CMC75 Landmark Years (1976): CMC Admits First Women, Athenas Join Athletic Department
As part of the buildup to the 75th Anniversary celebration for Claremont McKenna College (visit CMC's 75th Anniversary Countdown Page to learn more), we are reliving many of the great moments and landmark years from CMS athletic department history over the 75-day countdown from April 17 to July 1. If you would like to add to the memories of one of these moments, or if you would like to submit your memories of your own favorite CMS Athletics moment, fill out the form on our main 75th Anniversary page.
Great Moments Featured in this Story:
1977: Women's Swim & Dive Finishes Second in Debut Season
1978: Women's XC Earns First Athena SCIAC Title
1982: Women's Swim & Dive Earns Top 20 Finish at NCAAs
1984: Women's Cross Country Finishes 7th at First NCAAs
1985: Women's Volleyball Wins 24, Earns NCAA Bid
1987: Women's Soccer Wins SCIAC in Third Season
1988: Women's Basketball Goes Unbeaten for First SCIAC Title
1991: Softball Takes SCIAC in Second Varsity Season
Claremont McKenna underwent a major transformation in the 1970s with the decision to become co-educational, welcoming its first women in 1976 (and soon changing its name from Claremont Men's College to the more familiar Claremont McKenna College, while keeping the CMC acronym).
The addition of women's athletics was an immediate change to the dynamic of campus, as the Athenas began competing as soon as the first CMC women's students were enrolled, beginning with women's volleyball in the fall of 1976. The women's athletic department began in 1976-77 with five teams, with basketball, tennis, swimming and diving, and track and field joining volleyball in holding their first varsity seasons (cross country would be added one year later).
The expansion of women's sports wasn't just a local phenomenon. The Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) began in 1971, introducing postseason opportunities for women's sports. Title IX was passed in 1972, and the NCAA would eventually absorb the AIAW and take on women's championships in the 1981-82 season.
By itself, Claremont McKenna would have had a huge disadvantage trying to start women's sports in 1976 with just a handful of newly-admitted female students, competing against SCIAC schools which were co-educational all along. Fortunately, the consortium set-up of the Claremont Colleges allowed CMC and Harvey Mudd, who were already partnering in men's sports, to add Scripps into their athletics umbrella.
Prior to becoming part of the varsity athletics fold, Scripps students were competing in club sports, combining with Pomona College. One of those was the women's tennis club, which was run by Gerry Lahanas, who was also a Scripps professor. Lahanas became the first Athenas women's tennis varsity coach and the founding women's athletic director, overseeing the transition from a purely club setup to one in which the Athenas competed alongside their Stag counterparts.
Jodie Burton, who has been with the CMS Athletic Department since joining as its women's basketball coach in 1979-80, was one of the people who was influenced by Lahanas in those early years.
"Gerry helped structure the CMS program," said Burton. "She was inspirational in teaching me how, when and the importance of speaking up."
At first, the women's teams were abbreviated as SCHM (Scripps-Claremont-Harvey Mudd), before eventually settling in to the modern branding as Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (the joke at the time being that SCHM could be pronounced too much like "scum"). Lahanas' tennis team was one of the early SCHM squads seeing immediate success, finishing third in its debut season in the SCIAC in 1977 and climbing to second in 1979.
Women's swimming and diving also had a strong debut year in 1976-77, tying for second in the SCIAC. Kristina Albrecht (50-yard backstroke) and Shannon Daley (50-yard breaststroke, 100-yard breaststroke) were SCIAC Champions in 1977, along with contributing to a 200-yard medley relay title to give the Athenas four SCIAC championship races in its first season of competition.
After adding cross country in 1977, the Athena harriers had the honor of winning the first women's team SCIAC title, taking first place in the league in 1978. One of the members of that league championship team was Kathleen Evans (pictured at right), who also competed in volleyball and track and field during her athletic career. Evans had the distinction of being the very first female student accepted and enrolled into Claremont McKenna, after her deposit was accepted in March of 1976, and was part of the 1976 volleyball team that was the first to compete at the varsity level.
Steadily, the women's programs kept improving. Women's cross country, which featured All-Americans Mary Tracey (CMC) and Jeana West (Scripps) added its second SCIAC title in 1980. Tracey was a local high school student who came to Claremont Men's College because she wanted to major in economics and didn't plan on competing in sports. She joined the track and field team during spring of her freshman year, not knowing that she would take to it so much that it would lead to her qualifying for the Olympic trials in the Marathon 10 years later. She said that fitting in with the Stags in what had been a completely male-dominated environment wasn't difficult.
"We practiced right alongside the men and I never felt like there a problem," she said."Part of it was maybe that I competed in an individual sport, so we weren't really in each other's way and it made it easier to co-exist."
In fact, she felt so comfortable fitting in amongst the men's teams that she told a story of a playful prank that she and her teammates pulled one fall evening. The football team at the time would honor their players of the week with pictures that they posted in the dining hall, including a special honor called the "Hard Rock Player of the Week." Tracey decided that she wanted to win that award, so she and her cross country teammates snuck in one night and replaced the football pictures with their own.
"They knew right away it was me," she laughed. "The football coach (John Zinda) called me up, and said 'Mary, where are our pictures?' But at least I got to be the Hard Rock Player of the Week, which was all I wanted."
