A decade before Title IX would establish equal access to sports across the sexes, Betty and 'Red' Simmons founded the Michigammes Track and Field team for girls and women. Six years later, three of the club’s alumni were competitors in the 1968 Olympics. One was Ann Arbor native Francie Kraker.

The Simmons’ Support

As spectators at the 1960 Roman Olympics Kenneth 'Red' Simmons and Elizabeth 'Betty' Simmons noticed how poorly the United States women's team performed in the 800m track and field event. They recognized an opportunity.

Red (nicknamed for his hair color) and Betty had met studying physical education at Michigan State Normal College (now, Eastern Michigan University). Red had earned accolades in high school and college athletics. As an undergraduate, he participated in the 1932 Olympic trials, but fell short of making the team. After college, he spent 25 years as a Detroit Police detective before returning to Eastern in 1959 to earn his Masters in Physical Education.

The Simmons' moved to Ann Arbor when Red was offered a job as an instructor in the University of Michigan’s physical education department. Betty found employment as a P.E. teacher at Slauson Junior High. It was Betty who saw 14 year old Francie Kraker run the 600m physical fitness test in a flash. Francie finished in less than two minutes, easily outrunning every member of her class, regardless of their gender. Betty shared the news of Francie’s feat with Red. They had discovered their Olympic hopeful.

Francie was the founding member of the Ann Arbor Ann’s Track Club in 1962. The team was renamed the Michigammes in 1965, by which time their membership had grown to include at least 14 girls and women from throughout Southeast Michigan. They participated in indoor and outdoor track and field, and cross country, becoming dominant in them all. 

Red was a trailblazer not only as an early champion of girls' and women's competitive sports, but in his embrace of weight training. He designed programs for the University of Michigan Football team and for Francie. She would later credit his strength building instruction as the reason she was able to avoid many injuries.

Road to the Olympics

Francea 'Francie' Kraker was the middle child of Dr. Ralph and Norma Kraker. She attended Slauson Junior High, graduated from Pioneer High School in 1965, and went on to the University of Michigan, competing as part of the Michigammes all throughout. The Ann Arbor News profiled Francie less than a year into her training when she was already aiming for the Olympics.

Francie had all of the elements that make a good athlete. Red commended her natural stride, intelligence, ability to take instruction, and quick learning. In the lead up to the 1968 Olympic trials Francie needed to be pushed by a higher caliber of competition, but traveling to events required money. Local supporters started fundraising to aid Francie. She took a semester of college off to train and work as a waitress at the Old German restaurant to finance her dreams. She faced more challenges when she was sidelined by appendicitis and tendonitis.

After years of anticipation the Olympic trials finally arrived, but she finished just short of the top three 800m qualifying spots. Red attributed her performance to anxiety, “She wanted to make the team so much that she just couldn’t hold herself in. She thought she could hold the pace.” Despite the shortfall, her accomplishments didn’t go unnoticed. She was offered a spot at the U.S. team's training camp at Los Alamos to prove her high-altitude running abilities that would be required for the Mexico City Games. Francie didn’t squander this second chance and she secured a spot on the team. 

1968 Mexico City Olympics

In 1968 Francie made history as the first Michigan-born woman to represent the United States as part of the Track and Field team. Her Games were short-lived after she was eliminated in her first race. She had gotten an unlucky draw of tough competitors that included the eventual 800m bronze and silver medal winners. If she had participated in any other first round she would have advanced to the semi-finals. The disappointment provided motivation to keep training for a chance to race again in 1972. 

The Olympics are an occasion for countries to project an idealized national identity, but what is ignored in order to present this vision? Ten days before the games began in Mexico City the Mexican Armed Forces had killed hundreds of student demonstrators in the city. For the United States, the fight for civil rights made its way to the international stage when Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a gloved first on the podium during the medal ceremony for the 200m sprint. Francie was in the audience during this demonstration and in a 2013 oral history interview recalled her reaction, “I think it was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen anybody do.” 

1972 Munich Olympics

After graduating from Michigan Francie moved to Boston and maintained her conditioning routine with the 1972 Munich Games in mind. The Simmons’ had identified a weak point in the women’s 800m and Francie did the same years later when she recognized an opening to excel at the newly introduced women’s 1500m event. 

