Golden Nuggets: Baseball and Softball Begin Camp

Football

• More position reviews are up on Golden Bear Report since I last published a Golden Nuggets! The reviews are up for the Tight Ends, Inside Linebackers, Outside Linebackers, Offensive Line, and Defensive Line.
• Check out Jon Wilner’s review of the Pac-12 2020 schedule.

Misc.

• At last weekend’s women’s basketball game against Stanford, Cal Athletics celebrated 150 years of women being allowed to enroll at Cal. Read about the first female Cal AD, who revolutionized the integration of women into athletics, Joan Parker.

“You think about where the Cal women’s teams are today, and a lot of that credit goes to Lue for laying down the foundation,” said Chris Dawson, who forged a long and successful career as an administrator at Cal and the Pac-12 Conference. “She knew that she would have a challenge on her hands getting women’s athletics off the ground. She was determined. She was smart. And I think she took pains to understand the university structure, and where she needed to go to get allies.”

The formation of a women’s athletic department at Cal in the mid-1970s meant the university had to support female student-athletes with all the proper resources needed to maintain the various sports teams. The programs needed facilities, equipment, uniforms, a travel budget, and so much more.

The enactment of Title IX began the process of ensuring women would not be discriminated against in athletics, but that didn’t mean all of the pieces were just automatically in place to make that happen. Lilly fought tirelessly to make sure women’s programs at Cal received proper treatment, from providing scholarships, hiring support staff, getting locker room access, improving coaches’ offices, expanding uniforms and more.

• Cal Beach Volleyball looks to continue its rise towards the elite, and finally make a NCAA championship bid.
• Brandon McIlwain is back from a season ending injury in 2019, and hopes that focusing only on baseball will help him rise up and have a special 2020 at Evans Diamond.
• Cal Softball will have ten new players this year, but that hasn’t stopped them from winning big before.