How the Games Are Remembered at Smith
By Jan McCoy Ebbets
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The Olympic torch has been doused. Some 10,000 world-class athletes have
gone home. The Summer Olympic Games have been officially put to bed until
the year 2000. But for the many members of the Smith community who spent
days, weeks or months in the 100-degree summer heat of Atlanta, the 1996
Olympics will be remembered as revolutionary. Finally, the world celebrated
women as champion athletes.
For many who were there, whether as former Olympians, volunteers, paid
staff or spectators, the thrill of witnessing a record number of women in
competition--36.5 percent of all the athletes-- is still felt long after
the Games are over. What they remember is that Olympic spirit, reflected
in a brand of perseverance, a unique vitality and a physical grace. What
they continue to celebrate are the achievements of women in sports.
"The Olympics were awesome for women--USA women were the best!"
says Lynn Oberbillig, Smith athletic director. She recalls her surprise,
upon walking into the Georgia Dome to watch the U.S. women's basketball
team play Zaire, to find herself one of 31,000 spectators. "I had just
left there the night before at midnight, after watching the Dream Team game,"
Oberbillig says, "and then to come in the next morning to see the U.S.
women play Zaire with the same crowd was unbelievable."
Other emotional highs followed for Oberbillig, especially as she watched
the U.S. women's softball team. Oberbillig, who has played and coached Division
I softball for years, says she again found herself among "thousands
of people cheering for women playing softball and really getting into the
U.S. team. I found myself sitting in the stands fighting back tears and
not being able to explain why. I think it was just so overwhelming, to have
fought the battle for years to even play, to get scholarships, to have a
team that was important, to fight for gender equity, and then to see the
'average' citizen in a frenzy about something that has driven my whole life
--I was in awe."
Oberbillig is not alone in her enthusiasm. Carla Coffey, varsity cross-country
and track and field coach at Smith, calls it "one of the best Olympics
ever for women overall, and for women in track and field." As a member
of the USA Track and Field support staff for the Olympics, she spent 10
days this June helping with team selection in Atlanta. It is an unbelievable
experience, she says, to be on hand to witness the remarkable strides women
in sports are making.
This apparent transformation of the Olympic playing fields in the United
States didn't happen overnight. It began in 1972 with Title IX, a federal
law mandating equal opportunity for both men and women in athletics and
education. Title IX began to open up more opportunities for women to play
sports at the high school and college levels. The numbers tell the story:
In 1972 only 96 American women participated in the Olympics; in 1996, 280
women were on the playing fields.
"It was a true coming of age for women in sports," says Chris
Shelton, associate professor of exercise and sport studies and co-director
of the Smith Project on Women and Social Change. "We've all worked
for the last 25 years to open up more opportunities for girls and women
who want to play sports. This summer seemed to offer the first Olympic Games
where the public joined in, in the celebration of women as athletes."
At the Atlanta Olympics, women were "flooding in the doors,"
says Shelton, excelling in everything from track and field to swimming,
volleyball, soccer, basketball and softball.
Shelton has long been active on the women's sports scene as a teacher,
coach and advocate. This summer, as a Spanish-speaking volunteer translator
and an official member of the Olympic Basketball Competition staff, Shelton
had a ringside seat from which to observe the emerging playing power of
women's basketball teams. Assigned to a training site (actually a local
high school gymnasium) and wearing the official Olympic uniform, she served
as a communication conduit between the teams and the Olympic sites staff.
She came to know firsthand the training habits and on-court strategies of
the Cuban women's basketball team, the Argentinean and Puerto Rican men's
teams, and the Brazilian men's and women's teams.
 Exercise and sport studies professor
Chris Shelton will remember the Olympics in Atlanta as the Games that ushered
in a new era of achievement for women athletes.
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If competition for recognition in sports could ever be called a race,
Shelton would say she sees no finish line yet for women. She is excited,
however, to have been invited to attend a meeting this fall of the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lucerne, Switzerland. It will be the first time
the IOC has initiated a formal dialogue within the Olympic movement about
improving developmental sport for women, she says.
Speaking on behalf of the Women's Sports Foundation, she will urge the
IOC to recognize the 2000 Summer Olympics, to be held in Sydney, Australia,
as the 100th anniversary of women's participation in Olympic sports. More
importantly, she says, she will seek the IOC's help in realizing a 20-percent
participation quota for all women athletes from every country sending Olympians.
(A number of countries sent no women athletes to the Atlanta Games at all.)
And finally, she will ask the IOC to sponsor and support a series of sports
leadership conferences designed for women in developing countries who wish
to become coaches.
