On Monday night, the Long Beach Century Club hosted a celebration of girls and women in sports at the newly opened Long Beach Sports Basement. The event was replete with fun games and refreshments, but more importantly, Long Beach women’s sports legends who spoke to the young female attendees about their personal experience in athletics and the stunning impact it has made on their lives.
Opportunities for women in athletics have come a long way over the last few decades. Former Long Beach Poly counselor Debbie Hughes shared that in 1967, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor. However, to do so, she had to be sly, due to the common belief of the time that a woman could not physically complete 26.2 miles, and the resulting policy of their banishment from the event.
Not one to be deterred from this ignorant pseudoscientific sexism, Switzer signed up for the race under the name “K. Switzer.” During the marathon, the race director noticed Switzer, and proceeded to attempt to remove her from the race by physically pushing her off of the course. Fortunately, her then-boyfriend intercepted him, and Switzer continued in her pursuit of crossing the finish line.
After this incident, she resolved to become a source of change to prevent other women from being denied opportunities. In doing so, she helped pave the way for fellow American Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the inaugural women’s Olympic Marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. The women’s 10,000 meters was not added to the Olympic program until 1988, and the 5,000 meters was added in 1996, while these events had existed in the Olympics for men since 1912.
Professional photographer and videographer and former Long Beach Poly cross country coach Kathryn Boyd-Batstone spoke next, and shared statistics about women in the prep-athletics scene. Before Title IX passed in 1972, fewer than 32,000 women participated in college sports, representing less than 16 percent of total college athletes. Moreover, in 1972, only 295,000 girls competed in high school sports, less than 7 percent of total high school athletes. By the 2019-2020 school year, this number reached 222,920, or 44 percent of all NCAA athletes.
Presently, females represent 40 percent of athletes at the high school level, and there were 3.42 million girls playing high school sports in the United States during the 2023-2024 school year. Still, 75 percent of coaches in the NCAA today are men, displaying that equality has not yet been achieved in the coaching realm. Current female coaches as well as athletes intend to and are already ameliorating this stark deficit that exists between men and women in leadership positions in athletics.
One such trailblazer is Long Beach State women’s volleyball coach Natalie Reagan, who also spoke at the event. Under Reagan, who just completed her first year as head coach, the Beach has been on a tear, posting a 19-11 overall record in 2024 and beating defending national champions Texas. Reagan shared that she participated in a multitude of sports as a child, everything from equestrian to soccer to eventually, volleyball.
“80 percent of Fortune 500 female CEOs played sports when they were younger,” Reagan said. “It is so important for you to stay in sports and learn their lessons, because they can be life changing.”
This idea was further expounded by Lisa Ulmer, who is living proof that if sports are your passion, you can make them your life and career. After graduating from Cal Poly Pomona in 1984, having been a basketball player there, Ulmer got her teaching credential and began to teach at Jordan High School, where she also coached girls’ basketball for 20 years. In addition, Ulmer is the former Moore League athletic coordinator and head of the Long Beach middle school sports program, and she now serves as a volunteer assistant coach for Wilson High School basketball.
“Maybe your best friends play your sport. It brings you joy, but it’s also a social thing for you. We make relationships with these people,” Ulmer said. “Do you think you need teamwork when you get older into another job, maybe when you’re not in sport? Do you think you’re gonna need that skill set to deal with people who are not fun to deal with? You’re gonna need that. That’s life. We all deal with that.
“For me, sport is learning how to deal with failure. And it’s learning how to deal with success,” she added.
Lastly, LaTanya Sheffield, Long Beach State head coach and USA Track and Field’s coach at the Paris Olympics shared the inspiring and unlikely story about her rise in athletics. Sheffield was primarily focused on cheerleading in high school rather than running, but was talented enough to walk on at San Diego State, which is where she began her hurdling career. Within two years of commencing this new endeavor, Sheffield broke the American record in the 400 meter hurdles. She later represented the United States in this event at the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, and then got into the coaching scene.
Sheffield shared that she has one major regret in her career: the Olympic Final, where, after defying the odds and making it through the qualifying rounds as the other two American women got eliminated, she placed eighth. Reflecting on her mindset going into the race, she said, “I didn’t reassess my goal. I was just going along with the program. And the thing is, what do you do when your back is against the wall? I think, at that moment, a plan would have really been good for me. I think that if I had reassessed my goals, it would have grounded me. So if I don’t say anything today, always reassess your goal.”
Nevertheless, Sheffield’s perspective on this has shifted over the years. She elaborated, “I believe if I had a plan, I believe if I had thought differently, perhaps we would have had a different outcome. But I gotta tell you that I am so grateful with that outcome.
“I really was sad because I knew there were some things that I could have done just a bit differently. But now, in this life, who I am today, that’s the best thing that happened to me. Because now I know that. And I’ve been able to do better. It’s not really about the mountaintop. It is all the journey.
“Everything that you have and will face is on purpose, and you will do it on purpose. That’s how I see it. So, take a chance. Take a risk. The worst thing that could happen is no. This is the worst. But it doesn’t mean that tomorrow is not gonna happen.”
Long Beach, a city long known for producing Olympians such as Sheffield, sent 21 athletes and coaches to the 2024 Paris Olympics, and of these, 8 were women. The young athletes of today are hopefully going to carry on this tradition in the coming years and represent their hometown on the international stage, and Long Beach is rallied behind them. As Ulmer remarked of the event, “This girls and women’s sports day is a really big deal. I know you think there’s only a few girls here, but I guarantee every year this number is going to snowball and keep getting larger and larger as this becomes a yearly thing.”
What’s more, the sky’s the limit for Long Beach’s female athletes, no matter what path they choose, largely thanks to the resources and skills sports have gifted them throughout their childhood. Ulmer says that this is the reason she is still so passionate about youth athletics and chooses to immerse herself in them, even in retirement.
“I still see the value of sport and what it brings, and right now, women’s sports are off the charts. I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment,” Ulmer said. “You have this awesome opportunity in front of you that you can do anything you want with. You could be a coach, you can be a leader, maybe an athletic administrator. You can be an athletic trainer. You can be maybe an agent, you may be a journalist. There’s so many things you can do in sports.
“I encourage you to think about that, keep playing your sport, keep being the great people that you are, and look for ways to give back. We are in a great place with girls’ and women’s sports right now, and you guys are the next generation.”
