Army West Point Athletics
Thursday, May 27 - Memorial Day, a Time to Reflect
May 27, 2010 | General
Mady Salvani taking care of today's blog. Graduation was this past Saturday with the President of the United States here to present diplomas. Not one to brag, but women's soccer player Liz Betterbed was No. 1 in the class (includes academic, physical and military disciplines) and No. 2 academically.
She is just the second female to be No. 1 since woman arrived at West Point in the summer of 1976 and the other was a women's tennis player in Rebecca Marier in 1995. This year is the 30th anniversary of the first class to graduate. Those first few classes were a special group of females to survive those early years.
Luckily there were a lot of folks who wanted to make it work and were in favor of females attending the Academy. However, there were just as many who were hoping it would not last and it would be a phase. It wasn't and not only did they survive but flourished in the Corps of Cadets as one can see today.
Sports were a big factor in the beginning. There were no fall sports in place that first year even though they knew females were coming. The first sport was women's basketball and Army had a talented group of players. Christi Stevens was a member of that first class and though she was short by today's standard for a forward, she grabbed any rebound that went to her side. She went on to act as team captain all four years.
The games were played in the Central Gym at 4 o'clock in the afternoon during the week. At the start of games there were few people in the gym but by 4:30 it was crowded because the Cadets were cutting through as they were headed to barracks to get ready for dinner. They would stop and cheer on the girls teams. It was a small gym so it didn't need a lot to make it look full.
The first year I didn't do any stats because it was a club team. The second year I worked women's basketball and did stats with a manager. I used the same form we used for men's basketball and would call to my manager and she would record what I said with little dots. We then converted that info on a NCAA stat sheet that at that time did not list minutes, steals, turnovers or blocked shots. One of my managers was Becky Halstead, who went on to become the first female West Point graduate to achieve the rank of general in the U.S. Army.
The new list for Hall of Fame just came out and Melody Smith, one of the finest shooters in women's basketball history, will be inducted in September. Melody was a pure shooter and held Army's scoring record for over 20 years. She had long-range ability and I can imagine how many points she would have if the 3-point shot was in existence at that time.
Years ago Memorial Day weekend was a busy time in our office as it was the start of June Week and also Army-Navy weekend with track, baseball, golf, tennis and lacrosse split between the two service academies. It was a special for our office because it our last weekend of competition before it started again in September, which is different today as fall sports open in August.
