Date:24/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/24/stories/2008092461052000.htm

Sport - Athletics

Mary Garber – a legend

New York: Mary Garber, a pioneering figure for women in sports journalism who began covering athletics in North Carolina more than 60 years ago, when female sportswriters were barred from press boxes and locker-room interviews, died Sunday in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was 92.

When Garber started writing about sports full time in 1946, the craft was essentially a man’s domain. Coaches often treated her with condescension, fellow sportswriters ignored her and professional associations kept her out. But she persevered, first covering high school sports and then reporting on college athletics in the Atlantic Coast Conference before later writing on a wide range of sports for The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem and The Winston-Salem Journal.

In June 2005, she became the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, presented annually since 1981 for major contributions to sports journalism. The Association for Women in Sports Journalism presents an annual Mary Garber Pioneer Award honouring a role model for women in sports media. — AP