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Winter 1998
In a League of Their Own
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"Women
athletes today owe everything to Judee Holland," says Sondheimer.
"Without her, UCLA wouldn't be recognized as it is. She was so ahead
of her time that it gave UCLA an edge."
Under
NCAA auspices, UCLA women kept racking up impressive results, with
athletes such as basketball's Denise Curry '82, softball's Dot Richardson
'84, volleyball's Liz Masakayan and gymnastics' Sharon Shapiro '84
drawing national attention. It wasn't just campus sports that boosted
UCLA's women, however. The Olympic Games have turned the spotlight
on a number of Bruin women over the past 25 years, going back to
Meyers' participation on the first women's Olympic basketball team
in 1976. In 1984, Bruin women won an astounding 12 medals in the
L.A. Games. In fact, the '84 Games were like campus sports, with
an Olympic village sprouting from the intramural field and gymnastics
-- dominated by Bruin men -- taking place in Pauley. Bruin women
speedsters showed they had no equal, beginning a streak of 100-meter
sprint champions (Ashford in '84, Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988
and Gail Devers in 1992 and 1996) that still hasn't been broken.
With
all its upside, though, the 1980s were also a time when Title IX
was under threat. The Reagan Administration weakened enforcement
of the law, and federal court cases narrowed its impact (until 1988,
when Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act to put Title
IX back on track). "There was a backlash in the '80s," says Holland,
"but it wasn't overt. You just went into work with white knuckles
every day." UCLA's basketball program also suffered a blow in 1984,
just after a remarkable victory over highly ranked Old Dominion,
when star players Char Jones and Michelle McCoy were dismissed mid-season
for academic problems. For Holland, it's still a bitter memory,
especially since no male athletes had ever been kicked out in similar
circumstances. "I shut my office door and cried for an hour after
it happened," she says. "Sure I felt bad for the program, but I
really felt bad for those kids." Since both athletes were African
Americans from inner-city backgrounds, their dismissal put a damper
on UCLA's recruitment of inner-city players for years to come --
even though UCLA had been at the forefront of bringing opportunities
to African-American student-athletes.
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