The switch paid off, and Francie finished second in the event's U.S. Olympic trials to qualify for the team. In a diary of her 1972 Olympic experience Francie described the buildup to her first race in Munich, “As I get into my warmup I feel perfect, to my surprise, yet still have a sense of unreality that this mere physical effort is made confusingly out of proportion to all this preparation and waiting.” This time, Francie advanced to the semi-finals. 

The Games are a global event and in 1972 violence was used to command the attention of the international media. Eight Palestinian militants affiliated with the group Black September captured nine Israeli athletes as hostages and killed two in the process, demanding the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. A failed rescue attempt ended with nine athletes, five gunmen, and one West German police officer dead. The International Olympic Committee suspended events for one day to hold a memorial. 

Francie wasn't left with much time to process what had occurred. The following day she was back on the track to compete in the 1500m semi-finals. She finished with a time of 4:12.8, which would have ranked her sixth in the world the year before, but it wasn't enough this time. Her second Games were over. She left Munich before the closing ceremonies and later wrote, “My own feelings are still mixed about these and future Olympic Games. It must be a reflection of the confusion we feel to the roots of our society, this lack of agreement as to the value and meaning of these Games and our part in them. The place of nationalism must be redefined, the emphasis redirected to the competition of athlete between athlete.” 

The Michigammes' Medal Contenders

Francie was not the only Michigammes alumnus to take part in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. In 1968 Sperry Jones Rademaker competed in kayak doubles alongside her sister, Marcia Jones Smoke. As a University of Michigan student Sperry was one of the earliest Michigammes members in 1963 and excelled at cross-country. Francie cheered her on in Mexico City and the two were close friends.  

Maxine 'Micki' King, a Pontiac native, was also member of the Michigammes at one time alongside her training with diving coach Dick Kimball. A repeat national diving champion, Micki was highly favored in 1968, but ended up fourth after she was injured mid-event. She forged a comeback in Munich to earn gold in the 3m springboard. 

Lasting Legacies

After her second Olympics, Francie vowed to keep training for more international competition, but she decided to hang up her spikes in 1975 after accepting a position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She became the women’s athletic director and track and cross country coach, the first role in a career path made possible by Title IX's passage in 1972. She later returned to Ann Arbor where she coached Greenhills' girls' track to the school’s first State Championship, then moved on to East Lansing.

The same year that Francie ended her competitive track career, Red retired from coaching the Michigammes. Betty had recently passed away after battling cancer and her contributions to the team were indispensable. Sustaining the club often came down to personal contributions from the couple, who would cover entry and travel fees when girls couldn’t afford them. “It’s a long ways to build a club,” Red later said, “But I never really got discouraged. Every now and then, I would see a little spark and determination in the girls. That’s all I really needed."

Red was coaxed out of retirement three years later when he was offered a job he couldn't resist: inaugural coach of the University of Michigan Women’s Track Team. He spent four years building up the team's roster and skills before passing the reins to the next logical successor: Francie. 

Francie had never had the chance to race for any of her alma maters. She later reflected, “It would have been something special if I could have been running for my high school or my university but they didn’t have women’s teams and I missed that.”

Now, she was able to provide that chance to the women who came after her. While the law stipulated equal funding for women, enforcement didn't come without persistence and long-held beliefs weren't changed overnight. In 2013, Francie described leadership in the University's athletic department that didn’t believe in the value of women’s sports. “By the time I started coaching at Michigan it hadn’t gotten much better because the same people were in place… it was a battle all the way.” 

The fight continued at Wake Forest University where she and her husband, John Goodridge, both coached. A decade after Title IX, Francie was combatting inequalities regarding medical and safety concerns, scholarships, and staffing. In 1999, Francie was fired from Wake Forest and John quit in support, alleging her departure was retaliation for her support of her athletes' rights. They returned to Ann Arbor where Francie worked in the University's admissions office and John coached at Eastern.

Red passed away in 2012 at the age of 102, leaving a legacy of coaching women and girls to challenge themselves and society’s expectations for them. He took pride in the impact he had on Michigammes’ members, “The main thing I try to teach the girls is an attitude about training and about life that will carry on into other activities as they get older. You have to bring them along gradually because they don’t understand a lot of the time what it takes to become a well-trained athlete, but they do learn about themselves both physically and emotionally.” 

