West Virginia University Athletics

Pioneering athlete Bette Hushla was among the first women to ever compete in intercollegiate athletics at West Virginia University in 1965 when she was a member of the Mountaineer men's swimming and diving team.
            
That was seven years prior to the passage of Title IX and nine years before WVU began sponsoring women's sports teams.
           
 A native of Williamson, New York, Hushla arrived on campus in 1964 - four years after rifle's Marilee Hohmann became the first female athlete to perform on a Mountaineer athletic team in 1961.
            
Hushla was a champion AAU swimmer competing in the Rochester, New York, area for her sports-minded parents, Fred and Beatrice Hushla. Her father, who worked at Eastman Kodak as an industrial engineer, once served as national chairman of the U.S. Luge Committee.      
            
Hushla's swimming exploits included owning the world's fourth-fastest time in the 100-yard backstroke with her long-course clocking falling three-tenths of a second shy of the winning time in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
            
She represented the U.S. three times in swimming competitions in Canada and hoped to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials in either 1964 or 1968. However, because aspiring female athletes were unable to compete collegiately, Hushla's opportunities were limited.
            
Familiar with West Virginia University as a result of having some relatives living in the Mountain State and wanting to obtain a music degree to become a concert pianist, Hushla opted to attend WVU to study music and to compete on the men's swimming team.
            
She performed as an unattached athlete as a freshman in 1964, and then when new coach Jack Lowder took over the men's program the following year, he asked Hushla to join the squad after researching her times and realizing that he didn't have any back strokers on campus.
            
Hushla's lone season at WVU in 1965 was noteworthy and controversial, considering the times. Winning six of the eight races she entered led to Hushla's profile in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" section before qualifying for the Southern Conference championships held in Williamsburg, Virginia, on March 3, 1965.
            
Unfortunately, three days prior to the meet, the Southern Conference ruled Hushla ineligible because she was a female, resulting in a firestorm of controversy. WVU's Dean of Women, Betty Boyd, organized a student protest that garnered more than 2,000 signatures in one day and was sent via telegram to the league's headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Her plight soon became a national news story with columnists from Boston to Los Angeles taking up Hushla's cause. Bud Collins, writing in the Boston Globe, was among them.
            
"The case of Miss Hushla, a 19-year-old sophomore at West Virginia, is clearly one for the Supreme Court," he wrote. "The Constitution seems to disapprove of decrees such as the one issued by Southern Conference Commissioner Lloyd Jordan regarding Miss Hushla."       
            
Although Hushla remained in school, eventually earning her history degree in 1967, she never stepped foot in a swimming pool again for the rest of her life. She taught school in West Virginia for a short time, was briefly married, then moved to New Jersey to operate a small business and to raise her daughter, Mattie, who died of cancer in 2011 at age 43.
            
According to her younger sister, Marianne Ly, writing in her self-published tribute "Remembering Bette," Hushla was "a gifted musician, voracious reader, dedicated co-worker, a friend to those in despair, a five-time cancer survivor and a lover of cats and all animals."
            
She succumbed to complications from COVID-19 on April 28, 2020, in Trenton, New Jersey.
            
Hushla is survived by her younger sister, Marianne, and one nephew, Alex.