Before Title IX: Stout gymnastics teams contending for and winning state titles

 Women's Gymnastics Championship Story from March 7, 1969, edition of The Stoutonia 

MENOMONIE (June 23, 2022) – Long before the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) and even before the Wisconsin Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WWIAC) was formed, the UW-Stout – then Stout State University – women's gymnastics team was challenging for and winning state titles.
 
Before the landmark Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was signed into law June 23, 1972, Stout's first women's athletics team was established in the 1966-67 school year.  Kay Carter came to Stout in 1966 as an instructor in the physical education department and with some assistance from men's gymnastics coach John Zuerlein, formed the first Stout women's team, a gymnastics team of four – Karen Mueser,  Marlene (Wieman) Backhaus, Liz (Lloyd) Lohse and Peggy (Drake) Hintzman. Carol (Govin) Springer joined the team in 1967-68 and Barb Anderson joined the team beginning with the 1968-69 season.
 
In the program's second year, the finished second at the WARFCW meet in 1967-68, then won the title outright in the spring of the 1968-69 school year. 
 
There were a few small articles in The Stoutonia, the school newspaper, in the spring of 1968. But when the athletic department held an end-of-the-year athletic banquet, the women's gymnastics team was not invited.
 
Zuerlein – who would prove time and again to be a friend of the women's gymnastics team - had other ideas. He encouraged the men's gymnasts to invite the women's gymnasts as their personal dates to the event. During the gathering, Zuerlein stood and introduced the women and championed their accomplishments, which included individual titles for Govin-Springer on the vault and balance beam.
 
The team grew during the 1968-69 school year. Barb Anderson joined the team, along with Pat Demereth, Gail Banes, Eve Larson and Terry Jackson.
 
"I just appreciate what the five women established the (two) years before and I just walked into it," Anderson said.
 

The team captured the title the following year. This time the team made sure their accomplishments were more well known. Lloyd-Lohse and Carter provided The Stoutonia with all the information about the meet and a nearly half page article appeared in the March 7 issue.
 
"I made sure we could get articles printed in the newspaper," Lloyd-Lohse said. "So I submitted the story and either I put together the details or they called Kay Carter. We did try to bring recognition, at least in the school newspaper."
 
But recognition did not come from the athletic department at the annual banquet.
 
"We were invited, then uninvited, then invited, and uninvited," Anderson said. "And then we sat by the Fireside Lounge for a while where they were making up their mind again, and then they decided we could go. I remember sitting down, paying for the meal, eating the meal and not getting recognized."
 
Anderson, Govin-Springer, Wieman-Backhaus, and Lloyd-Lohse sat down recently – in person and virtually - with current UW-Stout staff members to share memories of those early years of Stout women's gymnastics. Drake-Hintzman shared some memories via email a few days after the initial interview.
 
The pioneer gymnasts found out nearly 25 years later they could lay claim to a pair of state titles. At Carter's retirement recognition in the mid-1990s, Carter shared with the team members present that La Crosse competed with an ineligible player, in essence, disqualifying the team and handing Stout the crown.
 
Only Mueser had previous gymnastics experience before coming to Stout. Mueser would go on to compete for four years, the first four-year woman athlete at Stout. Mueser, who passed away in 2017, was inducted into the UW-Stout Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001.
 
Wieman-Backhaus, a Menomonie native, began to develop an interest in gymnastics when, in eighth grade, Zuerlein attended one of local schools to teach some tumbling moves and worked with each of the girls in attendance. When Wieman-Backhaus was in her second year at Stout, she saw flyers on a table in the student center about a gymnastics team and signed up.
 
Govin-Springer, also a Menomonie native who lived on a dairy farm east of Menomonie, was introduced to gymnastics when Zuerlein would come to the farm to buy milk.
 
Lloyd-Lohse hailed from a Cincinnati, Ohio, suburb and came to Stout to become a home economics teacher.
 
"I learned about the gymnastics team from a young woman in one of my classes," Lloyd-Lohse said. "I was tired of just women in my classes, so if there would be men, I would do it. I grew up sailing, so I was always athletic."
 
Drake-Hintzman, also from Menomonie, was with the team in its first year, before transferring to Eau Claire State University.  

 "A lot of women came to the first tryout run by coaches Carter and Zuerlein, but over the course of several weeks, all but a few chose not to continue," Drake-Hintzman wrote in an email. "Those who remained, attended practices for three hours in the evening.  There was a lot of support and comaraderie among this group of women.  Team members helped each other learn and improve."

Anderson came to Stout from Stevens Point and joined the third season of the gymnastics team. 
 
"After they established the team, I was on campus and thought 'Why don't I join this'?" Anderson said, who remained in Menomonie after graduating from Stout.
 

The women's team shared a gym with the men's team, and the teams got along well together. Several of the men's gymnasts would spot for the women on some of their routines and Zuerlein, who had started the men's program early in the decade, was a stalwart for the women's program.
 
"When we were learning more difficult things on the uneven bars, or working on the trampoline, the men's team would be our spotters," Govin-Springer said. "We were close with the men's team because we were in the gym at the same time and you know, they were our helpers."
 
But men's gymnastics and women's gymnastics had quite a few differences.
 
