The landmark 1975 U.S. Women's Lacrosse Touring Team had two Wilson players and a determined coach on their side

by Coleen Dee Berry

Forty years ago, 17 women did something extraordinary, unexpected, even earth-shattering by sports standards. They were members of the 1975 U.S. Women’s Lacrosse Touring Team and they went to Great Britain—at that time the acknowledged number one powerhouse of the sport—and returned home undefeated, with 13 wins.

 

For American women’s lacrosse, the 1975 team’s triumphant two-month tour was a landmark achievement—the equivalent of the U.S. women’s soccer team defeating China in the 1999 World Cup or the U.S. women’s ice hockey team winning Olympic gold in 1998.

“Lacrosse has always had special moments that signal important new growth in the game … which only become fully clear decades later,” wrote author and lacrosse historian Jim Calder in his 2015 book, Women Play Lacrosse. “The United States’ success during the 1975 tour changed the direction of women’s field lacrosse.”

Two Wilson women were part of that team—team captain Connie Lanzl ’72 and defensive player Sandy Walker ’74—as well as team coach Kathy Heinze, who served as Wilson’s lacrosse coach from 1965-69. Heinze, whose American mother married a British diplomat, grew up in England playing lacrosse and was a member of the All-England team from 1961-64.

Heinze is fiercely emphatic about the crucial role Wilson had in building the 1975 team. “If Wilson College had not had a lacrosse team, this whole story would not have happened. Wilson was very instrumental—not just for the three of us individually, but for the whole 1975 team,” she said.

If Wilson College had not had a lacrosse team, this whole story would not have happened. — Kathy Heinze

 

~

To understand Wilson’s influence on the 1975 team, it’s necessary to understand how different the sport of women’s lacrosse was in the 1960s and ’70s from today.

Title IX, the federal law that set up gender equity in college sports for women, did not take effect until after 1972. The sport had not gained the popularity it has now—not many colleges had lacrosse teams for either men or women. Wilson was one of the few colleges in the area with an organized women’s lacrosse team.

In addition to college teams, there were private, amateur lacrosse clubs who fielded teams. The NCAA did not officially sponsor women’s college lacrosse teams until 1982, and so there were no NCAA rules forbidding women lacrosse players from playing on both a college team and a club team.

After Heinze came to coach at Wilson in 1965, she founded a club team called Central Penn. Many of Central Penn’s games were played on a field at the Allenberry Resort in Boiling Springs, Pa., which is owned by Heinze’s in-laws. “I’d play for Wilson on Saturday and then for Central Penn on Sunday,” Lanzl said. “In those days, you played for anyone, anywhere, any chance you got.”

The athletes who came to play for the Central Penn club would later form the nucleus for the 1975 U.S. team. Lanzl and Walker played for Heinze on Central Penn, along with 1975 teammates Mary Ann Smeltz (West Chester College), Sue King (Gettysburg College) and Rose Ann Neff (Lock Haven University). Barbara Doran, who was one of the first women athletes to receive a Title IX scholarship to play lacrosse for Penn State, also played for Central Penn.

Both Lanzl and Walker said Wilson’s lacrosse team was a deciding factor for them in choosing to attend the College. “I had played lacrosse since I was 12. I loved the game and I wanted to continue to play it at the college level,” Walker said.

British and American women’s lacrosse touring teams had been competing against each other since the 1930s. When the British touring team came to the United States in 1973, the American team played exhibition games at Wilson to prepare for area matches. Heinze coached that 1973 U.S. team, which included Lanzl and Walker as members.

“When I came here, no one (in the area) was playing lacrosse except for Wilson, and they happened to need a lacrosse coach,” Heinze said. “I took the job and then formed Central Penn. Without being at Wilson, I don’t know if there would have been a Central Penn. You could say Wilson was the catalyst for all that.”

~

The 1975 U.S. touring team arrived in London on Sept.18, regarded as underdogs in the wake of a lackluster stateside exhibition game against the U.S. Reserves team. “We played poorly and there were some British coaches on hand and they carried the word back,” Walker said. "They thought we were weak.”

Their first game on English soil set the tone for the rest of the tour—a 15-0 shellacking of the England Reserves team, second in rank only to the English national team. In fact, Heinze noted several players from the national team had been slipped onto the Reserves. “I guess they wanted to put us in our place early,” Heinze said. “When I saw them on the roster, I was really very angry, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter. We never looked back after that game.”

That first game remains an indelible memory for both Lanzl and Walker.

“I remember looking up early on and the scoreboard read 4-0, and I will never forget my sense of absolute wonder and elation at that moment,” said Lanzl, who scored three goals in the game. “I felt that I was part of the most perfect game that I had ever played in. There were few errors, our passing was flawless, we were just on a roll and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I knew that if we kept playing like this, nothing could stop us.”

“They couldn’t even score one goal against us,” Walker said. “I remember our goal-keeper (Sally Wilson Owen), late in the game, making these two incredible, impossible saves. She dug down deep to make those saves … and winning the game in that way, making the impossible possible—it bonded us, it gave us an inner confidence that carried us through the tour.”

