UAA Women's History: Joan Maser, Carnegie Mellon
Considering that she grew up in an era and place that offered little opportunity for girls in sports, it was unlikely that Joan Maser would spend 38 years in athletics at Carnegie Mellon University.
“For some time, sports were non-existent to me growing up in Lancaster (Pennsylvania). My brothers were older and played Little League Baseball in the summer. There was not anything for girls. We only had three girls’ sports in my high school, which was for grades seven through 12: field hockey, basketball, and tennis,” she recollected. “I played basketball, but there were no organized sports at all until ninth grade. For the most part, we just rode our bikes and swam in the public pool.”
Pittsburgh
Going to college was a life-changing experience for Maser in multiple ways. “My basketball coach told me to go to University of Pittsburgh and I did what she said. Pittsburgh was a huge culture shock for me,” she admitted. “I didn’t even know how to walk across a city street when I got there. There were no people of color in my school and there was not a lot of religious diversity. It was a major adjustment because I was so out of my element, but being away from Lancaster and away from my family allowed me to grow up into my own person.”
While she was in high school, Title IX came into effect on June 23, 1972, and one of women’s sports most memorable moments, Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in the Houston Astrodome took place in 1973. “Title IX did not have an immediate impact. It took a while for schools to react and figure out what they were going to do. We were in the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) when I played at Pitt.”
She played two years, mostly as a reserve, on the women’s basketball team, but spending time in the training room with minor injuries piqued her interest in sports medicine. “At that time, the women’s athletic training room housed all the women’s sports in addition to men’s swimming and gymnastics. The rest of the teams had their own athletic trainers and male student staffs,” recalled Maser, who graduated from Pitt in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education in addition to a National Athletic Trainers Association Certification.
“I shouldn’t have been a PE major, nor should they have even had it as a major,” she laughed. “There were not a lot of jobs out there for teaching or as a woman athletic trainer at the time. My senior year, I went to Carnegie Mellon to learn football from Mark Keppler, the Bucknell AT who was a one-man show at the time and caring for the Tartans’ athletes. We weren’t allowed to work Pitt football, men’s basketball, or wrestling. Getting the chance to learn from Mark (who retired at the end of 2016 after 31 years at Bucknell) gave me experience that allowed me to get my first job at Carnegie Mellon.”
Early Years at Carnegie Mellon
Hired at Carnegie Mellon in 1981 to be an assistant athletic trainer, Maser also found herself in a role she could not have anticipated as the Tartans’ head field hockey coach. “I didn’t play field hockey in high school, but at that point I wished I had,” she quipped. “When I did attempt to coach, we practiced on a patch of grass in front of the library. The only time we were allowed on the football field was when we played games, and our locker room was in the basement of Skibo Gym. I mustered through it until we got a field hockey coach who knew what she was doing.”
Joan Maser with her 1984 Carnegie Mellon field hockey team.
On Jan. 13, 1981, women’s athletics programs were approved as part of the NCAA’s structure, with the NCAA holding cross country and field hockey championships that fall. The AIAW remained active until 1983, but operations ended in mid-1982. Maser was pursuing her master’s degree in physical education and exercise physiology at Pitt in 1979. “When I was in grad school, the basketball coach said she’d love to have me back. I still had two years of eligibility left and I liked the idea. We submitted all the necessary paperwork to the AIAW, but my application was not approved,” she recalled.
“There were only so many sports at Carnegie Mellon when I started. Women were coaching women, and women were often coaching more than one sport. Jane Fisk coached volleyball and fencing, and Gerri Seidl coached basketball and track & field. Donna Morosky coached men’s and women’s swimming, and women’s cross country,” she pointed out. “The weight room was in the men’s locker room and the locker room had no doors because ‘only football people were down there.’”
Carnegie Mellon and the UAA
In 1984, Maser was promoted to women’s athletic director. Her foray into athletic administration came at an interesting time. That fall, Washington University Chancellor William Danforth and University of Rochester President Dennis O’Brien began talking earnestly about the formation of an NCAA Division III intercollegiate athletic conference with the membership being determined by academic similarities rather than athletic ones.
On June 25, 1986, the formation of the University Athletic Association (UAA) was announced with informal competition taking place in 1986-87 and championship competition commencing the following year.
“We went from traveling in vans to flying to conference opponents. That was the push women’s programs needed. Men’s and women’s teams started traveling together so the arrangements needed to be the same,” Maser described. “A lot more money was put into both men’s and women’s programs, but that was really the start of women’s programming at Carnegie Mellon having more resources and full-time coaches.”
“The UAA was a big driver in getting Carnegie Mellon and all the UAA schools more Title IX compliant. I was doing all the travel arrangements for years. Wherever the men stayed, the women stayed. We had equity across sports. The hotel we used in a city for our football team was the same one we used for our cross country programs,” she explained. “It was not about saving money. It was good for both the men and women to share the same experiences and learn in the UAA together.”
Her Career at Carnegie Mellon
Maser earned a role as associate athletic director in 1991, ending her time in athletic training. She remained in that role before taking on the Coordinator of Athletics Support Services in 2008, a position she held until her retirement on June 30, 2019.
“Athletic training combined the things I enjoyed most about collegiate athletics: sports medicine and working with the student-athletes. The administrative side was not a passion for me, yet I enjoyed the experiences and the people across the UAA and NCAA who I worked with,” she remarked. “As an administrator, I had to carve out time to be with the student-athletes. Division III turned out to be a good home for me.”
She is glad to see the opportunities afforded to women athletes these days, while recognizing that the work is not done. “It has been a long, slow process, but we have made a lot of progress. Division I is still not equitable in terms of male vs. female or sport to sport.”
Maser has witnessed dramatic changes in the athletic training field nationally and particularly at her alma mater. “As an alum of Health and Rehabilitative Sciences at Pitt, I see the magazine they put out and it makes me wish I could go back now. With the structure now, O would have majored in physical therapy or adapted physical therapy for those with special needs,” she stated. “I rolled with the crowd at the time I was there and truthfully there weren’t a lot of opportunities. Now they have occupational therapy and work with prosthetics. I know I would have flourished and found comfort in a place like that.”