Shelley Sturges playing hockey for Cornell University in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Shelley Sturges.
Shelley Sturges had always been around hockey.
Growing up in Ithaca, New York, she started skating as a young child. Her father, a professor at Cornell University, was the academic adviser to the hockey team. By the time she was in eighth grade, there were even some Cornell hockey players living at Sturges’ home.
In 1972, when she was in ninth grade, Sturges joined the hockey team. As a junior in high school, Sturges had an opportunity to play for an all-star team called the Ithaca Shooting Stars. They competed against the new Cornell women’s hockey team, which was first recognized as a varsity sport for 1972-73 season.
“We’d play games. We even had some tournaments where other college teams came in, and we were just so much better,” said Sturges, who used to live in the Cloisters and now resides in the Lake Highlands area. “We would win. We won all the games and so for many years, that team would just feed into the Cornell team.”
Differences for male and female athletes at the Ivy League university were stark.
The men had a locker room, but the women didn’t. Instead, they changed in restrooms, and their gear was stored under a staircase, never really able to dry out. They didn’t have their own athletic trainer, so the team would tape their own ankles and wrists. They traveled to find competition in two vans owned by their coach, who worked as a painter by day.
Title IX, which protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance, was passed in 1972.
“Maybe by the time I was a senior we started seeing the benefit of it, where we finally had our own locker room,” Sturges said.
But Sturges and her teammates pushed for more rights and amenities the whole time. They’d meet with the athletic director at Cornell and demand equal ice time and storage space for their equipment.
Nonetheless, the team succeeded. They won the Ivy League Championship every year during Sturges’ time at Cornell. She was named MVP during her senior year and was one of the team captains as a junior and senior.
“The first trophy that we won looks like something your kid would get from playing YMCA soccer,” she said. “And the coach actually bought it himself.”
Sturges, whose husband and youngest daughter graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, has returned to her alma mater over the years, but in her most recent visit in July, she celebrated the 50th anniversary of women’s hockey at Cornell and received her Ivy League Championship ring.
It was only a few decades overdue.
