Fabulous 50: NC State Women’s Swimming and Diving Group | Information

This weblog submit is contributed by Ell Woolard.

In this Fabulous 50 submit, we’re taking a look at NC State Women’s Swimming and Diving workforce’s first season and early improvement. The passage of Title IX in 1972 elevated athletic alternatives for girls all through the United States. NC State’s girls’s athletic packages blossomed within the Seventies, and a varsity Women’s Swimming and Diving workforce was fashioned in 1975. The workforce was began with a small group of majority freshmen swimmers, however they rapidly constructed a fame as a aggressive workforce. They would go on to finish 13th within the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) National Championships in the course of the 1975-1976 season. Both males’s and ladies’s swimming and diving had been coached by Don Easterling, and this gave the groups a way of camaraderie. In one 1976 Technician article, swimmer Cathy McNichol defined “I think we’re put on the same level as the guys. At times, it seems as if we’re one team.”

McNichol believed that the ladies’s workforce can be a prime ten finisher at nationals the next 12 months, and her prediction held true.  During the 1976-1977 season the workforce did make the highest 10 on the AIAW championship, achieving an eighth place rating and elevating the Women’s Swimming and Diving workforce to nationwide prominence.  By 1977, 5 of NC State’s swimmers had achieved All-America designations, and the workforce was co-captained by two All-America swimmers, Eileen O’Brien and Jane Holliday. Beth Harrell joined the swimming team in 1977. A University Games gold medalist, Harrell would go on to earn 26 AIAW All-America honors and maintain the American file in girls’s 50-yard butterfly and 200-yard freestyle relay. Harrell returned to NC State to function assistant coach in 1994-1995, and he or she was inducted into the North Carolina Swimming Hall of Fame in 2020 and the NC State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2024.

NC State’s divers had been additionally making waves. In spring of 1977, diver Micki McKay received the 1- and 3-meter diving competitions in opposition to each the University of North Carolina and Duke University. Divers Laurie Clarkson and Allyson Reid joined the team that fall and rapidly started scoring wins. Reid would go on to grow to be a three time ACC Champion in each 1- and 3-meter diving, profitable in 1979, 1980, and 1981. By the late Seventies, the Women’s Swimming and Diving workforce was top-of-the-line within the nation. They won the first annual ACC women’s swimming championship in 1979, and would go on to win once more in 1980, 2017, 2019. 

The Special Collections Research Center has many major sources on NC State Women’s Swimming and Diving workforce historical past. For extra data on the workforce take a look at our Women’s Swimming and Diving timeline or attempt looking out in our on-line assortment of NC State’s Technician. The North Carolina State University, Athletics, Media Relations Records comprises information clippings, media guides, and different supplies referring to the workforce’s historical past. Additional pictures of the workforce may be discovered within the University Archives Photograph Collection, Athletics Photographs.

If you might have any questions or are excited by viewing Special Collections supplies, please contact us at library_specialcollections@ncsu.edu or submit a request on-line. The Special Collections Research Center is open by appointment solely. Appointments can be found Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm and Saturday, 1pm–5pm. Requests for a Saturday appointment have to be acquired no later than Tuesday of the identical week.