March 15, 2011
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Penn State All-Sports Museum will host three speakers and a movie at the Clemens Family Theatre beginning Wednesday with former softball coach Pat McTarsney for Women's History Month. All speaker series presentations begin on Wednesdays at Noon.
In 1964, four women's sports attained varsity status at Penn State. By 1968, Penn State had a total of 11 women's varsity sports, four years before the influential Title IX legislation. Come 2012, Penn State will have 14 women's varsity sports with the inclusion of women's hockey. Pat McTarsney led the charge as Penn State's first softball coach, a stint that lasted 15 seasons (1965-72, 1974-80). McTarsney will speak Wednesday, Mar. 16.
Dr. Mark Dyreson will approach the topics of women in the Olympics and his time at Penn State as a professor in the kinesiology department and an affiliate professor in the department of history. During the 1920s American women began for the first time both to vote and to participate in the modern Olympic Games. Many journalists, sports administrators, and women athletes saw these two advances in gender equity as linked. Quite a few people even claimed that women's incursions into the formerly all-male domains of Olympic competition were even more important than the hard-fought victory, which won them the right to vote. Dr. Dyreson speaks Wednesday, Mar. 23.
The third and final speaker will be Toni Clarke, who played for the Lady Lion basketball team and graduated in 1979. Title IX legislation forbade sex discrimination in institutions that received federal aid. This applied not only to women's participation in athletics, but also women's access to higher education, such as law schools. In the early 1980s, the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Association of Women Judges joined forces to push the state and federal courts to review a perceived bias against women that they believed existed in the courts. Join the All-Sports Museum as Clarke speaks about her time on the basketball and in the court of law. Clarke speaks Wednesday, Mar. 30.
In addition to the speaker series, the All-Sports Museum will present the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own, starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis. The movie depicts the inception of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which started during World War II. Show times will take place this weekend starting at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. All events will have refreshments on hand and the events are free to the public.
For more information, please call Aimee Brown at (814) 863-5689 or email at asb193@psu.edu. The All-Sports Museum is located at the southwest corner of Beaver Stadium opposite the Bryce Jordan Center on Curtin Road. For complete coverage of all the activities at the Museum, visit GoPSUsports.com.
Follow Penn State All-Sports Museum on Twitter and Facebook at /PSUSportsMuseum.
--NITTANY LIONS--