4.6.25

Setting the Record Straight

By Lily Parker ’23/25

With no funding or facilities to speak of, things were different for female student-athletes before the adoption of Title IX. And although their athletic careers weren’t officially documented prior to 1974, Wichita State’s first softball players kept their own records of those early years filled with hardships, highlights and everything in-between.

In 1974, Wichita State joined the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, a landmark achievement for progressing equal treatment of men and women in college athletics. But what of the women who had been playing sports long before the university officially recognized their teams, whose efforts laid the foundation for the thriving programs we enjoy today?

As a matter of fact, women’s sports at Wichita State have existed as far back as 1906, although to decidedly less fanfare than men’s sports. Female students attending Fairmount College, and eventually the University of Wichita, could participate in a host of intramural activities, including basketball, tennis, archery, volleyball, field hockey, rifle and tennikoit – just as a sampling. The softball program started gaining real momentum in 1969; teams formed in mid-September, and the season commenced that following April. Jan (Pew) Hoskins ’72/76, quadruple threat in field hockey, basketball, volleyball and softball during her time as a student, still remembers the challenges from those early days. “We had no trainers, no dugouts, no meal money, no formal league. Coaches donated their time, and we only had one or two softballs per game, no matter what happened,” says Hoskins, the Pizza Hut Shocker Sports Hall-of-Famer who was inducted in 2020. “We were all learning on the job through the first couple of years.”

But what the team lacked in resources, they made up for in abundant resolve. Players bought their own uniforms and equipment and, during the off season, stored them in the mostly-empty closets in the men’s old facilities. Without money for plane tickets or hotel rooms, they traveled by car to face off whichever rival schools would play them in Kansas – Emporia, the University of Kansas, Kansas State and Washburn, to name a few. Home games were held at Heights High School and practices at the ungraded and unleveled grass field east of Henrion Hall, where today the northernmost court of the Sheldon Coleman Tennis Complex is situated.

No one official record lays out the team’s story nor the stories of the young women who worked to ensure that the program gained formal recognition. Instead, it’s scattered throughout archives and yearbooks, newspaper clippings and scrapbooks assembled by the pioneering players, the women who can be seen today in the stands of Wilkins Stadium, cheering on the team they helped make possible.

BUILDING A TOP-TIER SOFTBALL FACILITY

Wichita State softball players will soon have a high-caliber facility fit for a high-caliber team, thanks to the ongoing renovation of Wilkins Stadium. “We’re dedicated to updating the stadium to match the outstanding growth and success of the Shocker softball program,” says Darin Kater, WSUFAE senior vice president of development. “Individuals and businesses are stepping up to the plate to provide key funding to renew the stadium. These upgrades will enable the university to host conference and regional tournaments on campus and, most importantly, will foster great, positive experiences for not only our softball student-athletes and their fans and supporters, but all Shockers.”