While more women participated in the 1996 Summer Olympics than ever before,
it should not go without notice that of the more than 10,000 Olympians,
6,500 were men and 3,700 were women. Of the 271 athletic events, there were
165 men-only athletic events, 95 women-only events and 11 mixed events,
including badminton, yachting and equestrian.
It's a far cry from 1896 and the first Olympiad, held in Athens, Greece;
there women athletes were excluded from participating in the Games. It wasn't
until the Paris Games four years later that women were invited to compete
in tennis, golf and yachting at the Paris Games. Less than a dozen women
accepted the invitation. But it was a start.
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A Local Olympic Hero
For any athlete who has ever competed in the Olympics, it is a privilege.
It puts athletes in a class of their own. And Judy Strong, now a senior
coach of field hockey and lacrosse at Smith, knows that firsthand. She understands
how much it takes to earn a marching spot as an American in the Olympics
opening ceremonies and how "totally awesome" it feels once you're
there.
Making the Olympic team not once, but twice, is what has helped earn
Judy Strong a bit of fame in local sports circles in New England. As one
colleague put it, "Judy is still a local folk hero around here."
It's been 12 years since she last competed on the Olympic women's field
hockey team and only three years since she again made the women's national
team.
A forward on the U.S. team that won a bronze medal in the Los Angeles
Games in 1984, Strong in 1993 received an invitation to participate in tryouts
for the national field hockey team. After winning one of the coveted 40
spots on that team, she then wrestled with what to do: Should she accept
the chance to play on the national team, which would lead to a chance to
be one of the 16 players to go to the Olympic Games, or should she let it
go? She knew, at the age of 33 in 1993, it would probably be her last opportunity
for Olympic competition. But it also meant three years of team training
in Virginia Beach and no guarantees--at least at that stage--of a shot at
the Olympics.
There are never any guarantees for an Olympic athlete. And not until
May 1996, when 24 players were readying themselves for the Atlanta Games,
would Strong have known whether or not she had survived the final cut to
be named one of the 16 Olympian field hockey team members.
In the end, Strong opted to keep her job as a coach and lecturer at Smith
rather than grabbing at the opportunity to make one more entrance into the
Olympic Stadium. "It was a very tough decision. I've had my moments
of regret. But I like my job," she says. "I can keep giving back
to the kids here. And I've already been on an Olympic team, two for that
matter. In 1984 we were expected to do nothing at all as a team. We played
welland we brought back the bronze!"
Athletic coach Judy Strong knows what it takes for an athlete to earn
a marching spot as an American in the Olympics opening ceremonies. She also
understands what an honor it is to be an Olympic medal winner.
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No medals have been won by an American field hockey team since--not even
this summer, although hopes were high that a gold medal was attainable in
1996.
Despite being ranked third in the world, the team finished a disappointing
fifth in competition, leading some to note that they played well, but peaked
too soon and scored too late. Australia, undefeated in competitions since
1994, took the gold medal, South Korea the silver, and Holland the bronze.
As a ticket holder for the Atlanta field hockey events, Strong admits
to having some flashbacks about marching in the opening ceremonies of the
1984 Summer Games. It was a good way, nevertheless, to reunite with 1984
teammates and cheer on former coach Pam Hixon from the University of Massachusetts,
who in 1994 became the coach of the U.S. team.
Strong's only complaint is that the field hockey events got little, if
any, television coverage from NBC or ESPN. "In England and Holland,
field hockey is a top priority, a family sport," Strong notes. "In
Europe, the sport is considered as popular as baseball is to us in the United
States. It was like that in 1984; we didn't get much air time and hasn't
changed since then."
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Life After the Olympics: A Running Analogy
From her home in Boulder, Colorado, Gwyn Hardesty Coogan '87 hardly gives
much thought to her own Olympic experiences, first as a contender in the
10,000 meters in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and this year in
Atlanta as a team alternate for the women's marathon. Unless she is asked.
"I wasn't nostalgic at this year's Games, as much as I really enjoyed
myself," Coogan says. "I was in the middle of a six-week training
break and we went to Atlanta for the last four days." Of the closing
ceremonies, she says, Atlanta "refreshed my bad feelings from 1992
in Barcelona. I was disillusioned by the hype and scope of the Olympics
in 1992."
Now a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at the University of Colorado and
at work on her doctoral dissertation in number theory, she shares parenting
responsibilities for daughter Katrina, who is almost 3, with husband and
running mate Mark. Between the two, they juggle training schedules so each
can continue with long-distance running.
Running, says Coogan, is as good for mental conditioning as it is for
physical. "It's a safe way to make mistakes. For instance, if I make
a mistake in a marathon, the worse thing that happens is I don't win a race.