Tracey and West passed the distance baton to Cindy Nagle, who joined the women's cross country program in 1981 and was a four-time All-American, leading the Athenas to the NCAA Championships as a senior, where they finished seventh. The 1981-82 women's swimming and diving team also kept the early momentum going and earned a top-20 finish at its first NCAA Championships. Volleyball had its breakthrough season in 1985, improving from four wins to 24 and qualifying for the NCAA Championships. Burton lifted the basketball team to its first winning season in 1982-83, and then to an undefeated SCIAC championship season in 1988.
"Although it did not come without its share of struggles, it has been important for me to see the growth of our women's program," said Burton. "CMS hired more coaches for the women's program so dissimilar sports were not coached by the same person, so the volleyball coach did not need to also coach softball, for example."
Those breakthrough seasons were huge in establishing a winning culture among the women's sports. With that culture in place, CMS kept adding more and more women's programs to the varsity fold, growing from six in the early 1980s to the current 11 varsity programs that compete today. Impressively, all five of the women's programs added in the last three decades immediately fit right in with SCIAC Championships in their first four seasons.
The first addition was women's soccer in 1985, which finished second in its first year of competition. By the third year, the Athenas were 9-1 in SCIAC and holding the 1987 league championship trophy. Softball came next in 1989, and made an even more rapid ascent, going from 6-32 in its debut season to winning the SCIAC in 1990 with a 16-4 league record (20-15 overall).
Women's water polo won the collegiate nationals as a club team in 1992 and successfully won its battle to upgrade to varsity soon after, finishing third in SCIAC in their debut season in 1994, and moving up to second place in year two. By 1997, just the fourth year of competition, the Athenas joined the SCIAC Championship ranks with a 9-1 league finish.
Women's lacrosse also fought to move up from club to varsity around the turn of the century and succeeded, finishing an impressive 10-3 in its debut season in 2003. The Athenas would hit the 10-win plateau nine times in their first nine seasons, reaching the NCAA Championships in 2007 after a 15-0 start and winning its first NCAA Tournament game in 2008. In 2010, the SCIAC began sponsoring women's lacrosse, and the Athenas won the first-ever title with a perfect 10-0 record.
The last women's sport to upgrade to varsity, increasing the CMS size to 21 sports, was women's golf in 2007. The Athenas matched the lacrosse program in 2012, when the SCIAC sponsored women's golf for the first time, and CMS took home the very first trophy. Just six years later, CMS won the 2018 NCAA during the "Year of the Athena" when volleyball, tennis and golf all won national titles, and the track and field team finished fourth with three individual national champions.
As someone who has been around for the entire history of the women's athletic department, Burton could take special pride in the Year of the Athena, and an athletic department that has captured the SCIAC Women's All-Sports Trophy the last 12 years in a row, and for 31 of the last 35 years since (1985-86).
"I am exceptionally pleased with the growth of our women's program," said Burton. "I am so proud of those female athletes who stuck with us as we grew to be the strong programs we are today."
The First Athenas
(compiled from best available information and may be incomplete)
1976 Volleyball Roster
Head Coach: Sirkka Williams
Beth Bickson (Scripps)
Teri Cahill (HMC)
Lisa Carmack (Scripps)
Kathleen Evans (CMC)
Debbie Hasty (CMC)
Lesly Helm (Scripps)
Lesly Irvine (Scripps)
Frances Ito (Scripps)
Beth Karras (CMC)
Robin Kohler (Scripps)
Sarah Nunke (Scripps)
Carol Opatrny (Scripps)
Torrie Pollack (CMC)
Linda Sampson (Scripps)
Emily Schneider (Scripps)
Margaret Schwab (Scripps)
Ann Swisher (Scripps)
Karen Taggart (HMC)
Mary Ann Uhlman (CMC)
1976-77 Women's Basketball Roster
Head Coach: Jean Foxen
Cheryl Dudley (Scripps)
Nancy Engimar (CMC)
Anne Garton (Scripps)
Kimi Geter (Scripps)
Coky Gray (Scripps)
Debbie Hasty (CMC)
Kathy Hasty (CMC)
Lesly Irvine (Scripps)
Denise Moore (Scripps)
Sharon Wooden (Scripps)
1977 Women's Tennis Roster
Head Coach: Gerry Lahanas
Tracey Borst (Scripps)
Cindy Carroll (HMC)
Anne DePue (Scripps)
Catherine Gray (Scripps)
Catherine Hubbell (Scripps)
Robin Hurt (Scripps)
Jennifer Jones (CMC)
Susan Liff (CMC)
Anne Lippert (Scripps)
Patty Long (Scrips)
Nancy McLain (CMC)
Carolyn Pollock (Scripps)
Julie Pinkoski (CMC)
Pam Polzin (CMC)
Karen Richards (Scripps)
Lydia Rivera (Scripps)
1977-78 Track and Field Roster
(1976-77 roster not available)
Head Coach: Gayle Hopkins
Assistant Coach: Sirkka Williams
Renee Clift (CMC)
Kathleen Evans (CMC)
Karin Fitzpatrick (Scripps)
Jennifer Holland (Scripps)
Jennifer Jackson (Scripps)
Gigi Larner (Scripps)
Sarah Miller (Scripps)
Paula Nishibayashi (CMC)
Alexis Oliver (CMC)
Mary Tracey (CMC)
Rebecca Venture (Scripps)
Kehau Wall (CMC)
Early swimming and diving rosters not available