Women’s Basketball Debuts

First female varsity team takes the court

More than 40 years after the first men’s basketball team launched varsity sports at Babson, female athletics entered the competition. The year was 1974 and the sport, once again, was basketball. That year’s squad, coached by Fran Hartwell, was winless in five games but laid the foundation for a 7–3 record the following year behind leading scorer Nancy Flynn. While basketball was the only all-female team in 1974, it wasn’t the only sport in which women participated. That same year, four women—Christine Lazuk ’77, Shirley Choy ’77, Kathy Seufert ’77, and Anne Sullivan ’79 — became the first female members of the swimming and diving team coached by Bob Hartwell.