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Babe Didrikson, Female Athlete Who Broke Barriers, Still a Role Model and Inspiration for Growing Ranks of Women Competitors
New York, N.Y., September 6, 2000 --Babe Didrikson, The Greatest All-Sport Athlete of All Time by Susan Cayleff is the newest addition to the Barnard Biography Series. Forty-four years after her death, Didrikson's impact on women in sports can still be seen. Unwilling to accept that being a woman meant being less than a man, Didrikson used talent and an unrelenting desire to overcome barriers.
 In the half century since Didrikson competed, there has been an explosion of women in sports. In Didrikson's day, she was an athletic anomaly, but, today, one in three girls plays high school varsity sports, up from one in 27 only 30 years ago-a nine-fold increase. Didrikson was a pioneer who dispelled the idea that women athletes shouldn't sweat and who opened the door for such women as Mia Hamm and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. A winner of three Olympic gold medals and 31 LPGA titles, Babe Didrikson stated in her autobiography that her goal was "to be the greatest athlete that ever lived." Tenacious and decidedly unladylike for the 1920s-1950s, she excelled in every sport she tried, including golf, running, jumping, javelin throwing, swimming, basketball, and baseball. Sports Illustrated named her the Female Athlete of the Century in December. With extraordinary talent and ferocity, Didrikson paved the way for female athletes from the women of the WNBA to the victorious U.S. Women's Soccer team.
Called "a reminder that individuality, creativity, physical strength, endurance and commitment persevere when ones wings have not been clipped and our own unique talents are given the chance to soar," by Sunniva Sorby, the expedition leader of the Trans Antarctica Expedition 2000, Cayleff's book is "a story that inspires young adult readers to work hard and to reach their potential."
Cayleff, whose adult biography of Babe Didrikson was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, now brings this triumphant hero to young readers. The department chair and professor of Women's Studies at San Diego State University, Cayleff is the author of three books, including Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1998, Cayleff was inducted into the National Woman's History hall of fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
Babe Didrikson, The Greatest All-Sport Athlete of All Time is published by Conari Press in conjunction with Barnard College, an independent college for women affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. The Barnard Biography Series was conceived to bring attention to the accomplishments of women in a time when reading matter for teenage girls often focuses on the newest "boy band" or on the latest fashion trend instead of on inner strength and overcoming odds. The book is the fifth in the series, which also includes biographies of Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lorraine Hasberry, and Beryl Markham.
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