Nuhn celebrates Title IX progress, knows there’s a way to go
Babby Nuhn, a state coaching treasure, grew up on Long Island. She had more athletic programs afforded to her than girls in other places. Individual sports, traditional team sports, there was competition between schools.
“When I moved to Connecticut and started my career at North Branford, it was a little bit of a step back,” Nuhn said. “The whole state, not just North Branford. The evolution, there’s no doubt about it, has been exponential with young women getting involved in sports compared to 50 years ago. Opportunities, everything.
“As they used to say in those Virginia Slims commercials, ‘You’ve come a long way, baby.’
But we’ve got a longer way to go.”
When Nuhn started coaching in 1972, Richard Nixon was president. Jimmy Carter was president when she won her first state field hockey title in 1980. She won her fifth state title in November.
“Just don’t put in I’m ready to retire,” she said. “I’m not.”
Nuhn will talk about her teams and about Title IX, celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, for hours. She’ll talk about women like Jean Hunt of Farmington and Joan Sullivan of Simsbury whom she calls “true pioneers in Connecticut who made monumental changes. These women fought when it wasn’t popular to fight for their young women. These women paved the way.”
Few pioneers enjoy talking about themselves and their achievements less than Babby Nuhn. She will go publicly without an age. She tells me her first name — it’s not Barbara — but that, too, will go without public consumption. Babby was a nick
name given to her at a young age.
By this point in a half-century career, she is Babby and she is ageless.
Nuhn transferred to Southern Connecticut and eschewed a graduate fellowship in California to teach health and physical education at North Branford. She started out coaching the Thunderbirds’ field hockey, gymnastics and softball teams.
“We had a boys gym and girls gym, big gym, little gym,” she said. “Our schedule was minimal compared to what it is today. The boys and girls soccer, the boys and girls basketball are the same now. The state championships for everybody at Mohegan Sun. My goodness! Where it has come from, it’s rather impressive.
“The special dinners and awards and All-State, there are a lot of similarities between the boys and girls sports and that never happened back then. You didn’t have uniforms, or the uniforms you did have were really antiquated.”
Babby laughs. She talks about the tunics. And, yes, when she played basketball it was a sixperson team with a rover.
“They didn’t think girls could run that much,” Nuhn said.
In terms of emotions and effort of her first teams, Nuhn doesn’t have to strain to remember what it was like. She remains in touch with many of those women.
“When we were involved in the games, it was the teamwork and it was the same spirited account,” Nuhn said. “Good chemistry is everything. Of course, you wanted to win. After each game, we had homemade cookies. We socialized afterward whether we won or lost … They just don’t pack up and go home like it is today.”
Those girls from 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002 have sons, daughters and grandchildren who play now. Some have served as her assistants. They’ll laugh about the differences, especially the equipment.
“I don’t think I ever had a feeling we weren’t accepted,” Nuhn said. “The coaching staffs, the men, women, we were tight. We supported one another. I remember the guys after football practice would come in support the girls. The girls basketball team was rockin’ and rollin’ with state championships in those days.
“We were standing shoulder to shoulder in my opinion. I don’t look back at it and like, ohhh, I wasn’t being respected. It was not my experience.”
Nuhn’s field hockey team won state championships in 1980 and
1981. They didn’t get rings. The football team won the state title in 1979. Nuhn said they didn’t get rings either.
She also has seen the other side.
“When the UConn women’s basketball team went to the Final Four in San Antonio a few years ago, we all saw how things weren’t equal.”
The discrepancies between the men and women involving weight rooms, food quality and variety, swag, branding etc., became a national story and an embarrassment for the NCAA.
“We know, overall, it has been slow,” Nuhn said. “I hate to see colleges drop programs because there are too many women’s programs. That was not the intent of Title IX. That always bothered me, that there was a comparison and used negatively. I always thought it should be about opportunity.”
When she was young and with the young women before her, Nuhn said teacher, homemaker, nurse and secretary were the inevitable paths. Noble choices all, “but you weren’t going to become an engineer or a doctor. So she looks back at the rosters of 50 years of coaching with particular satisfaction.
“You have doctors, you have nurses, you have the stock exchange, incredible, very successful,”
Nuhn said. “We’ve had players go on with field hockey scholarships to college, too. That didn’t used to happen.”
She points to Pat Summitt as a giant of women’s sports. She points to former CIAC executive director Karissa Niehoff, who began as a physical education instructor and coach to become the first female executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, as a guiding light for young Connecticut athletes.
Nuhn grew up the youngest of three. She said sports helped discipline herself academically as well as the field of play.
“Skills are important, but teamwork is paramount,” she said. “Trying to do the right thing on and off the field. Getting involved in community service. I think it molds you. Let’s face it. Most of your CEOs have been involved in athletics and not always as the best player. Every student-athlete has a role. You don’t have to be captain to bring something positive to the team.
“Sports helps you to deal with adversity. You don’t like every call or every opponent, but you have to respect one another. It’s not just bounce, hit or throw a ball. I tell parents who say their children don’t like sports, ‘No problem. Get involved in theater, music, be a statistician for a team.’ ”
Nuhn continues to hike and bike and, in the fundamental spirit of Title IX, continues on the path of molding young people. She follows the UConn women’s basketball team closely. She went to the Final Four in Minneapolis and has been to a dozen Final Four since she retired from teaching. She hiked Zion National Park with her niece.
“The shootings, George Floyd, there are so many things going on in our society,” Nuhn said. “I would want to get more harmonious. Equal sports, equal pay, equal whatever. You don’t look at as men or women involved with computers. They’re just doing their job. I would like to see it a little more meshed together, not separated. Women’s sports, youth sports, just sports. We need more.
“Let’s face it. We all know there are hidden things. I hope in the future it becomes little bit more of an opportunity for everyone. There have been a lot of changes, but I know we have to go much further.”
And, no, Babby Nuhn, whose coaching career was born the same year as Title IX, is not retiring.
“I still love it,” she said. “I’m still silly about it.”