Margie Wright overcame many objects on her road to the Olympics. Kicked off a Little League team because she was a girl. No scholarships to make college affordable for female athletes. Demonized as a coach for pushing Title IX equality.
But finally, Margie made it to the Olympics. In 1995, she took a year off from her coaching job at Fresno State to coach the women’s Olympic softball team. She’d realized her Olympic dream. She was going to Atlanta!
Showdown in Atlanta
But even in Atlanta, she had to gear up for battle. As the pitching coach, she discovered she was being paid less than the male hitting coach. She took her pay stub and marched into the USA softball office.
“I want back pay and a check stub that looks like his or I’ll sue,” she said.*
Officials met Margie’s demand.
Margie went to bat for her players, too. Going into the team’s final game before the Olympics, shortstop and team captain Dot Richardson was seen wearing a Rawlings wrist band. That riled team officials, who didn’t think women should have the same sponsorship opportunities that men had. The director ordered her to take it off.
“Dot was ready to walk away from it all,” Margie recalls. “But I talked her out of it, and I made the director accept the wrist band.”
The long years of battle did nothing to dim the thrill of Margie’s Olympic moment.
“Every time we entered and left the stadium at the Atlanta Games, I got chills,” she says. “It was the most awesome thing, representing your country doing something that you love.”
In the gold medal game against China, Dot Richardson put Team USA up 2-0 with a two-run home run early in the game. But the coach for the Chinese team protested that the ball was foul. Umpires conferred for nine long minutes before calling the ball fair. The Americans went on to win the game with a score of 3-1. The nail-biting game and the victorious celebration that followed clinched the softball team’s place as the darling of the Olympics.**
Margie was electrified at the team’s gold medal ceremony.
“When we stood for the national anthem, I just couldn’t hold it together any longer,” she says. “I was so thrilled for these women, to take home gold the first time softball was an Olympic sport, and to do it in front of the fans in your home country.”
Fifty years of phone calls
Margie’s activism continued until she retired in 2012, making her a continual target for male coaches, athletic directors and league officials. It was exhausting.
“You’re always seen as the bad guy, and that takes a toll on you,” she admits.
But asked what inspires her to continue fighting for a woman’s right to compete, Margie’s answer comes easily. “If I didn’t do anything, what would they do to the next woman?” she says.
Even today, she advocates for women’s athletics.
“I get calls about Title IX all the time,” she says. “It’s been fifty years and still we’re fighting the same battles.”
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* Margie Wright’s story and all quotes in the post are from my interview with her on February 19, 2021.
** Softball was an Olympic sport from 1996 to 2008, but was removed (along with baseball) in 2012 and 2016. They were the first sports to be dropped from the Olympic program in 69 years. They were added back for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games (played in 2021 because of COVID-19), with Japan winning the gold medal softball match against the United States, 8-3. Sadly, the sport isn’t included in the 2024 Paris Olympics and isn’t on the initial roster for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. According to the International Olympic Committee, baseball and softball don’t draw enough global participation, and the best players don’t participate, because their regular season play conflicts with the Olympics. But the final lineup hasn’t been determined. There’s still time to convince the IOC otherwise!
Image: Ron Babb and the Amateur Softball Association/USA Softball, Etched in Gold: The Story of America’s First Ever Olympic Gold Medal Winning Softball Team (Masters Press: Indianapolis, IN, 1997), p. 246.