Reflecting on her career as an athlete and coach in 1982 Francie said, “I’ve always felt a few years ahead of things, I was too old to wait for things to happen, so I took the opportunities as they came.” In 1995 Francie became the second person inducted into the Michigan Women’s Track Hall of Fame; the first was Red Simmons.

To be an early race car driver was to constantly confront death. To watch your friends die and get right back behind the wheel, following in their tire tracks. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Sammy Ross raced cars for almost a decade, defying demise. This meant driving distances of between 100 and 500 miles on looped, trenched dirt tracks in cars without standard safety measures. Oil leaks from competitors were common, sending followers flying into a wall or over an embankment. By 1928, Sammy had reached the upper echelon in racing, qualifying to compete in the Indianapolis 500. 

The 1928 Indianapolis 500 Starting Lineup

Before Getting Behind the Wheel

Samuel “Sammy” Ross was born to parents Edith and Benjamin Ross in Ann Arbor on June 6, 1901. The family lived on South State Street before relocating to Wall Street, just north of the Huron River. This move brought young Sammy into contact with a neighbor who was repairing an old Studebaker. Sammy began helping and was soon hooked. His skills were furthered by his work with George V. Richard, a Wall Street neighbor who owned a garage. “I worked for him and learned every nut and bolt of every motor going.” Sammy didn’t complete his formal schooling, but he learned his trade in auto shops. He remembers seeing his first car race in 1922 and by the next year he was racing in them himself. 

Dirt Track Daredevil

Not just anyone could choose to compete in car racing, trials and qualifying were required first. Sammy earned his eligibility in June of 1923 to take part in a 100-mile race at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit. After facing engine troubles that forced him to make two pit stops he ultimately earned a respectable fifth place finish in this first showing. 

Motorsports were still in their infancy and investment had yet to be made in creating infrastructure for competition. Sammy’s first race took place on a dirt track that was initially constructed for horse racing. These earthen tracks easily accumulated ruts and quickly turned to mud with any rain. Without precipitation, their soil surfaces kicked up dust that rendered it difficult for drivers to see where they were going. Sammy would later recount using trees outside of the tracks as markers in order to determine where to turn.   

The Program for the 1923 National Dirt Track Championship in Detroit, including Sammy as an entrant

Just a year into his racing career, Sammy won 17 out of 19 races to earn the 1924 Dirt Track Champion of Michigan title. His triumph was a testament not only to his driving abilities, but his skills as a mechanic in maintaining a reliable car. In one 1924 race only four of the seven contestants completed the 100 miles. Of them, Sammy took the top position. The Ann Arbor News wrote, “Ross’ victory was due principally to the fact that he was the only driver that did not have tire or engine trouble.” The next year the Ann Arbor News further underscored how crucial a dependable car was when Sammy was struggling to defend his title, writing, “Things have not been breaking this year for Sam like they did in 1924. His car on several occasions went wrong.” Sammy fought his way back to regain the state title in 1926 and 1927. 

Of course, Sammy owed his success in no small part to his nerves of steel. During one 75-mile race in 1925, Sammy was a mile ahead when one of his tie rods collapsed, sending his car through a fence and down a 12-foot embankment. His car rolled three times, but he miraculously escaped with just a scratch on one eye. He was back behind the wheel two weeks later.

Other competitors were not so fortunate. In his first month of racing Sammy competed in a field of ten cars in Grand Rapids, four of whom were involved in a pileup that resulted in the death of driver Bug McCale. In 1925, Detroit driver Al Waters was killed in another race Sammy took part in. On lap 146 of 150, Waters crashed into a fence at the Michigan State Fair track, dying instantly, and injuring 20 spectators. The list of casualties could tragically go on.

The Brickyard: 1928 

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, was built in 1909 as a 2.5 mile banked, oval track made of crushed stone and tar, rendering it double the size of the typical 1-mile fairground venues and a radically different composition. The gravel quickly proved too dangerous and within its first year the track was resurfaced with brick, bestowing it with the nickname “the Brickyard.” As champion of the dirt tracks, Sammy would have to prove his abilities on a different surface.

