Athletics

CMU softball, 1980

The current concept of collegiate athletics—a $1 billion-dollar enterprise for the NCAA in 2021—is nothing like the 1852 regatta between the rowing teams of Harvard and Yale. Since that time, generations of athletes, male and female, have been part of an evolution of college sports, which includes an important and ongoing conversation around gender equality and women's rights at colleges and universities.

Nearly 50 years after the Ivy League regatta that started intercollegiate sports, Central's first female athlete competed for the school. During the first decade of the 1900s, intercollegiate women's athletics at Central became a robust program, but an administrative decision in 1913 put an end to intercollegiate competition for Central's women. For the next five decades, women's sports were largely intramural events and informal "play days" with other schools. Although "play days" and intramural events did not receive the same recognition as men's athletics, they were an important part of the history of women at CMU, and they serve as a testament to the hard work of CMU women to move women's sports from merely an extension of physical training to a highly competitive Division I program.

A major part of the transformation of women's athletics at CMU and across the United States was the passage of Title IX in 1972. With federal legislation supporting their efforts, the leadership and advocacy efforts of legendary administrators, coaches, and athletes propelled Central's athletics programs forward. The women of CMU have been trailblazers not only in Mount Pleasant, but on the national stage.