March 1, 2002

Letters of Their Own

By CHRISTOPHER FLORES

For college athletes, varsity letters are annual markers of effort and achievement. For some female graduates of Michigan State University, that recognition has come, albeit as much as 70 years after they earned it.

In a ceremony in February, the university presented letters to 200 women who played sports for Michigan State before 1980, when the university began complying with a new gender-equity law by, among other things, awarding varsity letters to its female