Babe Didrikson Zaharias
The first woman to play in a PGA event, Zaharias competed in the 1938 Los Angeles Open. Only four other women have appeared in PGA events since. She was also accomplished in basketball, track, tennis, baseball, and swimming, and was selected the best female athlete of the first half of the 20th century by the AP. Asked if there was anything she didn’t play, Babe responded: “Yeah, dolls.”
Toni Stone
Stone is considered the “female Jackie Robinson,” as she was the first woman to play big-league professional baseball. She was signed by the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League in 1953 to play second base. Their previous second baseman? Future Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.
Billie Jean King
King defeated Bobby Riggs on Mother’s Day in the first of two 1973 matches dubbed Battle of the Sexes, landmark moments where a female athlete bested a male head-to-head on a nationwide broadcast. She had staying power too — 10 years later at Wimbledon, she became the oldest Grand Slam semifinalist at 39 years, 7 months and 9 days old.Nadia Comaneci
At just 14 years old, Comaneci was a breakout star at the 1976 Montreal games. She became the first to achieve a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event, and won gold in the all-around, beam and uneven bars. “I just remember trying to stay focused,” she said. “It takes very little to break your concentration, and then you make mistakes.”
Victoria Roche
Roche, originally from Korea and adopted by British parents living in Brussels, was the first girl to play in the Little League World Series in 1984. Little League began allowing girls to play in the late 1970s, and the first to reach the World Series was Roche. She was an outfielder on the Belgium squad, which also included her brother Jeremy. Other girls have followed in her footsteps.
Nancy Lieberman
Lieberman has been a pioneer since she was 17 and made the U.S. Olympic team for the 1976 Montreal Games. She became the first woman in a men’s pro league in 1986 with the Springfield Fame of the United States Basketball League. When the WNBA started, she returned as a player, and played one last game in 2008, at age 50.
Steffi Graf
No women’s tennis player has dominated a calendar year the way Graf did in 1988 at age 19. She completed the only Golden Slam in tennis history, by winning all four Grand Slam singles titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year. Leading up to her Grand Slam, she lost just once that year, to Gabriela Sabatini at Amelia Island.
Florence Griffith-Joyner
Griffith-Joyner still looms large over track and field. Incredibly, she still holds the women’s world records in both the 100 meters and 200 meters, more than three decades later. She put up both times in 1988, with a 100m time of 10.49 seconds during Olympic qualifying and a 200m time of 21.34 during the Seoul games.
Manon Rheaume
A scout sent videotape of Rheaume to the Tampa Bay Lightning, she was invited to camp, and made her debut against the Blues in 1992. It was the first appearance by a woman in an NHL preseason game. “This changed my life basically and took my life in a different direction than I was planning to go,” said Rheaume, who won silver for Canada in the 1998 Winter Olympics.
Julie Krone
Aboard Colonial Affair at the 1993 Belmont Stakes, she became the first female jockey to win a Triple Crown race. She earned 3,704 wins and was the first woman inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Krone endured a fractured kneecap (in a race she went on to win), fractured ankle, a fall in which she broke both hands, and a fractured arm.
Post a Comment