Ivy@50

Theresa Hirschauer
At Brown University, her teams dominated as Theresa Hirschauer played for six Ivy Championship squads in soccer and softball. She has been pursuing titles ever since as a high school coach and athletic director.

Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, Brown University originally wasn't on Theresa Hirschauer's mind as a possible college. Coming from an athletic family and playing soccer, softball, and basketball in high school, Hirschauer was at a soccer tournament in Virginia when a Brown recruiter noticed her. Soon she was being actively recruited by head coach Phil Pincince.

"He was emphasizing the athletics and then I realized hey, Brown's in the Ivy League," remembers Hirschauer. "The ability to play soccer and softball was a major factor" in choosing Brown, she recalls. A trip to Brown spring of her senior year decided it. "I fell in love with Brown," says Hirschauer, spurning full scholarships from Boston College and the University of Central Florida.

Brown made a wise choice. From 1986-89 Hirschauer led the soccer team to four straight Ivy titles and two NCAA appearances. In the process she was named Ivy Rookie of the Year in 1985 and Ivy Player of the Year in 1988, and set Ivy records for goals scored in a game, season, and career, as well as points scored in a career. These records still stand today.

Hirschauer is the greatest women's soccer player in Brown's history and, perhaps, the greatest player in Ivy history. She also played softball for Pincince, earning first team All-Ivy honors twice. Brown University named her to the Ivy League women's Silver Anniversary Team in soccer in 1999, and to its Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997.

Academically, Hirschauer took advantage of the unique Brown curriculum, which allows students great flexibility in meeting degree requirements. "I always wanted to be a math teacher," she recalls, and "the class choices made it so much easier" to pursue athletics and academics. Plus, she was able to take many psychology courses which "help me deal with student athletes" in her current position as soccer coach, math teacher, athletic director, and interim middle school head at Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS), a small, academically excellent private school in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Brown assisted in Hirschauer's being hired at Country Day when she graduated with a degree in mathematics in 1989. The school named her 'Athlete of the Year' and she made the cover of the Brown Alumni Magazine. That was noticed by "some Brown alums that worked at CCDS," remembers Hirschauer. They encouraged her to interview, and she got the position.

Perhaps inadvertently, Brown played a role in her wanting to coach. "I never had a female coach, and that made me want to become one," says Hirschauer. "My experience at Brown pushed me to want to coach and come back to Cincinnati and teach. Because of my love for athletics, I ended up as the Athletic Director."

Hirschauer currently has the four positions at CCDS, and runs soccer camps around the United States during the summer. She is in a unique position to compare present-day athletics to her time as an athlete. What is the biggest change? "Specialized sports," says Hirschauer. "AAU and Select sports are making the athletes choose" a single sport. Some get burned out. "It is the biggest challenge for us at the high school level."

She attributes her ability to successfully take on all these roles to her years at Brown. "I'm a very organized person to this day and the main reason is teaching myself the ability to juggle -- academics, athletics and a job (she worked in the dining halls all four years) at Brown," she asserts. "The reason I'm able to be Athletic Director, soccer coach, algebra teacher and this year the Middle School Head is because of my experiences at Brown."

"Brown University was the best decision of my life. It opened all the doors to my professional career."

ed. note - Brown's Phil Pincince is one of the League's most successful two-sport coaches, with more than 250 wins in 29 seasons in women's soccer alone. Pincince has won 12 Ivy championships in soccer, including nine in a row from 1982 to 1990, and three in softball. His teams won both Ivy titles in 1985-86 and 1989-90, making him one of the few Ivy coaches ever to win championships in two sports in one year.

— Stephen Eschenbach

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This website will be hosting a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of formal Ivy League competition, featuring special articles every weekday through the end of May 2007.

Although some League rivalries predate the Civil War, and the term 'Ivy League' was used in newspapers as early as the mid-1930s, the Ivy League began formally with the Ivy Presidents' agreement of 1954, and the first year of formal competition was 1956-57.

The first formal Ivy League contest -- on Sept. 29, 1956, when the Columbia Lions' football team hosted the Brown Bears at Baker Field in upper Manhattan -- will be commemorated at that same site (now Wien Stadium) with a ceremony on Saturday, September 30, when Columbia hosts the Princeton Tigers.

Since that first contest, more than 75,000 Ivy athletes have played under a unique model of college sports, sharing a remarkably consistent goal: to provide successful athletics as an integral part of the full undergraduate experience -- combining the values and lessons of athletics with those of the classroom and laboratory, the campus and the community -- to produce leaders in every walk of life.

The 50th Celebration is not intended as a formal or complete history of each era, sport or school in the last half century. There's simply too much history to be able do that -- although the online Ivy League Record Book provides a wealth of information about Ivy League standings and All-Ivy teams, national successes in every sport, and individual athletic and academic achievements.

Rather, the Celebration will ask more than 200 former Ivy League athletes to tell the story of Ivy athletics through an almost-daily series of interview-based profiles. Combined with more comprehensive theme-based features (such as the Ivy League's long Olympic history), these profiles will cover every part of these 50 years at all eight schools -- all of the more than 30 Ivy women's and men's championship sports (the broadest collegiate athletic participation in the country) -- and the incredibly diverse backgrounds and careers of Ivy athletes.

Some of these alumni were stars or champions. Others -- like most athletes at every level of competition -- played more anonymously or with only modest team success. In their combined athletic and academic Ivy League experiences, however, each of them found values and habits that led to later success, whether in global arenas or in their own families and neighborhoods.

Special aspects of the Celebration will include:

a preview of each week's stories in the weekly Ivy League email newsletter, which is available free of charge on the left hand side of this page, beneath the menu. Just simply place your email address in that box and select 'GO.'
an earlier (preceding Friday) preview for members of the media, Ivy Sports Information Directors and other Ivy institutional staff (media may sign up by writing to Jane Antis).
archiving of all profiles and features on www.ivy50.com, chronologically as well as by both school and sport.

We welcome reprinting of all stories, with appropriate credit, in public media, and in all institutional media (including websites, weekly bulletins and calendars, game programs, and alumni magazines).

The Ivy League 50th Celebration will be Co-Edited by Ivy League Associate Director Brett Hoover and by Stephen Eschenbach, a long-time contributor to each of the Ivy alumni magazines who also will be Senior Writer. Other contributing writers will include two-time Olympian and 1990 Harvard graduate Meredith Rainey Valmon; former Ivy Public Information Assistants Josi Carlson and E.J. Crawford; current Ivy Public Information Assistants Wes Harris and Bethany Karantonis; and Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans and Associate Director Chuck Yrigoyen.

We hope you will enjoy this special year-long Ivy feature, and we look forward to reading your comments and answering your questions, which can be sent to Hoover.