, Raymond Essick '55 ALS, MS '58 ALS, and her son, Ray '81 ENG, MS '83 ENG, PHD '87 ENG, were both successful swimmers for the UI men's program.

"I had never felt a lack of anything," Essick said from her Colorado Springs, Colo., home. "My husband called it to my attention. He thought that would be neat, the fact that we'd all be lettermen."

Essick learned the sport from scratch while at Illinois. She got involved with Terrapin and found her niche in the synchronized division. Her first meet was a play date at Michigan State in the fall of 1953.

"I remember thinking, 'Oh gosh, just so I don't finish last,'" she said. Just four years later, she was at the top of the synchronized swimming world.

Essick recalls scrambling to find pool time on occasion and working with her coach, the late Doris Layson Bullock '42 ED, '47 LAS, at odd hours.

"I think at the time I probably worked harder than most of my competitors, but in retrospect, I could have worked harder," Essick said. "But you did what you had to do to get where you wanted to be."

Shimmon and daughter

Now an information technology consultant in Naperville, Shimmon often returns to Champaign to visit her daughter, Lauren — a UI junior heptathlete on Gary Winkler's nationally recognized Illini women's track and field squad. Standing outside the women's track and field locker room provides the elder Shimmon with a bit of deja vu. It was outside that very locker, in the tunnel between Huff Hall and the Armory, where Shimmon would wait for the men's trainer to tape her ankles. After all, there was no dedicated trainer for the women.

"I feel like I paved the way for them, not knowingly at that time," she said via telephone. "It was really thrilling. [Lauren] was a freshman in college, and she got her locker and her track clothes. I never had a locker, I never had a locker room, I never had track clothes.

"It was really fun. I was really proud of her."