Babe Didrikson Zaharias
From Hoopedia
Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956) was an American athlete considered to be perhaps the greatest all-around female athlete of all time. She achieved outstanding success in golf, basketball and track and field.
Babe Zaharias was born Mildred Ella Didriksen in the oil town of Port Arthur, Texas. Her mother, Hannah, and her father, Ole, were immigrants from Norway. Three of her six siblings were born in Norway, and the other three were born in Port Arthur. Her surname was changed from Didriksen to Didrikson. Didrikson grew up in Beaumont and acquired the nickname "Babe" (after Babe Ruth) after she hit five home runs in a single baseball game. She wrote that she was born in 1914.
Didrikson excelled in basketball at Beaumont High School. As a result, she was offered a job paying $75 a week with the Employers Casualty Insurance Co., of Dallas, Texas, during her senior year in high school, nominally as a secretary, in 1930. In fact, she was employed to play basketball for the company's team, the Golden Cyclones, one of the industrial league teams in competitions organized by the Amateur Athletic Union.
Between 1930 and 1932 she led the team to two finals and a national championship and was voted All-American each season. Her exceptional athletic versatility prompted Employers Casualty to expand its women's sports program beyond basketball.
At the 1932 Olympics she won national acclaim when she captured two gold medals and a silver in the track and field competition. She had started another basketball season with the Golden Cyclones when the Amateur Athletic Union disqualified her from amateur competition because her name appeared in an automobile advertisement.
She needed to support her family during the Depression, so she took on a number of projects to do so. Among them, she barnstormed with a men's and women's basketball team called Babe Didrikson's All-Americans, and an otherwise all-male, bearded baseball road team called the House of David.
She gave up basketball to concentrate on track and field and golf.
The Associated Press Babe Zaharias Memorial Award is given annually to the outstanding United States female athlete.
