Melissa Ludtke and the First Female Sportswriters

Melissa Ludtke, who in 1977, while reporting for Sports Illustrated, sued the New York Yankees for equal locker room access and won, gave a speech to the Association for Women in Sports Media some years ago that described what that era was like for the first crop of female sportswriters. She mentions my good friends Lawrie Mifflin, then of the New York Daily News, and Jane Gross, then of Newsday, Betty Cuniberti at the Washington Post, Sheila Moran at the LA Times (hey Sheila, didn't we have fun covering tennis at Forest Hills back then!) and others. Diminutive Jane broke the NBA locker room barrier around the same time I crossed the NHL line. In addition to the NHL, Lawrie covered the American pro soccer league from its inception and got the players accustomed to female reporters from the get-go.  (RH)

Here's Melissa's eloquent and inclusive accounting of those years:   http://npc.press.org/wpforal/ludapp.htm