Women Urged to Use Initiative

Joan Cronan, women’s athletic director at Tennessee, urged women to be more attentive to opportunities than obstacles and to show more initiative as the women’s sports movement enters its 20th year since the adoption of Title IX. Gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funds was banned in 1972 with the adoption of Title IX.

Cronan’s comments came Thursday at the National Girls and Women in Sports Day, sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Foundation, at a downtown hotel.

Among the 321 people attending the seminar and luncheon was Evelyne Hall Adams, 82, the oldest Olympian in the country. She lost the gold to Babe Didriksen by two inches in the 1932 80-meter hurdles.

“It’s a different ballgame today,” Adams said. “There are a lot more opportunities . . . and not as many stumbling blocks.”

Velma Dunn-Ploessel, who was second in the 1936 Olympics in platform diving, echoed the changes today.

“When I was in the Olympics, I had to pay for everything. Even my old bathing suit,” Dunn-Ploessel said. “And when I got back . . . USC told me I needed to do something more ladylike. That’s terrible.”

Notes

Five women were honored for their contributions to the local sports community: Barbara Edmonson, assistant track and field coach at USC; Karen Hellyer, an administrator with the CIF Southern Section; Carin Jennings, a member of the U.S. National Women’s Soccer team; Tracy Dodds, a former Times sportswriter now an assistant sports editor at the Orange County Register, and Gail Weldon, the chief trainer for the 1984 L.A. Olympic Games, who died in December of liver cancer.