Penn celebrates women's athletics with F. Hockey Final Four

On Saturday, the Quakers' thrashing of Harvard became a university-wide celebration when thousands of students tossed the east goal post into the Schuylkill River. This Saturday, Penn will once again host a celebration -- a Silver Anniversary celebration, that is. Over 500 alumnae, students and guests will come to Penn on Saturday to commemorate 25 years of women's championship competition in the Ivy League. Throughout the year, each of the eight Ivy League schools will host a special weekend event to mark the 25-year landmark. Penn's weekend celebration kicks off on Saturday. The following day, the festivities continue as Penn hosts the NCAA Division I Field Hockey Championships at Franklin Field. Besides the field hockey championships -- an event that is, by itself, generating significant attention -- Penn is also specifically honoring the history of women's athletics in the Ivy League with a special exhibit at the Palestra. In preparation for the event, administrators, alumni and current students researched the history of Penn women's athletics -- a difficult task since much of the history was either incomplete or unrecorded. "We looked at what the archives had, what the yearbooks had, we looked at the newspapers," Carolyn Schlie Femovich -- Penn's senior associate athletic director -- said. The Palestra display, which will make its way to each of the eight Ivy campuses, features a 20-foot, two-sided traveling photo exhibit. The photos capture both the past 25 years and older moments in the history of women's athletics. Penn is also creating a timeline that traces important moments in Quakers' women's athletics, beginning in the 1920s. In addition, the exhibit features a more general study of what sports were being developed, where they were played, what the facilities were like and who the competition was. Though the Ivy League is celebrating the 25th anniversary of women's sports, the Penn timeline begins in the 1920s because, as Femovich noted, Penn women's athletic history dates back far longer than the 25 years of official Ivy competition. 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 other Ivy League teams, but never competed in any sort of recorded championship contest. The first Ivy League women's championship held was a 1973 rowing contest. Squash is the most recent addition to the list of championships, having been added in 1982. Golf will be the next women's sport to debut an Ivy championship, as it holds its first this spring. According to Valerie Cloud, Penn's veteran field hockey coach, chronicling the history of women's collegiate athletics is especially important, as it gives current student-athletes a chance to connect with their predecessors. "I don't think the current students have a good sense of history," Cloud said, adding that she had just seen the photo display and considered it simply "awesome." Women's lacrosse coach Anne Sage agreed that Saturday's celebration will educate current student-athletes. "I think a lot of the current athletes think this is the way it always was," Sage said. "We didn't have the opportunities." Between the field hockey championship and the display inside of the Palestra, Penn expects a massive celebration of women's athletics this weekend. "It's just an awesome weekend for field hockey and for women's sports," Cloud said. "It will be very gratifying when it's all over."

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