WVU Sports Hall of Fame
Marilee Hohmann was the first female athlete to compete on any WVU athletic team in 1961, 11 years before Title IX became federal law.
The Fairmont, West Virginia, native competed on the WVU rifle team from 1961-62, coached by Major Charles Means and Sgt. Charles Haley. She became the first woman ever to compete in an athletic competition at the United States Military Academy at West Point. At the time, the Academy was an all-male institution and a special dressing room arrangement had to be made.
Her exploits as a modern-day Annie Oakley were published in numerous media outlets -- Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that serves the U.S. Military community. During that 1961-62 season, Hohmann had the fourth-highest average, 283, on WVU's defending national championship rifle squad.
Hohmann attended East Fairmont High, where she was a majorette and Maid of Marion. She captured a national rifle championship at Camp Perry, Ohio, in 1959, at the age of 16. Hohmann was encouraged to shoot competitively by her father, Harold, who had won a national championship in 1958.
At WVU, Hohmann was a member of the Pi Beta Phi women's fraternity and earned her master's degree. She taught at Fairmont Senior High and Mannington High before taking a position on the Fairmont State faculty, where she taught speech and communications for nearly 20 years. One of her students was the late WVU football coach Bill Stewart. Hohmann was a member of Governor Jay Rockefeller's West Virginia Arts and Humanities Commission.
She was married to John Veasey of Fairmont, and they had one son, Chance, who received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in 1990. Hohmann died of cancer in 1986 at the age of 43.
