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多丽丝遗产: A World-Class Trailblazer
多丽丝遗产 |
Falcon female athletes jostle for position, 点, and wins as readily as do male athletes, 但情况并非总是如此. Today’s SPU women athletes, whether they know it or not, can thank a petite blonde, 多丽丝·布朗，64年毕业, in part for their success.
“I think Doris is inspirational not only as a runner, and not only because she’s one of the main reasons I’m able to do college athletics,杰西卡·皮克勒说, a Seattle Pacific University sophomore who’s already one of the top distance runners in the country. “She’s one of the mothers of women’s running.”
A charter member in SPU’s “Legends Hall of Fame,” Heritage began her running career in the 1960s — when schools rarely allowed women to compete. “在我上学的时候, there were very few races for women,” Heritage says about her years as a Seattle Pacific student. “Whitworth College let me run in their dual meets with SPU. If the race was a mile, I could run a half-mile of it. I was in some boys’ high school cross country races.”
但这将会改变. In 1960, she teamed up with Seattle Pacific’s track and field coach, Ken Foreman. 和他在一起, Heritage gained an advocate who helped her blast through the wall that prevented women athletes from reaching their full potential. By the time Congress passed Title IX in 1972 — leveling the proverbial playing field of women’s high school and college athletics — Heritage had been running competitively for 12 years. 事实上, highlighting the oddities of the time, she had been named Seattle’s 1971 “Man of the Year in Sports.”
During her competitive prime, Heritage garnered an impressive set of records: at 330 yards, 880码, 800米, 1500米, 一英里, 3000米, 两英里. She needed every finger on her left hand to count her national cross country 冠军:5. Likewise, she needed every finger on her right hand to count her 世界 冠军:5. Heritage went to both the Tokyo Olympics and the Munich Olympics. 最后, showing times were indeed changing, she was named “Washington’s Woman of the Year” by the Washington State Legislature in 1976.
Heritage was named to the U.S.A. Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1990; she became the second-ever female named to the United States Track Coaches Hall of Fame in 1999; and in 2002, she was named to the National Distance Hall of Fame. “Her commitment to excellence was palpable,” wrote Foreman in The Fragile Champion: Doris Brown Who Always Ran the Extra Mile. The two of them would work together for decades, first as coach and athlete, then as colleagues after Heritage became a coach and professor of physical education at SPU.
最后, in 2002, Heritage left the classroom after 33 years; she remains SPU’s head cross country coach and assistant coach of track and field. Through the decades, she’s made Falcon cross country runners formidable foes in NCAA Division II. Named conference coach of the year seven times, she’s coached 10 of her cross country teams to the top 10 at national meets. In 1996, the women’s cross country team became the West Region women’s champion. SPU has won the conference women’s championships seven of the last 12 years, and she guided the men’s team to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference title in 2004. Twenty of her runners have been named All-Americans, including two national champions.
Her middle-distance and distance runners on the track and field teams also give the Falcon track team a national reputation for excellence. Seven women have won AIAW and NCAA titles from 800米 to 10,000 meters. And, en toto, Falcon men and women runners have scored at nationals 38 times in the last 28 years.
她是怎么做到的? “Doris is an incredibly inspiring Christian woman,” says Tom Box, athletic director at SPU. ”She’s a living legend at Seattle Pacific, and a revered ‘star’ in the running 世界. She and Ken Forman put Seattle Pacific on the map in terms of athletics and helped blaze a trail for women in sport.” Adds Heritage simply: “Dr. Foreman was very good about excellence and confidence and preparation. We trained to be the best.”
——霍普·麦克弗森 [hmcpherson@shoppingboutique.net)
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