Penn celebrates Ivy women's athletics

The invitation calls it "A Celebration of Generations." If everything goes as expected during Penn's commemoration of 25 years of Ivy League women's championship competition, that's exactly what it will be. On November 21, Penn will host around 500 alumnae, students and guests in the Palestra, as they commemorate the history of women's athletics in the Ivy League. As part of the celebration, Penn is hosting the NCAA Division I Field Hockey Championships. Penn's celebration will occur Saturday the 21st, while the championship game will be played the following day. Penn's event is part of a year-long, league-wide celebration. Throughout the year, each of the eight Ivy League universities is hosting an event -- Harvard held a symposium last month -- to celebrate the landmark. "We think that 25 years is a significant point in time. No other league has hit this milestone yet in women's athletics," said Carolyn Schlie Femovich, senior associate athletic director and one of the organizers of the event. According to Jules Spaeth, Penn's assistant director of alumni relations, invitations were sent out to every alumnus that could be located who played a women's varsity sport. Included on the invitation is a series of pictures, both recent and old, that chronicle the history of women's athletics at Penn. "We're getting more and more people calling in, saying that they recognize someone from the photos," Spaeth said. In preparation for the event, administrators and alumni extensively researched Penn athletics. Researches found, however, that gathering information about women's athletic contributions at Penn was a difficult task because it was often unrecorded or incomplete. "We looked at what the archives had, what the yearbooks had, we looked at the newspapers," Femovich said. "Part of our task was to get the history of women's athletics at Penn recorded and compiled in one central place." The compiled research will be presented in various form in the Palestra during the celebration. On display at Penn -- and at each of the universities' campus event -- will be a 20-foot, two-sided traveling photo exhibit. The photos capture both the past 25 years and older historic moments in the history of women's athletics. Femovich added that Penn is creating a timeline that will be on display in the Palestra." The timeline will include Penn athletic moments from throughout this century as well as a more general study of what sports were being developed, where they were played, what facilities were like, and who the competition was. The timeline begins in the 1920's because, as Femovich noted, Penn women's athletic history dates back far longer than 25 years. "Our hope for the alumni is that they will get a personal insight into what it is like to be an athlete today and how they helped to lay the groundwork to make it all possible for today's athletes" Femovich said. In fact, Penn's first recorded women's varsity team is the 1916 tennis squad. Prior to 1973, Penn's women's varsity squads competed against local schools and the other Ivy League teams, but never competed in any sort of recorded championship contest. The first Ivy League women's championship was a 1973 rowing contest. The most recently added championship was squash in 1982. And golf will be the next women's sport to debut as it holds its first championship this spring. "We felt that we should celebrate not just 25 years of women competing in Ivy League championships, but all those women and all those things that happened before then," Femovich said. The Ivy League celebration is both a testament to the past 25 years, but also an acknowledgement of the progress made. Femovich cited better talent, improved facilities and increased coverage as positive changes. Women's field hockey coach Val Cloud, who has coached at Penn for 19 years, claimed that the sheer quality of her players is the most dramatic change. "The quality academically and athletically has increased," Cloud said, adding that the increase in talent is evident around the Ivy League. Women's basketball coach Julie Soriero agrees. "Parents are encouraging their daughters to be athletes, not cheerleaders," Soreiro said. With November 21 in the near future and many alumni planning on attending the celebration, the excitement is building among both administrators and current student-athletes. Diana Caramanico, a member of the women's basketball team and last year's Ivy League Rookie of the Year, said the attention that women athletes are now receiving helps generate better facilities and increased coverage. "The more aware people are of women's athletics, the more energy and resources they're going to put into it," Caramanico said, mentioning the Women's National Basketball Association as proof of recent progress. "It's a great time to be playing women's sports."