On March 30th, Millersville Athletics have a good time on the one-hundredth anniversary of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics. The rite became held to have fun and honor all past and present accomplishments of women’s sports activities and the contributions of Marge Trout. Speakers from the ceremony blanketed Alumni Ashley Moyer-Gleich (2010) and junior Madeline Stehly. Moyer-Gleich contemplated back on her years of being a basketball player for the Marauders. During her career, she gained 3 PSAC East titles, in addition to three NCAA Tournament appearances. She has because risen to end up the fourth lady NBA legitimate in contemporary records. However, she didn’t take complete credit for her fulfillment. She turned into inspired with the aid of strong ladies in her life: her mother Patti, and her former MU basketball instruct, Mary Fleig. “My mother raised me as a bit lady, dribbling a basketball in the kitchen wearing a get dressed to be a referee in the NBA nowadays. Years later, I met the second maximum effective women instruct, Mary Flieg.” Flieg taught me two training in my lifestyles,” he explained.”The first lesson was the way to… lead with a mindset and with extreme ferocity. Second, how to behave with fearlessness.” She later said that “all the one’s years in Millersville inspired me to in which I am nowadays, and I desire that with those instructions, I will inspire the next technology of Women Athletics,”
Madeline Stehly is a year starter for the MU Field Hockey crew and has earned her membership into the National Field Hockey Coaches Association ( NFHCA) All-Academic Squad and won the NFHCA Scholar of Distinction. Although, as a local of Valley Center, California, she became regularly requested why she would depart California for Millersville, “Millersville became an area that drew me in with its values and ordinary culture. As a scared freshman, I was greeted by the field hockey instruct, team of workers, and crew, who made me sense at home. Although there are matters that I conflict with, particularly [apperarent in] Freshman yr: I know that they have my back. There’s that [feeling] all over campus and particularly with ladies athletics.” She went on to say that she learned more from Women Athletics than anywhere else and that “I still have extra to discover.” She concluded via pronouncing that, “We are extra than a crew; we are a circle of relatives.”
The remanding of the rite contemplated at the closing one hundred years and how Women’s Athletics has come. Over a hundred years in the past, there were battles inside Millersville over the importance and notion of ladies’ athletics. However, a very famous suggest, Marge Trout, changed into fortunate sufficient to look at the fee and significance of ladies’ sports. Trout turned into a vanguard for Millersville within the fantastic boom in women’s athletics and helped create possibilities for younger athletes who weren’t to be had while she changed into developing. When Trout first taught physical training in 1964 at MU, while there were handiest four sports for girls. Trout desired to exchange that, and they innovated and advanced several intercollegiate sports like field hockey, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, and so on. Barbara Walman, a 1973 Elwood J. Finley Award winner, said at the ceremony, “Mrs. Trout constantly fought for us to have equality and fairness,” stated Barb Waltman. “In a few methods,” stated Waltman, “we have been dealt with quite unfairly; however, we were given what we had to compete. We by no means felt like we were 2d-class residents because Trout became such advice for us. So we started out to get greater uniforms and system and court docket time for practice.”
According to a pamphlet surpassed out on occasion, history becomes being made whilst in 1972, Title IX was signed. Before the law become handed, fewer than 32,000 ladies were playing and competing in intercollegiate athletics. Trout innovation and Title IX soar commenced and led greater women than ever before to end up athletics. Then nine years later, Trout have become the Director of Women’s Athletics until her retirement in 2001. However, each accomplishment got here with a project. Donna Eshleman from the Millersville Athletics Department reflected on those demanding situations whilst she had the privilege to work alongside Trout as a student secretary even as being a scholar-athlete in 1978, “One of the several demanding situations I do not forget all through my years encompass now not being able to practice [during the summer]in Brooks Gym (where we would play our domestic basketball video games)…because the constructing changed into stored locked at some point of the summer season; no longer having indoor exercise space when it rained inside the spring season [softball had to use Byerly Gym if it was available. It was a dangerously small space to use for softball practice!]. Finally, when a brand new field was designed for softball in the back of Pucillo Gym, the infield turned lovely: but, the football group practiced in the outfield throughout our spring season! Needless to say, there was no grass growing inside the outfield. With football practicing in our outfield, it challenged numerous people to see how generally we should hit the ball into their practice throughout our batting practice time! ”
Since then, Trout drove Millersville into solving these problems. Now, there have been new renovations of athletic facilities. Eshleman states that “due to the fact my 4 years on campus (1978-1982) until now, there were many adjustments for girls’ intercollegiate sports activities teams at Millersville, [such as:] opposition and practice area/courtroom availability (i.E., playing on same fields/court docket as guys’ groups); protection of athletic facilities; [increases in the] number of competitions [played] all through the normal season, and [permission for] pre-season practices and after season [practices,] ensuing in an accelerated standard call for on scholar-athletes time.”
Since the signing of Title IX and Trout’s improvements, over 52 participants of the Millersville University Athletics Hall of Fame are ladies, and almost 60 percent of its 450 scholar-athletes are girls, in step with Millersville Athletics’’s pamphlet. Kristin Kunzman, Assistant Coach for basketball, ended the rite and spoke for Marge Trout, who couldn’t make it to the rite: “We all have a completely essential position inside the improvement of packages that exist nowadays. There were many memorable moments over one hundred years, and we’re searching forward to 100 years greater; May we maintain to offer to assist the subsequent era younger women that come to Millersville for schooling and need to participate in sports activities.”
