1/22/2008 11:56:17 AM
As the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC)
celebrates its 25th Anniversary of Women’s
Athletics, a series of profiles will be written about individuals
that have made a significant impact on women’s athletics in
the Conference. This profile features Dr. Joan S. Hult, founder of
women’s intercollegiate athletics at Concordia
College-Moorhead.
As any historian would say, to truly understand how far
we’ve come, it is important to know where we’ve been.
If you want to understand how far women’s athletics has come
at Concordia College, ask Dr. Joan Hult. Dr. Hult was
responsible for founding women’s intercollegiate athletics at
Concordia in 1958. Women’s athletics at Concordia began when
Dr. Hult invited two other local colleges for “sports
days.” Dr. Hult recalls that they did several sports in those
first few years including: volleyball, basketball, softball,
gymnastics and tennis. In 1958, the group began with only three
schools competing in women’s athletics but by 1968 the
women’s athletic group had grown to nine teams
strong.
The first decade of women’s athletics at Concordia was
quite different then it is today. For example, Dr. Hult recruited
most of her athletes from her Physical Education classes. She
recalls the female student-athletes all sharing one set of uniforms
and the athletes paying their own way to competitions. Furthermore,
she remembers that for a majority of away contests, the teams slept
on the floor in the basements of Lutheran Churches. And the few
times they were allowed to stay in a hotel, the women slept six per
room. In order to acquire funding for her program, Dr. Hult had to
beg the Physical Education department to provide them with some
assistance. According to Dr. Hult, “the
women’s programs never really had a budget that we knew of.
Every time we needed something, we had to go ask for it.”
Even with a lack of funding and support, the women’s
athletics programs were able to make great strides forward. What
had started as “play dates” held at Concordia expanded
to women’s tournaments held all over the state.
Concordia’s women’s programs were very successful in
those first few years and much of that was due to Dr. Hult. She had
experience playing semi-pro basketball and softball
in Chicago and used that expertise to give her
student-athletes an experience not many female coaches could
provide at that time. Dr. Hult stressed the values of good coaching
and being competitive. In fact, her players became so good at
coaching that the “A” team players began to coach the
“B” team players. In addition to coaching every single
sport at Concordia (except gymnastics) Dr. Hult also taught 15
hours a week in the physical education department. By the time Dr.
Hult left Concordia in 1968, the Concordia women’s teams were
a part of the Minn-Kota Conference which was one of the first five
women’s athletic conferences in the nation.
In addition to helping establish the Minn-Kota Conference, Dr.
Hult also worked behind the scenes in Washington for the
passage of Title IX. Dr. Hult says that her time at Concordia was
the foundation for her work in developing women’s sports
programs and fighting for Title IX. Dr. Hult is currently a
professor emerita at the University of Maryland. Her
love for the game of basketball and her extensive knowledge of the
history of women’s basketball led her to publish the book
“A Century of Women’s Basketball: From Frailty to Final
Four.” Dr. Hult is also currently in the process of
publishing a second book about the history of women’s
athletics.
Current Concordia College Director of Athletics,
Larry Papenfuss, had this to say about Dr.
Hult: “I’ve had the pleasure of talking to
Joan Hult on numerous occasions, as well as to several of the
student-athletes that she mentored during her time
at Concordia College. Many of these women
point to Joan as their role model as they worked to promote
women’s athletics in the 60’s and
70’s. She was a pioneer at this school, in the old
Minn-Kota Conference, and in the Association of Intercollegiate
Athletics for Women (AIAW). The NCAA looked to women
like Joan and the organizations they founded to build the framework
for the women’s programs we enjoy today. Talk to
her for five minutes and you get a glimpse of the passion and fire
that ignited the flame of women’s sports in this
country.”
Dr. Hult was the first woman inducted into the Concordia
Athletic Hall of Fame. For Dr. Hult, it wasn’t about her
personal accomplishment, “it was about the recognition that
women’s sports matter and that they should be part of the
scene.” When asked about some of the most significant changes
she has seen in women’s athletics over the past 25 years Dr.
Hult commented, “The good thing is that they can never turn
back the clock on women’s athletics. Although men comprise a
majority of the administration and coaching positions in athletics,
female student-athletes are becoming professionals and they are
getting jobs.” Dr. Hult also stressed the need to better
understand the value of what women coaches bring to the
table. She concluded by saying, “Division III has
a magical influence on kids. There is more parity and more
offerings. If I had my choice, I would choose the Division III
teaching and coaching model.”
For more information about the 25th Anniversary of Women's
Athletics click here.