In order to earn a spot in the starting lineup at the 16th annual Indianapolis 500, drivers had to reach a minimum speed of 90 mph. Sammy soared past this on his first lap, reaching a high of 108 mph while simultaneously breaking a shock absorber. His next three laps were hindered by this fault, but he still managed to clock in at 107, 105, and 104 mph. He started in 17th position out of the 33 car lineup.  

Footage from the 1928 Indianapolis 500

On Memorial Day 1928 the flag was waved and the racers were off. Sammy stayed out in the race until his 79th lap when he made a pit stop to change the tires and replenish the car’s gas, oil, and water. He stopped again, to replace his right front tire, all the time climbing in the ranks. By lap 131 he had made it to seventh position, only a lap behind Louie Meyer, who would go on to win the race. 

What the spectators didn’t know was that Sammy had repeatedly lost consciousness as he was driving. Later, it was discovered that tubing was jabbing him in the back over every bump, snapping his neck so hard a few times that it knocked him out. “But I just stuck my head out in the air stream and came to right away,” he later recounted.

The pit lane at the 1928 Indianapolis 500

On his third pit stop, 350 miles into the race, it wasn’t just the tires and fluids that were swapped out, but Sammy as well. The plan was to check on Sammy’s health while the relief driver took over for 20 laps or so to hold the position until Sammy could hop back in for the final stretch. As the Ann Arbor News put it, “Only an unkind turn of fate prevented Sammy Ross, Ann Arbor race driver, from placing up among the leaders and perhaps winning the 500-mile grunt at Indianapolis.” 

Impatient to get in the race, the relief driver attempted to start the car too quickly, ripping out the transmission and ending any chance at reentering the field. That relief driver was none other than Wilbur Shaw, “one of the most important people in the history of American auto racing.” Wilbur would go on to win the Indianapolis 500 three times and eventually save the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from demolition. But in 1928, he put a stop to Sammy’s first chance at Indy. In the end, Sammy earned $526. 

Sammy at the 1928 Indianapolis 500

Sammy continued racing despite this setback, but the luck he had maintained in evading damage ran dry. In 1929, just a week before the next Indy 500, Sammy was racing on a dirt track in Toledo when he lost control of his car. A fence was lined with fans in front of him and he did his best to steer toward a gap. He succeeded in missing the spectators, but he took the brunt of the harm himself. As a result of his injuries he was hospitalized for 13 months. The damage to his left arm was severe enough that doctor’s debated whether or not it would have to be amputated. Wilbur Shaw went on to win that Toledo race.  

Back at the Brickyard: 1931

1931 brought Sammy’s second chance at the top racing prize. He reached a qualifying high speed of 106 mph, only enough for him to start in 37th position out of 40. Having just regained his health, Sammy was again faced with the true risks of his chosen career. Just two days prior to Sammy’s qualifying run, driver Joe Caccia and his required co-pilot, riding mechanic Clarence Grover, died after their car slid in a turn, crashed through the retaining wall, and caught fire. 

Sammy and riding mechanic "Olie" Wilkinson at the 1931 Indianapolis 500

Race day arrived and Sammy remained steady in spite of the fact that he had been awake for the last 48 hours making final changes to his car. Still, he completed the entire race himself with no assistance from repeat relief driver Wilbur Shaw who had failed to qualify after a broken crankshaft. Relief drivers were shared across competitors and after stepping in for driver Phil Pardee, Wilbur crashed during the race, driving over an embankment. He was uninjured and walked back to the pits to continue his role as a substitute. Sammy crossed the finish line fifteenth, having gained 22 spots from where he started, but that also made him the last car to finish that hadn’t faced mechanical malfunction or been involved in a crash. 1931 would be Sammy’s final run at the Indianapolis 500 – at least as a driver.

Racing “Retirement”

Cars were his true love, and though Sammy gave up the driver’s seat, he remained a part of the racing community. For years Sammy returned to the Indianapolis 500 to work as a “goodwill mechanic” in one driver or another’s pit crew. He offered his assistance to men he had previously raced beside. 