It's not like I'm rock climbing and I make a mistake that causes me to fall
100 feet to my death. It's a safe place to learn about yourself, your limitations,
and learn about what your true feelings are."
Competition, whether it's in a road race, a job interview or a math exam,
Coogan says, is inevitable. Concentrating on what you can do, rather than
what you can't, is the key to performance. According to Coogan, "The
discipline of looking forward to an event is the same for any kind of competition;
you make sure you've covered all your bases by assessing your strengths
and building on those while trying not to let your weaknesses get you down."
Coogan describes the challenges of a math exam in much the same way she
describes running. "I don't want to be in an exam, see three questions
I can't answer and then freak out," she says. "Instead, I'll do
the questions I can answer first. It's the same thing in a race. If I'm
slower than the rest of the field, I don't look at the faster runners and
say, 'Oh, I'll have to drop out of the race.' I look at the field and say
to myself, 'Okay, I'll just have to run closer to the middle of the pack.'"
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Seeking a Niche
Now real life--and her own training routines--can begin again for Gretchen
Haase, M.S.'95, who spent six months this year as an employee of the Atlanta
Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG).
It had all happened quickly. Fresh from the graduate program of Smith's
Department of Exercise and Sport Studies, Haase had barely returned to her
native Seattle to look for a job when she was invited to apply for one with
the Olympic Sports Department in Atlanta--a unique and irresistible opportunity.
A week later, Haase was living in Atlanta and working as an assistant
manager for the Olympic rowing competitions, administration and training.
For Haase, who came to Smith in 1992 to coach crew and later was an assistant
varsity coach of lightweight rowers while in graduate school, it mattered
little that once the athletes started arriving on July 6 to prepare for
their Olympic rowing events, she worked from 5:30 in the morning until 8
at night, seven days a week.
Her own training routines, or lack of them, became irrelevant. It's a
sacrifice she willingly made to be one of only a handful of paid administrators
(there were more than 2,000 rowing volunteers) staffing the Lake Lanier,
Gainesville, rowing site.
Home in Seattle by mid-August, she rowed for the first time in almost
a year, noticing the next day, of course, how sore she was. In addition
to resuming regular rowing workouts, she plans to resume the hunt for a
job as a crew coach, although she is looking in an area of the country where
good coaching positions are low-paying and scarce. Working as a professional
regatta or event planner is another possibility. After all, what better
experience is there in working with players in the field, in exercising
knowledge of sports psychology and management, than to work as an Olympic
organizer and planner; what better way, for that matter, to launch a career?
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Career and Family Without Coxswain
For San Francisco investment banker Anne Martin '83, who today describes
herself as "driven," the effect of sports upon her life does not
go unnoticed. She remembers swimming competitively since she was 8, and
by the time she got to Smith as an undergraduate she had taken up team rowing.
In 1988, she finished ninth in the Seoul, South Korea, Olympics as stroke
in the women's quadruple scull event. By then she had become a world-class
athlete--this, while she worked full-time for a consulting firm in Lexington,
Massachusetts that generously gave her summers off so she could continue
to train. The training paid off; she won a bronze medal in international
competitions held in Belgium in 1985 and a gold medal in 1986 in the lightweight
fours without coxswain competition. In 1987, she came in fourth in the world
championships in lightweight singles. Then, as she tells it, "I put
down my oars. I was ready to retire from rowing."
But why? "It was always important to me to keep my life balanced
with something other than rowing," Martin says, "because I knew
it would end someday. And I also wanted to have a pretty serious career."
In 1991, she earned her master's degree in business at Stanford University.
In 1996, she gave birth to twin sons.
"I'm five years in the banking business, where I'm a vice president.
My life is kids and a full-time job," says Martin, who gives credit
to her husband, John Pestatore, a bronze medalist in the 1988 rowing competition
in Seoul and a high school math teacher, for helping their daily lives run
smoothly. "He's Mr. Mom," she jokes.
As for the 1996 Olympics, she watched them from home and marveled at
the accomplishments of this year's women athletes. "Women in the Olympics
this year were amazing, in good shape, had trained for years. It was very
impressive," Martin says. "I'm not sure if I were in training
today, I would be able to follow the same path-juggling both training and
a career."
Nevertheless, as she looks back she sees how rowing gave her a "great
lesson in setting goals and meeting them. But the other important lesson
I've learned recently," Martin adds, "and it's sometimes the hardest
thing for people like me, who are so driven, to know--is that slowing down
and being with family are the most important things to me now. I've never
been happier."
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