"When we started, we would get our handwritten compulsory routine and an optional," Govin-Springer said. "But we would get the routine and none of us had ever had gymnastics or dance. I called a dancer friend in another state just to figure it out. There was just nothing except what was written on the paper for us to figure these things out. Coach Zuerlein and the guys tried to help us, but you know, it was different."
 
"After the '68 Olympics, we did get video of the routines so we could see it on tape," Lloyd-Lohse said.  "So actually, we were one of the first athletes to be video-taped so we could improve what we did."
 
"When we went to that first meet in River Falls," Drake-Hintzman said about the 1966-67 season, "I remember the final competitor on floor exercise was impressive; artistic and athletic. On the way home in the van, we wondered if we could ever perform like her. I remember saying 'Marlene and Liz can do that,' and I believed it. I wonder what Marlene and Liz could have done in the first year if we had had internet and YouTube."
 
The two teams shared some equipment, such as the parallel bars. The women did not compete on the parallel bars, but the uneven parallel bars. One of the bars of the men's parallel bars was raised to create the uneven bars.
 
"And that's what all the schools did, it wasn't just us," said Wieman-Backhaus, who competed on the uneven bars.
 
"Didn't the balance beam wiggle a little," Anderson asked?
 
"A lot," Wieman-Backhaus answered.
 
"It wasn't as stable as it is now," Lloyd-Lohse said.
 
"We got used to it, but the visiting teams didn't," said Anderson, as everyone on the call chuckled.
 
Access to the training room and to the locker rooms also presented some challenges, such as the time Mueser needed to use the whirlpool to help rehabilitate an injury.  The training room at that time was located between the men's and women's locker room. The door to the training room from the women's locker room was locked, and a key to unlock it was not to be found.
 
Mueser donned a swimming suit. Zuerlein put a towel over Mueser's head and led her into and through the men's locker room to the whirlpool in the training room.
 
The women stated they did have to fight not only for recognition, but also for funding. And when they did get funding, they shared some items with the women's volleyball team, which started play in 1968-69, and the women's basketball team, which started up in 1971-72. The teams got warm-up uniforms, but those warm-ups – which varied greatly in size - were shared among the three teams. The women's volleyball and basketball teams had the same uniforms. But the gymnastics team was glad to get warm-ups, even if they didn't always fit properly.
 
"We did get warm-ups and let me tell you that gymnasium was really cold," said Lloyd-Lohse. "To sit there in leotards, tights and ballet slippers, they were not so cozy when it was 20 and 30 below outside.  It was nice to have warm-ups."
 
The purse strings started to loosen slightly after the second championship.
 
"In 1969-70, Karen and I were invited to the Stout Student Association (the student government) where they figured out the budgets," Lloyd-Lohse said. "We actually got them to budget $5000 out of a $50,000 athletic budget, and it was partly due to the fact that we had won the state championship."
 
Govin-Springer used a family connection for assistance for the SSA to overcome some of the prejudices of the day.
 
"My sister and the (SSA) president were good friends," Govin-Springer said. The president "was arguing and said, 'I suppose if we pay for their uniforms and we give them more money we're going to have to buy their bras, too, like we provide for the men's teams with jock straps.'"
 
The team also started to see some changes on campus.

 

"I think it was my junior year we got priority scheduling so, as much as you could, we wouldn't have afternoon classes that conflicted with our practice time," Lloyd-Lohse said.  "That was a big deal. Otherwise, if you had a later afternoon class, you had to miss part of that practice. At Stout at that time, you didn't miss classes."
 
As the team increased their skills and knowledge of gymnastics, they started to share that knowledge outside of the campus.
 
"As we got better, as we knew what we were doing, we ran clinics for some of the high schools," Lloyd-Lohse said. "I can remember going to Rice Lake where we helped run clinics for the high school kids."
 
"Our teams went to other universities to judge events," Govin-Springer said.
 
Title IX has had a huge impact on girls and women's athletic opportunities, even though the law does not specifically talk about athletics. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Members of the Stout early women's gymnastics teams have been able to see the struggles and the benefits of women's athletics over the years.

"I remember playing softball with a couple of ladies and one was the basketball coach at Stout, Vicki Rees," Wieman-Backhaus said. "She had an assistant coach who was paid $400 for the whole season and she figured it out. She earned about 10 cents per hour."
 
"I was a coach and it did affect us," said Lloyd-Lohse. "We had basketball, girl's gymnastics. It did have an effect. It took a while for the ball to get rolling, but at least we were recognized."
 
Anderson shared a story about when she started in karate and went on to earn her black belt at age 49.
 
"I can't tell you how wonderful an experience it was competing and doing sports with all ages (boys and girls, men and women)," Anderson said. "And they (the young girls) had no idea that they didn't always belong in the gym. Now they don't think about it. They just know they belong."
 
The level of competition has increased immensely since Stout formed their first gymnastics team in the late 1960s.
 
"You didn't have to be as good as they are now to win state championships," Govin-Springer said. " I would say our intermediates wouldn't even touch beginners in today's world."
 
"What we did, they are doing as five-year-olds now," said Wieman-Backhaus. "I have a great-niece who is an excellent gymnast and she's 10. You have to see her stuff. It's amazing."
 
"I'm glad things are getting better," Wieman-Backhaus said. "I hope it continues, and not only just men and women, but all races and ethnic groups and everything else."