Sticking to what he knew, outside of racing Sammy also continued to work as a mechanic and eventually transitioned his skills with machines into a job at Argus Inc. as a toolmaker. Argus’ employee newsletter included a feature on Sammy’s racing career and continued connection to the motorsports community in 1947. That year, Sammy served as a part of Shorty Cantlon’s crew at the Indianapolis 500. The two had raced against each other for years, but it would prove to be Sammy's last time working at the brickyard. Shorty died during the race after crashing into a barrier wall. 

Another Ann Arbor Generation

It took 48 years after Sammy's turn around the Indy track for another Ann Arbor native to compete in the famed 500. Howdy Holmes was born and raised in Ann Arbor as the heir to the Chelsea Milling Company and their famous Jiffy Mix. Leading up to Howdy's first race at Indianapolis in 1979, Sammy told the Ann Arbor News, “I’ve been reading about him. He sounds like a fine racer, a fine young man. And he sounds smart. That’s what you need down there at Indy. You need the smartness. Anybody can keep turning left.” Howdy rose from his 13th position start to finish seventh. As the only rookie to compete, he earned the title of Rookie of the Year. Howdy also raced alongside another teammate with Ann Arbor ties, Janet Guthrie. Janet graduated from the University of Michigan with a physics degree in 1960 and went on to become the first woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500 in 1977. 

The Finish Line

At age 24, early in Sammy's racing career, he married 21-year-old Ann Arborite Marjorie Bergeon. The press described her as Sammy's "mascot,"  “a charming petite little miss" who "has lent an air of charm and distinction to the races she has attended." The couple's rush to get married made the papers when they embarked on a race to the city clerk’s office before a new act went into effect that would have required them to wait five days before they could be issued a license. Their haste to get married was followed by a divorce not long after in June of 1927. In an era when divorce required a fault, Marjorie listed “extreme cruelty” as the cause. As one 1917 book on divorce law put it, “Extreme cruelty as a ground for divorce may embrace a good many different acts, and the term is somewhat elastic. What may amount to such cruelty as would constitute good cause for a divorce in one case may be entirely insufficient in another.” Whatever it meant in this case, Sammy did not contest it, and he never married again.

In his subsequent years, Sammy continued the trade he had learned in his youth. In 1968, the Ann Arbor News caught up with him in his small repair shop at 1342 N. Main St, located across the Huron River from where he had fallen in love with cars. A recent leg amputation now required him to use a motorized wheelchair. He joked, “Well, I guess you’d say I just ran out of legs.”

Sammy never held Wilbur's error against him. He recalled him later in life as, “the best friend I ever had in racing. He was sharp, eager, a tough competitor and a wonderful person besides. He was a good loser, a good winner, a credit to racing. I never said anything to him about that 1928 race. We just never talked about it. How can you fault someone who’s got his soul in the game.”

Sammy in 1973

What compels someone to repeatedly risk their life? To keep going even after watching compatriots killed on the track? Sammy described his mindset:

“Before most races I was scared, I was scared of the cars, the whole thing. But once that green flag is dropped, you just stop thinking about it. You stopped worrying and just drove by reflex and if you hit those big bumps on that Indianapolis brickyard you just tried to hit them a little harder the next time. It was always a pretty rough ride down there until you got over 100. Then you just flew over those bumps. But in any race when it was all over it was a good feeling to know you were still alive and if you’d won, it was that much better. If you had it in you– I mean that real passion for motors and racing and speed– well, it was something you had to do. I’m glad I did it.”

As Sammy's health was failing, friend and former riding mechanic Olin “Olie” Wilkinson, who had been alongside Sammy in the 500 in 1931, would take him out for drives. Sammy spent his final months in the Whitmore Lake Convalescent Home, where he could be found listening to races on the radio. When Sammy passed away in 1980 he donated his body to the University of Michigan medical school.

In 1991, a group of women who grew up playing hockey with neighborhood boys started renting ice at Yost Arena and formed Ann Arbor’s first women’s ice hockey team. They called themselves the Steel Magnolias. 

The Metro Skaters Hockey League

The Steel Magnolias were one of the original five teams in the Metro Skaters Hockey League (MSHL), which is a recreational women’s hockey league established in 1993. Other teams included the Polar Bears (Inkster), the Ice Pack (Melvindale), Team Michigan (Fraser), and the Terminators (Howell). Prior to the MSHL’s founding, women in southeastern Michigan had very few opportunities to play hockey, let alone join an organized league. By comparison, Ann Arbor offered four recreational men’s leagues catering to over 600 players in the mid-1990s. The MSHL–now known as the Michigan Senior Women’s Hockey League (MSWHL)–still exists and thrives today, expanding to multiple divisions based on skill level to accommodate the fast growing sport.

