The UF women's golf team after winning the Ninth Annual Florida Intercollegiate played at FSU in 1972. (Left to right: Coach Mimi Ryan, Pat Bayer, Nancy Davis, Suzanne Jackson, Martha Scott, Donna Dolbier).
A Long-Forgotten Milestone Moment for UF Women's Athletics
Friday, October 22, 2021 | Women's Golf, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
Editor's note: This is the latest installment in an occasional series to honor the 50-year anniversary of the University of Florida's women's athletic program.GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The fog of distant days has clouded their recollections.
They know it happened. They know they would have been there, crammed together in a couple of cars and hotel rooms. They can read brief stories from old newspaper clippings about the event, but if asked about specifics from the Falconette Invitational women's golf tournament in October 1972, their memory well is dry.
"I can't remember,'' said Mimi Ryan. "Not at this age."
The 85-year-old Ryan, who retired in 1994 and still makes her way to UF's home course a couple times per week to play nine holes when she can, was the head coach of the Gators women's golf team at the time. She recalls people better than long-ago tournaments.
Ryan mentions Pat Bayer, who goes by Patricia Cunningham today, as one of the team's top players.
A few months prior to the Falconette Invitational at Hollywood Lakes Golf Course in South Florida, Bayer finished tied for eighth at the National Collegiate Women's Golf Championships in Las Cruces, N.M. She recalls the excitement of traveling to New Mexico for the national tournament, but quiz her about Florida's third-place performance in the Falconette, and Cunningham calls on help.
"I have a scrapbook here,'' said Cunningham, a former attorney now retired in Lakewood Ranch whose game of choice these days is tennis. "Let me see. I bet I have a little article from it or something."
Cunningham scrolls through her scrapbook and finds several stories from the time period when the University of Florida officially approved an intercollegiate athletic program for women in the spring of 1972, a few months before Title IX was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972. Prior to 1972, UF women's athletics consisted of intramural and club teams not part of the NCAA or sanctioned by the University Athletic Association.
Instead, the UF women competed with other universities under the banner of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).
Martha Robbins was known as Martha Scott when she was an up-and-coming swimmer at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale and then at Lake Forest College about 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. Robbins and some classmates transferred from Lake Forest to UF in search of opportunity on a bigger stage.
A native of Darien, Conn., Robbins had a specific goal in mind.
"I transferred to Florida because I wanted to play golf,'' she said. "I had spoken to Mimi and she said, 'Sure, you can walk on to the golf team.' That is how I got there."
A photo of the 1972-73 UF women's golf team that was published in Golf World magazine.
Robbins was a relative newcomer on the UF golf team when the Gators headed to the Falconette Invitational to test their talent against in-state schools Miami-Dade Junior College, Rollins, Palm Beach JC and the University of Miami. In the two-day event on Oct. 16-17, Florida finished 12 strokes behind winner Miami-Dade North. Gators junior Suzanne Jackson shot in the 70s both rounds to win individual title over Muffin Spencer of Rollins.
Like her former coach, Robbins doesn't recall the tournament, but she has fond memories of Jackson, considered the team's top player and along with Bayer the first scholarship women's golfers in program history.
"She was a really good golfer,'' Robbins said. "She developed a really good name from working on the LPGA staff. They all loved her. They were all very sad about her passing."
Jackson died in November 1998 at age 46 after battling breast cancer for more than seven years. Following her time at UF and various attempts at a professional career, Jackson joined the LPGA in 1981 and was promoted to director of tournament operations in 1991. She developed into an expert on the rules of golf and in 1990, Jackson became the first woman invited to PGA Rules Championship and was also invited to officiate at the Masters.
It's understandable the Falconette is accessible only by a trip to the local library or a digitized newspaper bank. It was a different time and place, one almost impossible to fathom for younger generations. Still, the tournament has a special meaning as the Gators celebrate the 50th year of UF women's athletics being recognized as an official intercollegiate program.
The Falconette Invitational is known to be the first UF women's sporting event after Title IV was signed into law and the school recognized five women's athletic programs – golf, swimming, tennis, track and gymnastics – as varsity teams rather than club programs.
Cunningham grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and watched as her three brothers played team sports. She played golf because it was an individual sport and at least provided a competitive outlet and recreation. Like Robbins, Cunningham transferred to UF after starting college elsewhere. She attended Brandeis University in the Boston area prior to coming to UF.
