Hard Fought Victories

by Sara Gogol

Profiles coaches from a wide variety of sports--basketball, volleyball, tennis, softball, track, cross country, soccer, rowing, field hockey, lacrosse, cross country, and ice hockey--at U.S. colleges. Offers inspiring stories about the strong, competitive women who have helped reshape women's collegiate sports. The coaches profiled include Tara VanDerveer, the 1996 Olympic basketball coach and winner of two national championships at Stanford; ice hockey coaches Digit Murphy, who was involved in the ground-breaking Title IX lawsuit against Brown University, and Shannon Miller, the only female head coach for women's ice hockey at the 1998 Olympics; national championship winning track coach Beverly Kearney and championship winning softball coach Margie Wright; head coach and mother Muffet McGraw, whose 2001 team brought Notre Dame its first-ever women's basketball championship; and many more women who coach at both well-known and less prominent colleges across the country.