PASADENA, Calif.--The women basketball players of the California Institute of Technology--the Beavers--feel a bit overlooked, and they're hoping to change that. Last year the men's team stole the spotlight when the documentary Quantum Hoops hit the big screen. On January 10, the women play Whittier College, whom they beat last year by two points. Another win may just help them capture a bit of the limelight.
The game takes place on a designated "Beaver Fever" night, which offers a pep rally, snacks, and prizes through an initiative organized by the ASCIT Social Team, Team Tech, and the Beaver Fever group.
The Caltech women's team joined the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the SCIAC, in 2001, but they have few athletic peers. "When you look at college female sports, Caltech is about as unique as it gets," says coach Sandra Marbut.
Marbut is hopeful the Beavers will triumph over Whittier again. For students at a school like Caltech, athletic competition involves analyzing numbers, a pursuit they master in the classroom. With an undergraduate population of only about 900, of which women comprise only 29 percent, Caltech's pool of potential players is small. But this year Caltech has 15 players, four of whom have played all four years. Senior player Lindsay King passed a 1,000-point career total this season, which, Marbut notes, "is a significant milestone in any school." And another senior, Rene Davis, was the first woman named to the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference's 2007 women's basketball all-conference second team.
"Our team is excited to play; they feel like they have something to prove," Marbut says. They have something to prove to themselves and to the male-dominated world in which they work and play. While fanfare surrounded the men after Quantum Hoops, the lady Beavers have actually scored better. The women's team broke its losing streak after 50 games, while the men's team streak lasted 200. Last season the Beavers won two off-campus games. Their first win was highlighted on ESPN, but only at the tail end of a story about the men's team.
The team's origins mirror the same hard path women trod in Caltech's past. The first females were admitted to the school in 1972. The women's basketball team was only started in 1995, by Angie Bealko, who played on the men's team for a year before starting the women's program as a club sport.
The Beavers joined the SCIAC six years later, and while campus turnout to its games is on par with that for the men's, these players still face tough odds both on and off the playing field. "Here, women are competing in a male-dominated world," says Marbut. "Science is a man's world. But it's changing, and our players can be part of that change."
Still, there are advantages in playing at a place like Caltech. Marbut appoints honorary coaches, and both President Jean-Lou Chameau and his wife, Carol Carmichael, have played the role, as has Atkins Professor of Chemistry Robert Grubbs. "I'm pretty sure we're the only collegiate team in the NCAA that had a Nobel laureate as an honorary coach for our first win," Marbut remarks. And, she is convinced that challenges from every side forge the leadership skills she sees in her players. "The one who cures cancer someday will have failed thousands of times before they get it right just once," she says.
Marbut thinks that prospective students won't choose Caltech because they can play great basketball at the school, but they may just choose it because it's an option. And, she says the Caltech way is how college sports was meant to be. "They were meant to be students; to study first and get the benefit of sports in addition. The degree will get you the job, but the basketball will give you the skills to get the promotion, to make you a leader."
Caltech faces Whittier College at Caltech this Thursday, January 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the Braun Gym.