Suzanne Jackson during the Lady Gators Invitational in the early 1970s. (File photo/UAA)
"I played as a kid and I played in high school, but in women's golf, you didn't have that much opportunity,'' Cunningham said. "When it came time to look for colleges, I wasn't really thinking about college golf because it was just in its infancy. I didn't think there were women's teams, so I was giving it up.
"I went off to school in Massachusetts and didn't play any golf that year, and I came home to Birmingham that summer and there was a new pro at our club. He had been the men's coach at Alabama. He gave me lessons and told me, 'you really ought to think about playing college golf. I know the men's coach [Buster Bishop] at Florida and they have a good women's team.' He contacted the men's coach. I ended up talking to him and then I talked to Mimi Ryan. I just decided to transfer. Very unlike me. I was not big on a lot of change."
Of course, change was happening everywhere during that era and equal rights for women was a major issue.
Robbins benefited from the emerging opportunities for women. As a UF senior, she rode her bike to the IBM office in Gainesville to see if the company had any job opportunities. Her background with the Gators golf team led to an interview on the course and an eventual 12-year career with IBM. Robbins also met her husband at a golf course where she worked in the pro shop over the summer.
Robbins might not recall the Florida women's golf team's first tournament after Title IX, but she has vivid memories of a key moment in the program's evolution. With funding not provided by the athletic department prior to Title IX, the Gators needed money to attend the annual state and national championships during Robbins' first year at UF.
As a swimmer at Pine Crest School and Lake Forest College, Robbins only knew a world in which women's athletics received the necessary financial support from schools for travel, equipment and other necessities.
"I never, ever thought about funding for women's sports,'' Robbins said. "I was so naive."
Once she enrolled at UF and joined the golf team, Robbins was stunned the university did not provide funding for travel, hotels and various costs to play in the state tournament. Most of the money the program had came from fundraising or out of the pockets of coaches and players.
She refused to sit idly and wanted her voice heard.
First, Robbins and her roommate, a Gators swimmer, visited the office of the late Ray Graves, UF's former football coach who had moved into an administrative role as athletic director. The meeting did not go as Robbins envisioned.
According to official documents from the era, Graves had already been in contact with Ryan via letters on the lack of funding for the program, and while he congratulated the team on its success, he told Ryan the money was not available.
"We had a really good team,'' Robbins said. "We walked into his office, which was enormous. It was mahogany walls and there were all these plaques around the top of the office. And he had this gigantic desk with an orange and blue phone, and he stood up with his arms folded and said, 'What are you girls here for?' " Robbins recalled. "We told him, 'we're representing the golf team and the swim team. We wanted to talk to you about the possibility of finding some money because we have good teams.'
"He never sat down. 'The next thing you girls are going to want to do is live in Yon Hall. Will you please leave my office?' I couldn't get my head around that. I couldn't understand why. We just wanted to have a little money to travel."
Undaunted by Graves' rebuttal, Robbins called her father in New York. A colleague at his company had played football for the Gators and contacted UF on Robbins' behalf. A few days later, Robbins was in the office of UF President Stephen C. O'Connell to request money for the golf team's postseason travel.
"There was a whole different feeling,'' Robbins said. "I told him we have no money to go to states as a golf team and we have a really good team. He looked at me and he said, 'I am shocked. I didn't know it was so inequitable.' He had no idea. He said to me, 'you have all the money you need to get to the tournaments you can play in.' " Former Gators women's golf head coach Mimi Ryan later in her career at UF. (File photo/UAA)
By the time the Gators opened the 1972-73 season at the Falconette Invitational, women's athletics was part of the athletic department's annual budget.
When Florida announced its plans to create an official women's athletic department in the spring of 1972, Graves was quoted in a press release.
"The role of women on our campus is a vital one and they are making contributions in all areas of life in this university,'' he said. "I believe the contribution they make in the area of intercollegiate athletics will be significant."
The Gators have done that and more, becoming a model women's athletic program over the last 50 years.
Their rise started at the club level a few years before the long-forgotten Falconette, but they officially became part of a bigger team that fall weekend in Hollywood Lakes.
Ryan had big goals from the start.
"Suzanne had two days of fine golfing, which we needed to stay in competition in the tournament,'' Ryan told the Tampa Tribune a few days after the event. "I feel that we could have placed higher even though the competition in the state of Florida is about the roughest in the nation."
She was right. When Ryan retired 22 years later, the Gators had won two national titles and six Southeastern Conference championships.
