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Thursday, June 18, 2015

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com SPORTS

By TED JANES 

Daily Sports Writer

It was mid-morning, and Sheryl 

Szady turned on the television in 
her Oklahoma City hotel. Footage 
of the Michigan baseball coach, 
Erik Bakich, was replaying from an 
earlier press conference.

In the days before, the Michigan 

baseball team, notable underdogs, 
had won its first Big Ten Tourna-
ment under Bakich’s watch but 
had fallen short in the Louisville 
Regional of the NCAA Tourna-
ment.

Szady tuned in as Bakich’s 

speech reemphasized one of his 
goals for the program.

“Look at softball’s success,” 

Szady recalls Bakich saying. “Look 
at Hutch, what she does with her 
players. There’s no reason that 
baseball can’t be just that good.”

Accentuating the success of 

Michigan softball coach Carol 
Hutchins, “Hutch” to those who 
know her, is something Bakich has 
done since day one. When then-
Athletic Director Dave Brandon 
hired him to take over the base-
ball team in 2012, he addressed the 
media in a similar fashion.

“We’ve got to catch Hutch,” 

Bakich said in his inaugural press 
conference. “Hutch has set the bar. 
The softball program gives me tre-
mendous optimism of what base-
ball can do here, and not just do it 
once in a while, but do it on a con-

sistent level. She is someone I’ve 
enjoyed meeting, and I’m looking 
forward to spending time with and 
picking her brain on exactly how 
she does it.”

If chasing softball was Bakich’s 

plan, then he had another accom-
plishment to pursue on Sunday 
evening of May 31. After the Car-
dinals halted the baseball team’s 
Cinderella run, another Michigan 
team was on the brink of rising to 
exceptional heights.

All eyes turned to Oklahoma 

City, where the softball team — a 
trailblazer for Wolverine athlet-
ics — took down LSU that same 
day. The victory against the Tigers 
merited a spot in the National 
Championship.

Baseball, in Bakich’s eyes, was 

laying down the groundwork 
to reach softball’s prominence, 
a group that for the last three 
decades has been one of Michi-
gan’s most consistent. A team 
that, when both compete on the 
same day, draws more fans to the 
bleachers because Hutchins, who 
has more wins than any other 
coach in the University’s his-
tory, built the program into one 
of Michigan’s greatest. And when 
the Wolverines came so close to 
capturing their second National 
Championship, the Great Lakes 
State watched more than any-
where else in the country.

Baseball didn’t garner the spot-

light, so Bakich was right. The 

baseball team needed to, and still 
must, catch up to softball. Right 
now, the women of the Wilpon 
Complex bear the torch, and the 
men lag behind.

And Sheryl Szady was elated, 

because 40 years ago, when she 
suited up for Michigan’s first varsity 
women’s basketball and field hockey 
teams, the paradigm couldn’t have 
looked more different.

“I was in my hotel room going, 

‘Yes, finally! They’re striving to be 
what we are.’ ”

***

Foraging through the Michi-

gan archives, one would be hard-

pressed to find the names Liz 
Eagan and Sheryl Szady. The for-
mer only appears once, and the lat-
ter just twice.

The 
pair, 
longtime 
friends, 

began their athletic careers in 1973 
playing for Michigan field hockey’s 
“Team One,” and even though their 
statistics are virtually impossible 
to dig up, the foundation they tilled 
for future female athletes at Michi-
gan was exceptional.

Szady and Eagan were given 

the opportunity to play collegiate 
sports, at the varsity level, because 
of the enactment and implemen-
tation of Title IX. The law is a 
portion of the United States Edu-
cation Amendments of 1972 that 
declares 
that 

no person, on 
the basis of sex, 
can be excluded 
from 
an 
edu-

cational 
pro-

gram. Title IX, 
which 
applies 

to far more than 
athletics, 
was 

passed in 1972, but the guidelines 
for compliance in terms collegiate 
sports were not immediately laid 
out.

After the law was passed, Szady 

and her future basketball team-
mate Linda Laird began to cam-
paign for the actual creation of 
women’s varsity teams. At first, 
the University was remiss, ignor-
ing their requests.

The athletic director at the 

time, Don Canham, was outward-
ly unsupportive. Szady remem-
bers Canham challenging her and 
Laird. He said, “Who will you 
play? We have no money to trav-
el.” At the time, while their teams 
remained at the club level, Szady 
and Eagan were chipping in to pay 
for their own coaches. 

Otherwise, they were staffed by 

volunteers. The expenses of travel 
for women’s sports were beyond 
them.

In April of 1973, the University 

had yet to create women’s varsity 
teams despite Title IX’s passage 
nearly a year before, so Szady and 
Laird went to the University’s 
Board of Regents to campaign.

Canham wasn’t thrilled, but 

Szady and Laird finally got the 
answer they wanted.

“Yes, we’re going to start this 

program,” then-University Presi-
dent Robben Wright Fleming, also 
an ex-officio member of the board, 
told Szady and Laird.

At last it had been pronounced, 

signed and sealed, the dawn of 

women’s 
var-

sity 
sports 
at 

Michigan 
had 

begun. But the 
journey to top, to 
the place Szady 
wanted to reach, 
would take time.

“We 
always 

dreamed to be 

equal or have the same benefits and 
opportunities as the men,” Szady 
said.

But by the way things seemed 

in the mid-70’s, catching up to the 
benefits the men were afforded 
seemed centuries away. Women’s 
athletics at Michigan then weren’t 
characterized by what was avail-
able to them, but by what wasn’t. 
Over 40 years later, Eagan and 
Szady remember the first season, 
when the field hockey team played 
at Michigan Stadium.

There was no athletic training, 

no stretching, no pregame music, 
no meals or anything of that mat-
ter. At halftime, they didn’t go 
into the locker rooms at the Big 
House.

DELANEY RYAN/Daily

Former Michigan athletes Sheryl Szady and Liz Eagan reconnected and reflected on their time as Wolverines at the WCWS.
A new ‘catching up’: Women’s 
athletics continuing to grow

“We have 

always dreamed 

to be equal.”

See CATCHING, Page 10