When it was first established, the MSHL was supported by former Red Wings players. NHL Hall-of-Famer Ted Lindsay dropped the puck at the league’s annual Ruicci Cup tournament for many years. “We laughed about calling it the Stephanie Cup because the name Stanley was taken,” recalls former MSHL president Sue McDowell. Ultimately they decided to name the tournament after Gil Ruicci, husband of MSHL co-founder Michele Monson. Ruicci was a longtime friend of many Wings players and had been instrumental in getting equipment and running skills sessions for the players.

Founding of the Steel Magnolias

As one of the founding teams of the MSHL, Ann Arbor’s Steel Magnolias hold an important place in Michigan hockey history. It took grit and determination for these players to carve out a space for themselves in a male-dominated sport. Former player and assistant coach Sue McDowell (née Edwards) recalls a time in the early 1990s when she had difficulty even renting ice time at Ann Arbor rinks, while her male friends had no trouble. A friend advised, “List your name as S. Edwards and they’ll call you.” Reflecting back on this disparity, she says, “At the time, I doubt I could have secured ice if I didn’t play with the men.” 

The co-founders of the Steel Magnolias first dreamed up the idea of playing together as a women’s team during pond hockey weekends in the late 1980s. For readers not familiar with this popular winter pastime, pond hockey consists of playing pick-up or “shinny” on a frozen lake or pond and nearly freezing off your fingers and toes while drinking and socializing with your friends. The goals are wooden boxes on either end of the rink, and the rules are informal. It’s a time for tossing around your best hockey banter while showing off your dangles and dodging ankle-breaking cracks in the ice. 

Marie Coppa and Jayne Haas enjoyed playing pond hockey so much that they began renting ice time at Vets and Yost, and inviting friends to practice with them. Coppa, a local business owner, and Haas, a teacher and granddaughter of Fielding Yost, lived together on Ann Arbor’s West side. They were thrilled to be building a space where women could play hockey together. Another co-founder, Susan McCabe, brought in her friend Don Bartolacci as a coach. In 1991 they decided to make it official: they set a practice schedule and began recruiting players. The Steel Magnolias were born.

Coppa remembers choosing the team’s name because it seemed like “a good representation of women on skates.” The popular film Steel Magnolias had just come out in 1989. The original team logo, stitched in pink and gray, features a skate with magnolias blooming out of it. Over the years some team members felt the name wasn’t tough enough, but Theresa Marsik (née Juetten), who joined the team in its second season, recalls that it was quickly shortened: “Everybody just called us the Steel Mags so we weren’t getting hit with Sally Field references.” The team’s name evolved over the years depending on leadership, including a stint in the mid-2000s as the Mag-a-Ritas, and finally simply the Mags.

Early Years of the Mags

In their inaugural 1991-92 season, the Steel Magnolias ranged in age from 16-yr-old Sarah Stockbridge, a Pinckney High student who played goalie, to skaters in their 40s and 50s. Many had grown up playing on neighborhood rinks with their brothers or dads in the 1960s and ’70s, and continued to play drop-in or beer league as adults. They were accustomed to being one of only a handful of women they ever encountered on the ice. Others took their first strides at Yost Ice Arena during Steel Magnolias practices in the early 1990s. Despite differences in age and skill level, the team stuck together and went on to win in their first tournament appearance, the inaugural March 1992 Ruicci Cup.

The Steel Magnolias advertised their practice times and actively recruited players. Sue McDowell remembers seeing an ad in the Ann Arbor Observer for drop-in practices. She showed up, and asked “Hey, do you guys need a goalie?” McDowell grew up on Cape Cod and played for Colby College in Maine before coming to Ann Arbor in the 1980s.

Theresa Marsik had grown up in the Upper Peninsula and played men’s intramural hockey at the University of Michigan, where she studied environmental engineering. She heard of the team through a mutual friend of Susan McCabe.  Teammate Carol Lentz Wiley remembers what an impact Marsik made on the ice: “I was just in awe of her when we met, because she had such a great shot.”

