The Founding of CMS and Growth of Women’s Athletics
With CMC officially going co-ed in the fall of 1976, the presence of women on campus brought change to the classrooms, residence and dining halls, and the playing fields. To accommodate women’s athletics, a joint program was established with Scripps and Harvey Mudd with the women’s teams to compete under the Athenas moniker. With the women’s athletics department established for the 1976-77 academic year, the Athenas began competition in five intercollegiate sports: volleyball, basketball, swimming and diving, track, and tennis; with a sixth, cross country, added in fall of 1977.
The expansion of women's sports wasn't just a local phenomenon. The Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) began in 1971, which introduced postseason opportunities for women's sports; and Title IX passed in 1972, which helped promote equality in athletics. The NCAA would eventually absorb the AIAW and take on women's championships during the 1981-82 season. Alone, CMC would have had a huge disadvantage in trying to start an independent women’s program facing competition against other SCIAC schools that had been coeducational throughout their history. Fortunately, the addition of Harvey Mudd and Scripps College athletes into the program eased any difficulties. Prior to becoming part of varsity athletics, Scripps students competed in club sports together with Pomona College. One of those club sports was the women's tennis club, run by Scripps professor Gerry Lahanas, who became the first women's varsity tennis coach for the Athenas and served as founding women's athletic director.
(Read more about the founding of the Athenas and beginnings of women’s athletics here)
Jodie Burton
Joining CMS Athletics in 1979 as head volleyball and women's basketball coach, Jodie Burton emerged as consistent voice for gender and program equity. Best known for her 32 seasons as head coach of the Athena basketball program, Burton stood as the winningest coach in SCIAC basketball history when she stopped coaching basketball in 2011. Burton has served as head women's golf coach since the program's start in 2012 and has also served the athletic department's Senior Women's Administrator and an Associate Athletic Director.
(Jodie Burton was inducted into the Ted Ducey CMS Hall of Fame in 2012. Read her biography here)
In tennis, the Stags continued to make their mark. Coached by Hank Krieger, a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd, the Stags tennis team flourished within SCIAC, attaining a record of 40-8 between 1976 and 1980. In 1976, the Stags shared the SCIAC title with Redlands and went on to finish second in the NCAA Division III Championships to Kalamazoo College. However, John Blomberg ’76 would take home the Stags’ first NCAA Division III National Singles title, with A.J. Shaka (HMC ’80) repeating the feat the following year (Read full story here). In 1981, Stags tennis won their first NCAA Championship trophy, sharing the title with Swathmore College. (Read full story here)
(Hank Krieger was inducted into the Ted Ducey CMS Hall of Fame in 2004. Read his biography here)
Bicycle Racing Program
The CMC Bicycle Racing Program, one of the first of its kind in the country, was directed by an alumnus who expressed the ideals of a scholar athlete. In 1967, as a CMC undergraduate, Steve Maaranen '69 had competed in the Olympics in Mexico City. After graduating from CMC and serving in the Army, Marranen took his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School, researching at Oxford for his dissertation on British foreign policy in the 1930s. Returning to CMC as a faculty member, Maaranen also organized and coached the pioneering cycling program. With the prospect of the 1984 Olympics being held in Los Angeles, President Jack Stark and the CMC Board of Trustees were quietly pursuing the possibility of constructing a velodrome (a concrete banked bicycle raceway, surrounded by 3,000 to 4,000 permanent seats) for the LA Olympics. The velodrome would be built on eighty acres of land east of CMC between Sixth Street and Foothill Boulevard, east of Claremont Boulevard, property pledged to the College by Consolidated Rock Company, if the site were to be selected as an Olympic venue. Stark and the trustees envisioned CMC becoming an international center for cycling after the Olympics. While the project never materialized, it did underscore CMC’s commitment to a full spectrum of sports in the athletics program.
Members of the Bicycle Racing Program in 1977. CMC psychology-philosophy major Deborah Packer '79 achieved national rank in bicycling competition and Coach Steve Maaranen considered her “one of the finest women riders in the country.”
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Stags soccer team emerged as a local and national power. Under head coach and professor of philosophy Steve Davis, the Stags won the SCIAC title in 1978 at 10-0-2 and recorded two straight 6-0 league seasons in 1981 and 1982, which would begin a streak of 14 league championships in a row. In 1983, the Stags made a run to NCAA Division III Championship game, finishing runners-up to UNC-Greensboro after a 3-2 defeat. The following season the Stags made another deep run in the NCAA tournament, but again came just short losing to Kean College 2-1. (Read full story here)
1984 saw the opening of Pritzlaff Field as the new home to CMS soccer. The facility was funded by the Pritzlaff Family in honor of John Pritzlaff III '76, who helped Claremont-Mudd to back-to-back SCIAC Championships in 1974 and 1975. With soccer establishing itself as a powerhouse program, Pritzlaff Field provided a soccer-dedicated facility for the teams to call home, instead of the multi-use Parents Field which took a beating over the years. (Read full story here)
With Pritzlaff Field in place, the athletic department was able to add women's soccer to the varsity fold, with the Athenas kicking off their debut season in 1985 as the department's seventh women’s sport (and 17th overall). It didn't take long for women's soccer to join its male counterparts as SCIAC Champions, as the Athenas took league titles in 1987 and 1988 and began the program with nine straight winning seasons in league play, compiling a 60-11-5 record from 1987 to 1993.
(Steve Davis was inducted into the Ted Ducey CMS Hall of Fame in 2005. Read his biography here)
Water polo continued to be a CMS strength and the program built upon its successes of the 1960s and 1970s. Coached by Mike Sutton '76, the 1984 Stags water polo team had won the previous two SCIAC championships, capturing a third in a row that year, while also becoming the first (and still only) men’s water polo team to reach the 30-win plateau. The 1984 team also won the first of three Western Water Polo Association Championships, repeating as champions in 1986 and 1987.
(Read more about the 1984 and 1987 WWPA Championship teams here and here)
(Mike Sutton was inducted into the Ted Ducey CMS Hall of Fame in 2018. Read his biography here)
Ted Ducey CMS Hall of Fame Inductees
Class of 1976: John Blomberg; Wynnsan Moore; Roberto Muñoz; John Pritzlaff; Michael Sutton
Class of 1977: William "Bill”" Morrow
Class of 1979: Michael Haas; John Pignotti
Class of 1980: Bob Farra; Bob Gallagher; Wolfgang Karl Heim; Augie Nieto; A.J. Shaka (HMC); Kevin Smith
Class of 1981: Jenna West Kawamura (SC); Mary Tracey
Class of 1982: Brett Eppich Beal (SC)
Class of 1984: B.J. Fair; James Hanley; Donovan Jones; Geoff Russell; Martha Cobb Shanks
Class of 1985: Dale Donohoe; Cindy Nagle Gorman (SC)
Class of 1986: Nick Bagatelos; Carl Giles; Tom Harrison; Diana Thomas Schulz; Eric Themm; Mike Thomas
Class of 1987: Sheilagh Boyle (SC); Rich Davis; Tom Jedrzejewicz (HMC); Tim McNaughton (HMC); Michele Wetzler (SC)
Class of 1988: Chris Dabrow; Frank Hinman; Kurt Hocker; Julia Hodgkins (SC); Liane Kivela (SC); Todd McKenzie; Bob Moore; Todd Thomas
Class of 1989: Mike Dawe; Tony Gnecco (HMC); Robyn Hollingshead (SC); Diane Lindflott; Mark Messana; Dan O’Keefe; RJ Romero; Mike Scott (HMC)