FOR THOSE THAT PAVED THE WAY

Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Felecia Mulkey was convinced that she was going to be the next Mary Lou Retton. For Nicki Collen, it was actually tennis player Chris Evert. Stacey Smith wanted to follow in the footsteps of four-time Baylor track All-American SheShe Crawford.

"I wanted to be an elite tennis player when I was young, and I remember Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova," Collen said of the women in sports she followed before chasing her basketball dreams.

"I just remember Sunday mornings, laying in my parents' bed, because the French Open was on at 8 a.m. Just watching them and seeing how the competed, and such different type athletes. But I wanted to be the next Chris Evert."

Wednesday is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, a time to recognize and celebrate the female athletes of today and the women who paved the way for them.

"I looked up to Mary Lou Retton," said Mulkey, whose nine-time defending NCATA national championship A&T team opens with a meet Saturday at UMHB. "She was in the '84 Olympics, so I was 10 years old. And that is who I was pretty sure I was going to be. And I wasn't. But I did coach her daughter (Shayla Kelley) for a few years, so I got to know (Mary Lou). And she was better in person than you even thought she was."

With acrobatics and tumbling exploding on the national scene, on the verge of becoming an NCAA-sponsored sport, Mulkey said it's "created these opportunities for women to showcase their athleticism, for women of all sizes to be really looked at and celebrated for their athleticism. And that hasn't always been the case."

Collen said the only options for her mom growing up were cheerleading and band, "so there's a part of me that just doesn't get it."

"I don't remember not kicking a ball, throwing a ball, being in the backyard with my dad throwing a football, him hitting fly balls to me," said Collen, in her fourth year as the Baylor women's basketball head coach. "With my dad, nothing was for fun. Everything was teaching, training. We're not just going to play catch, by gosh, we're running routes. That's probably a little bit why I'm wired the way I'm wired."

She also thinks of her volleyball coach at Platteville (Wisc.) High School, Kathy Herbst, who died last month at 76 years old.

"Kathy Herbst was the first coach I ever had that didn't treat me like a girl," said Collen, who played collegiate basketball at Purdue and Marquette. "Now, I played for really good men as well. But I just remember thinking as a freshman in high school, we weren't girls, we were athletes. She was the first person that was like, 'there is nothing that you can't do that the boys do.'''

While doors were certainly opening for Collen even back in the day, she has seen an explosion in the popularity of women's basketball with ventures like Athletes Unlimited and Unrivaled, a league that former Baylor assistant coach Chloe Pavlich has helped build.

"Chloe has had a huge involvement with Unrivaled, and it never surprises me when things that she's touched turn into gold," Collen said. "But from TNT picking them up, to in-studio stuff, to the sponsorships they've gotten through Unrivaled, it's just an incredible time in women's sports, basketball in particular."

Fifth-year senior Sarah Andrews dreams of taking that next step to the WNBA when this season is done, but she also thinks about "the women before us that paved the way for us."

"It's a blessing, honestly, to be able to put a Baylor jersey on," Andrews said. "I've always wanted to be at Baylor since I was a little girl growing up, watching (former Baylor All-American) Odyssey Sims and the rest of them. Those are my idols. The women's game has grown tremendously. This is a huge day for women's basketball, and to be a part of something special like that is amazing."

Stacey Smith, now in her 23^rd year on the Baylor track coaching staff and third as associate head coach, was a nine-time All-American and the school's first female individual national champion when she won the NCAA outdoor title in the triple jump at 45 feet, 10 inches.

But at nearby La Vega High School, Smith (then Stacey Bowers) tried her hand at all the sports and was part of the inaugural La Vega ISD Hall of Fame class six years ago.

She still remembers Suzette (Scott) Gill taking her over to the old Baylor track to watch SheShe Crawford run.

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's SheShe!''' Smith said. "And I remember thinking, I want to do this. I want to be a part of this one day. And Coach Gill encouraged that and talked about it all the time. 'Oh, you can go to college. You can do this.'''

Another early influence for Stacey was La Vega basketball coach Robbie Williams.

"Coach Williams would talk about how important women in sports was and how big it was for women to be represented in sports," she said. "She would come out for the games. And I'm telling you, beautiful. She would have these outfits, and people would just wait for her to come out of the locker room. She was like, 'You can play athletics and still be a lady.' And she showed us that. When she came out of the locker room, you were going to know who she was."

What SheShe Crawford was to Smith, Stacey became that for countless girls growing up wanting to be just like her.

"I don't really see it like that," she says, "but I do tease the girls. They're all like, 'Coach Stacey, I want to be like you. Coach, I'm going to break your record.' And I tell them, it's not going to be easy. I feel like I worked really hard to get to where I am now. And I try to encourage them that you've got to work for it, and you've got to put your name out there."

One of her pupils she now coaches has a familiar name, sophomore high jumper Sydney Smith, her daughter.

"I don't want that pressure on her to be me," Stacey said. "I want her to be herself. I think she realizes, because I tell her all the time, 'Hey, I love you, regardless. This is what you do, it's not who you are.'''

More of a dancer and volleyball player growing up, Sydney started taking track more seriously in high school and became a 5-6 high jumper.

Recently, she follows Olympic gold medalist hurdler Sydney McLaughlin Levrone – maybe it's something about the name. "But when I was in middle school, there weren't really any women that I looked up to. I really just kind of looked up to my mom, I feel like."

Sydney says being coached by her mom is "not as tough as people probably think it is."

"But I think we do a pretty good job of separating coach and athlete and daughter and mother," she said.

"Sports is just a big part of who we are," Stacey said. "We just love sports. My mom, she's the fanatic. She's worse than I think all of us. But that's just the family we are.

"I wouldn't be where I am today if it hadn't been for sports."

FOR THOSE THAT PAVED THE WAY

Players Mentioned

Sarah Andrews

Sydney Smith

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