Remembering a Female Track Legend

No matter how much others scorned or criticized her, she kept competing to achieve her greatest goal. Whatever sport was out there, she would try it out and work with it until she mastered the sport. Didrikson once said as a child, 3. “My goal is to be the greatest athlete who ever lived.” Looking at her life, it looks like she achieved that goal.

Didrikson was born in Port Arthur, Texas, June 26. Records show that she was born in1914, but her tombstone and birth certificate state that she was born in the year 1911. Her full name was Mildred Ella Didrikson. Didrikson was a very as an active child; always running, jumping, climbing, and swinging. She was born to Hannah and Ole Didrikson, emigrants from Norway. When she wasn’t doing chores, she was running footraces, swimming, or playing baseball with the neighborhood boys. Didrikson always competed to be the best she could be. She even made some homemade weights out of a broomstick and two flatirons. The neighborhood boys she played with because of her baseball skills gave the nickname Babe to her. She was named after Babe Ruth. The nickname stayed with her the rest of her life. Little did she know, her childhood was preparing her to become a great athlete. How could she know if all she was doing was having fun?

Going into Junior High, students scorned and taunted her for being a tomboy. Nobody taunted her, however, when she was playing sports. She played on every girl’s team at South End Jr. High. The sports they had for girls were basketball, baseball, tennis, swimming, and golf. She kept her grades high enough to keep her in sports. Didrikson always asked the coaches questions about different sports on techniques and movements. She wanted to improve her game.

Besides attending Jr. High and many sports, Didrikson also worked at a potato factory and fruit packaging company to earn money for her family. By the time she was eighteen, Didrikson had been competing in swimming, diving, high jumping, basketball, and baseball. In February 1930, Colonel J. McCombs saw Didrikson in action on a basketball court during a game. Later that day, he recruited her for the Golden Cyclones. She now worked for the Employers Casualty Company as a basketball player. She was so good that the company paid her seventy-five dollars a month, as a secretary. That was a lot of money back then. The reason they paid her as a secretary was that if she had been paid as an athlete, she would be considered a professional athlete. The Employers Company had only amateur players and someone else could try to recruit her. McCombs later on introduced her to track. Didrikson became the only representative for the Employers Company for track. She was good enough to be a one-woman team.

During the year 1932, Didrikson competed in the AAU championships, also known as the Olympic trials. There in Evanston, Illinois, she won, competing in eight events, with 30 points. The runner up, a full team, got 22 points. Didrikson qualified for five events in the Olympics. Women usually only qualified for three. Didrikson went on to set new world record there. She set records in the high jump, 80-meter hurdles, javelin throw, and shot put. In the javelin throw event, she threw 143 feet and 4 inches. Jean Smiley and Didrikson broke the high jump world record, which was five foot five. The judges disqualified her because her head cleared the bar first. In doing the high jump, your head is supposed to clear first. What is not fair is that Didrikson had been doing her style the whole time at the Olympics and none of the judges had pointed that out before. Didrikson won a gold medal for javelin throw, shot put, baseball, and silver for the high jump.

After the Olympics, people knew Didrikson all around the world. In the late 1930’s, she started concentrating on golf. At the Los Angeles Open, she met George Zaharias, the love of her life. They married eleven months after they first met. George was a professional wrestler. He became her support, manager, and adviser. Her best friend, also an athlete, was Betty Dodd.

Didrikson would practice golf sixteen hours a day on weekends, and three hours a day on weekdays. She said, 2. “I’d golf balls until my hands were bloody sore. Then I’d have tape all over my hands and blood all over the tape.” Many people attracted by Didrikson’s golf playing style; her power swing, showmanship, and low scores, were newly attracted to golf. 1940 was the year she started winning golf events. Didrikson won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1946. That year she had already won thirteen consecutive golf events, as an amateur. Later on Didrikson became the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur. She won seventeen out eighteen events by 1948. That year she became a professional golfer. Besides golfing, Didrikson also was playing tennis, and bowling. With two other golfers, Patty Berg and Fred Corcoran, she founded the Women’s Professional Golf Association in 1949. Didrikson won the National Open twice, in 1948 and 1950.

In April 1953, she suffered from cancer. Didrikson battled it out and won. To show that she lived through it, she kept playing in golf events. A year later, she won the National Open again.

On September 21, 1956, Babe Didrikson Zaharias died in Galveston, Texas. She died of the cancer she had fought before. The doctors were unable to get the cancer out of her lymph nodes. She lived to be around forty. From all her hard work, Didrikson mastered the sports basketball, track, baseball, golf, tennis, billiards, bowling, skating, volleyball, handball, diving, boxing, and cycling.

All through her life, Didrikson charged on. She proved that you could do anything if you set your mind to it with hard work and determination. Babe Didrikson Zaharias should become a warrior of light for her determination and perseverance. Even though people scorned her for being a tomboy, she kept trying. Even though people considered female athletes freaks, she went for her goal. She is the perfect example of pursuing a goal. Didrikson truly became one of the greatest athlete who ever lived.