Wiley connected with the Mags when a coworker at Parke-Davis told her he had heard of a women’s hockey team starting in Ann Arbor. She had been playing for the company team, but jumped at the opportunity to join the Mags. There she met her partner Amy Brow, and the two took over from McCabe to manage the team from the late 1990s through 2006. 

Growing the Women’s Game in Ann Arbor

While many of the Steel Magnolias were seasoned players, just as many were relatively new to the game of hockey. Ken Weber recalls that his wife Jill was using figure skates when she joined the Mags. He and Jill both started playing in the early 1990s, when their three boys were playing in the Ann Arbor Amateur Hockey Association. Jill was “a novice skater,” but the Mags practices helped her learn the fundamentals of the game. Ken remembers being invited to play pond hockey at a team member’s lake house: “All the families and kids were skating together.”

The Steel Magnolias were supported by several local businesses with connections to the team. The team’s sponsors in the 1990s included the Lord Fox (owned by Marie Coppa’s family), Weber’s Inn (owned by Ken and Jill Weber’s family), Espresso Royale, and Play It Again Sports of Ann Arbor. Sponsors typically helped cover the cost of jerseys, ice time, and tournament fees. Many skaters who were just starting out also needed help buying hockey equipment, which is notoriously expensive.

The Steel Magnolias were able to secure practice and game times at Yost Arena with the help of teammate Camille Hutchinson, who was a scheduler for the rink. McDowell remembers that it was “quite a coup” to get ice at the home rink of the University of Michigan’s men’s team; the Wolverines hit their stride in the 1990s under coach Red Berenson, and they were NCAA champions in 1996 and 1998. During these same years, the Mags held regular practices and games at Yost. 

“Sometimes we played after the U-M men’s games on Saturday nights,” Marsik recalls. “I’d have to duck under the bleachers [to get to the locker room].” Wiley attended games at Yost as a child, soon after the Wolverines moved there from the Coliseum in 1973. “My dad drove us down to Ann Arbor, and we would watch those U-M vs. MSU hockey games. I couldn’t believe it, twenty years later–playing on that ice, sitting in that penalty box.” Fans who stuck around after the U-M games might have been surprised to see a group of women skating onto the ice. No matter the number of fans their own late-night games drew, many former Mags agree that it was some of the best ice they ever skated on.

Wiley and Brow, longtime co-captains of the Mags, remember how much fun they had playing on a line together. Their teammate Angie was fifteen years younger and her dad used to drive her down from Port Huron to play. She heckled their coach, Don Bartolacci, with comparisons between the Mags and the Red Wings. “I told him we were the grind line,” she said to her teammates one day, referring to a popular nickname for one of the Wings’ forward lines. The trio of Kris Draper, Joe Kocur (replaced by Darren McCarty in 1998), and Kirk Maltby were known for their physical presence on the ice, and their role as enforcers. On the Mags’s “grind line,” Angie was Draper because she played center, Carol was Maltby, and “Amy was McCarty because she was always in the penalty box.”

The team also pulled together when times got tough. When Jill Weber was diagnosed with breast cancer, her teammates supported her and her family. She passed away in January 1995, just a few years after the Mags started playing together. Soon afterwards, her teammates dedicated a game to Jill, and they won a decisive 11-1 victory against the Howell Flash. Vicki Loy helped organize an award in memory of Jill, which was “given to the female AAAHA [Ann Arbor Amatuer Hockey Association] player who demonstrates desire, confidence, and sportsmanship on the ice.” Nine-year-old Mary Cohen was the first recipient.

The team’s roster shifted over the years and the Metro Skaters Hockey League grew from five teams to several dozen, but the Steel Magnolias usually landed in one of the top MSHL/MSWHL divisions based on skill level and playing experience. They brought home the Ruicci Cup in 1992, 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2011. The Mags played together for almost thirty years. Their final 2019-2020 season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. After that, a core group who had been playing together as a tournament team reformed as the Top Titties (a tongue-in-cheek reference to what most hockey players call “top shelf” or “top corns”–the sweet spots just above a goalie’s shoulders but below the crossbar). Many longtime Mags skaters still play in recreational and house leagues in the area.

