Five decades on, their deep connection remains. A group of more than 24 pioneer Iowa State track and field student-athletes, bound by a unique Cyclone experience, are honoring the legacy of their coach, Chris Murray, by endowing a scholarship in his name.
“We want to help someone live their dream like we did,” said Debra Wood (’77), a member of the Iowa State 1974 national championship mile relay. “Some coaches didn’t know how to coach women. Chris was low-key and positive and showed us what was possible.”
With over $60,000 raised, the Chris Murray Track and Field Cross Country Scholarship will be given annually to an ISU women’s track and field/cross country athlete who is active in community service and has maintained a GPA of 3.0 or better. It honors the man who guided and inspired the track athletes from 1974 to 1979 as they went where no Iowa State women had gone before.
The passage of Title IX in 1972 opened the world of university athletics to women. The existence of a track club demonstrated an initial campus interest. Enter Murray, a University of Michigan graduate who was teaching physical education at ISU and serving as an assistant coach on the Cyclone men’s team. He was approached by a group of female students who wanted a full collegiate experience.
“The timing of everything came together,” Murray says. “These were women who wanted to keep training and competing, and they asked me if I would be interested in coaching them.”
Some athletes sewed their own uniforms. They recall long van rides to their meets. Murray’s wife, Vivian, oversaw the Maple-Willow-Larch cafeteria and provided the sack lunches for their travels.
“Our team slept two to a bed in low-cost hotels on the road,” Murray says. “Sometimes we had a fifth person in the same room sleeping on a cot.”
Such adversities did not delay competitive results. Murray’s Iowa Staters won the first four AIAW national cross-country championships. Fifteen of his athletes were All-Americans. Iowa State won 14 Big Eight Conference team titles during his tenure.
It is precisely those travel and competitive challenges and accomplishments that continue to bind these Iowa State trailblazers a half century later — they still share a love for their school and their coach. Those feelings fuel a continuing desire to make a difference for the future.
Faye Perkins (’79, ’85), who played three sports and is one of Murray’s eight Iowa State Athletics Hall of Famers, says there is power in numbers.
“We are women who went through the advent of Title IX,” Perkins says. “Both Chris and our teammates got very little recognition in the 1970s. This is a way we could all work together again to support a sport and coach that we love.”
Former national champion Elaine Baughman (’75) hopes this gift will spur future Cyclones to use philanthropy to validate their Iowa State experience.
“There are so many possibilities,” Baughman says. “We hope this is a blueprint for other teams.”