The British press took note of the U.S. team’s prowess: “The U.S. … interchanged passes and attacked with bewildering speed and accuracy, which made England look statuesque. England only managed the occasional attack but never could breach the massed American defense,” wrote The London Observer about the 15-0 defeat.

From there, the U.S. team translated its confidence into impressive results. The team traveled all over Great Britain, including Wales and Scotland, and the scores piled up: U.S. 18, Anglo-Irish team 0; U.S. 25, Midlands 3; U.S. 31, Home Scots 1.

From the Sunday Telegraph that September: “They've struck terror into our hearts," observed Judy Herten (a British coach), with much gusto and respect as the American women's touring team continued on their successful tour of this country, walloping all comers. "The Americans are so good—quite the best touring team we have seen here.”

The closest game was a 6-5 win over the English national team on Oct. 8, 1975, in Liverpool. The game featured an unprecedented timeout to search for a contact lens lost by U.S. attack wing Rose Ann Neff. “There were no timeouts in our game and this was a big decision by the referees to allow the search,” Walker said. “Ironically, it’s the only time the American press gave us any coverage during the tour.” (The contact was never found and Neff played the remainder of the tour with only one lens.)

Heinze, Walker and Lanzl all stress that women’s lacrosse in the 1970s was very different from today’s sport. It was a game of finesse, not power, relying on stickwork and passing, footwork and endurance.

“So we had no gloves, no helmets, no contact, no pads, no boundaries. No offsides, no timeouts, no substitutions. No lines (on the field),” said Walker, describing the 1970s version of the game. “I loved playing at Wilson because it was not a football field. The moment you have a football field with lines on it, there’s a structure there that the game really didn’t have. It was actually harder to play on a lined football field encircled by a track.”

For the 1975 tour, Heinze developed a physical regimen designed to give her players more endurance. Besides the usual calisthenics, the players ran track, everything from 100-yard sprints to 880-yard drills. The result paid off. “The British press kept referring to us as the ‘fast and fit’ Americans,” Lanzl recalled. “The training was both a confidence builder and a challenge because we knew Kathy was training us as no [women’s lacrosse] team had been trained before.”

The training also helped Lanzl and Walker play through injuries. Lanzl suffered a tear in her hamstring three weeks before the tour and Walker played with injuries to both knees. “I had all these weights to exercise my hamstring that I had to lug around from host home to host home throughout Great Britain,” Lanzl recalled.

The team had some spare time to be tourists, and went punting on the Thames, sightseeing and shopping. Both Lanzl and Walker have high praise for the British families who hosted the team members. “They were very warm and affectionate, the exact opposite of the British stereotype,” Walker said. “They would do anything for us,” Lanzl added. Several host families took to the Americans so much that they traveled some distance to cheer for the U.S. team at matches.

~

For me, the experience created this deep well of support and confidence, and for 40 years I’ve been drawing from that well. — Sandy Walker '74

By the time the Americans played Great Britain’s national team at the end of the tour—winning by a score of 8-6—they had also won the admiration of many Brits. Walker remembers the team walking onto the field, hearing long and loud applause from the crowd and “the oohs and aahs that our passing game would bring.”

“The British, from first match to last, were dazed by the speed and dexterity of the visitors, but most of all they were destroyed by determination,” the Observer wrote, and the Times of London concluded, “There is no shame in losing to such a fast, fit, determined and supremely talented side such as the American girls.”

Not only did the team return undefeated, but the Americans had outscored their opponents 189 to 27. “By beating the once-invincible British—all 13 international and territorial teams of them—America now reigns supreme,” wrote Jackie Pitts, then-president of the United States Women’s Lacrosse Association in the April 1976 edition of the organization's magazine, Crosse Checks. “Without a doubt, the women’s game in the U.S. currently displays a high standard of play—a standard which is our responsibility to preserve and improve.”

It was the U.S. team’s accomplishment that catapulted American women's lacrosse forward, according to Pitts. In 1976, a little more than 15,000 women and girls played lacrosse. By 2014, nearly 300,000 were competing across the country at all levels.

The undefeated team returned home largely unheralded. First Lady Betty Ford sent a letter of congratulations, along with then-Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp. Seven members of the 1975 team were later inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame, including Heinze and Lanzl.

But there were no parades, no television interviews, no one clamoring to do a “Miracle on Grass” movie.

Walker retired from lacrosse after the tour and now works as a renewable energy consultant in California; Lanzl spent time in Japan and became the first coach of the Japanese national women’s lacrosse team before moving to Greenville, S.C., and running a nonprofit organization.

The lack of acknowledgement never daunted the team members. Every few years they would get together to renew their bond and remember their triumphs.

The team gathered for its 40th reunion this past September at the Allenberry Resort at Boiling Springs and presented its coach with a special memory book of photos, clippings and reminiscences from all the team members. “After succeeding in doing something so extraordinary, the bond that the experience formed between all of us is a story in itself,” said Walker. “For me, the experience created this deep well of support and confidence, and for 40 years I’ve been drawing from that well.”

Four decades later, no other validation is needed because the team members all know what they accomplished.

"It was about time the old order was changed," Heinze told the Daily Mail in Liverpool during the tour. "We decided to put everything into this tour, to see if we could come back at No. 1 in the world."

And they did just that.