Changing the Narrative

Most female hockey players are familiar with the comments leveled towards women in the male-dominated sport. Whether it’s sexist slurs uttered among players or skepticism about women’s ability to excel in a fast-paced, physical sport, the pattern continues to this day: “You skate like a girl.” “No checking? That’s not real hockey.” “Can I have your number, sweetheart?” Players on the Steel Magnolias had to weather these types of comments (and much, much worse) just to step out on the ice and play the game they loved. The team’s mission was to grow the women’s game in Ann Arbor, and they had to put themselves out there in order to do so.

The Ann Arbor News ran several articles about the Steel Magnolias in the mid-1990s. There was even a short documentary picked up by PASS Sports about women’s hockey in Michigan. Ken Weber remembers that Jill appeared on screen in her Steel Magnolias uniform: “They brought cameras into the locker room at the Joe [Louis Arena], and Ted Lindsay was there.” While press coverage was great for raising awareness about the game, some players got tired of hearing the same narrative repeated. Back in the 1990s, McDowell explains, “There was a pattern in the press. Every year there’d be an article about how groundbreaking, how fascinating it was [that girls and women were playing hockey].” But what these players and coaches really wanted was equal opportunity to play and coach the game. 

McDowell was a co-founder of the city’s first girls hockey program, the Ann Arbor Girls Hockey Alliance, in 1994. She and fellow Mags players Kate Pinhey and Camille Hutchinson also helped found the University of Michigan women’s club hockey team in 1995. Nearly thirty years later, another Mags player, Deb Bolino, spearheaded the launch of Biggby Coffee’s AAA girls hockey program in Ann Arbor. Local girls now have the opportunity to play competitively at the 12U, 14U, 16U, and 19U levels, or to join their high school team at Pioneer, Huron-Skyline, or Washtenaw United. But when the original roster of the Mags were growing up, playing in an all-girls league wasn’t an option.

Theresa Marsik, captain of the Mags from 2013 until 2020, remembers that her hometown of Pelkie, Michigan had “a lot of hockey” for a small farming community in the UP, but no girls league. She played with the boys until her family doctor told her parents that “she might never have children if she got hit.” Marsik talked her dad into coaching a non-checking girls team. There weren’t any other girls teams around, so these 11- and 12-year-old girls played against younger boys teams who hadn’t learned checking yet (in hockey lingo, that’s peewees versus squirts). These days, body contact and checking is allowed more and more in girls’ and women’s hockey.

Historically, girls hockey programs didn’t really take off in the U.S. until the 1990s, and even then it was in hockey hotbeds like Minnesota, Michigan, and New England. Momentum picked up when the U.S. women’s hockey team won gold at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. Seeing female hockey players succeed on the international stage drew more women and girls into local leagues. USA Hockey and the Michigan Amateur Hockey Association reported only 610 female players registered in the state of Michigan in the 1990-91 season (compared to 23,984 male players). By 2000-2001, that number had risen to 3,636, and the latest 2023-34 season totaled 5,327. In the same timeframe, the number of female players registered nationwide climbed from just over 6,000 to reach a milestone 100,000 this year.

Despite major gains recently such as the January 2024 launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (which has six teams based in Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa, and Toronto), female hockey players at all levels are still seeking parity in funding and opportunities to play. In Michigan, a state with one of the leading AAA girls hockey programs, there are no NCAA Division I women's hockey teams. There is only one Division III team (Adrian College) and a few club teams. Many young women leave the state to play elsewhere. When McDowell and others lobbied the University of Michigan for a women’s team in the mid-1990s, they wanted a D1 team, but that dream never materialized. In 2024, rumor has it that Ann Arbor may someday have its very own D1 women’s team. Who knows, maybe the PWHL will even expand to Detroit!

Author’s Note

When I joined a team called the Mags in 2015, did I know that I was donning the jersey of Ann Arbor’s first women’s team? Did I know that years later I would find newspaper articles and photos documenting this legacy in the Ann Arbor District Library Archives? Did I know that I would be writing that history to celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the city? No, no, and no–but I sure am glad to be doing it! Now enough about me. Let’s hear it for the Mags!

The Steel Magnolias won the 1995 Ruicci Cup Invitational Tournament.