Covington softball field to be named after girls’ sports pioneers

Covington Independent Public Schools Board of Education voted last week to name the district’s new softball field after two pioneering coaches from Holmes whose efforts and advocacy helped establish organized girls’ sports programs in Northern Kentucky: Donna Wolfe and B. Joan Mitchell.

“My kids would have died to have the field facility that they’ve got now for girls’ softball,” Wolfe told LINK nky. “That’s awesome; I’m tickled pink.”

Wolfe was a student and eventual co-coach of Mitchell’s, who died in 2019. Mitchell was highly regarded as both an advocate and coach in her lifetime. In 2004, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association granted her a “Legend in Her Own Time” honor, and she was inducted into numerous sports halls of fame throughout the region and commonwealth, including the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Kentucky High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Wolfe would also earn numerous accolades, both for her work as a coach and for her own athletic accomplishments.

Athletic achievements are only one reason for naming the new field after Wolfe and Mitchell, though. Without the efforts of Mitchell, Wolfe and others, modern girls’ sports in Northern Kentucky wouldn’t exist. Or, at least, they wouldn’t have the kind of institutional backing and recognition they have today.

“Really, a lot of the work that was done by Miss Mitchell was done by Miss Wolfe, as well,” said Davana Gulley, whom Wolfe had coached in softball. “They did that work side by side.”

Gulley is a former student at Covington Independent and now works in the administrative office. She’s also a member of the Tom Ellis Athletic Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit alumni foundation that raises money and does community outreach for Covington sports programs. It was the foundation that proposed naming the field after Wolfe and Mitchell.

A letter written by Mitchell, which Gulley provided to LINK nky, tells how she “didn’t play any high school sports because none were available at my high school at that time.”

Mitchell graduated from Shelbyville High in 1953. There were girls sports programs at the collegiate level at the time, Mitchell writes, and she was on the starting teams for basketball, field hockey, volleyball and softball during all four years of her time at EKU.

Mitchell was hired as a PE supervisor in Covington in 1958 before being transferred to Holmes the following year, where she helped establish “a Girls’ Athletic Association,” Mitchell writes, which served as a kind of precursor program for the more organized programs that would eventually follow.

Wolfe participated in this early program as a student. It was all organized on a volunteer basis. There were no official conferences or sanctioning bodies, and only a handful of schools even had teams. In Northern Kentucky when Wolfe was a student, teams from Holmes High School, Campbell County High School, Dayton High School, Highlands High School and sometimes Bellevue, would meet up for “sports days of sorts,” she said.

“We would play each other,” Wolfe said. “One of the coaches that wasn’t involved in that that game would officiate.”

They got little help from the schools themselves, Wolfe said. Unlike the boys’ programs, nothing was provided for the girls, not practice space, not uniforms, not shoes or other equipment. Women coaches weren’t paid.

“I can remember when I played for Holmes as a student, we bought black felt, cut our numbers out, sewed them on and put them on a shirt and dyed our shorts red,” Wolfe said. “That was our uniforms.”

Mitchell graduated from Holmes in 1965, got a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree from EKU before returning to Northern Kentucky to become a teacher. After a two-year stint in Newport, she was hired to work at her alma mater in 1972, where she became a coach with Mitchell. Both of them coached softball, volleyball and basketball.

In 1972, when Wolfe returned, girls’ programs were not part of the Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference, so Wolfe, Mitchell and three others- Loyce Meadows, Margi McKenna and Naomi Delaney – requested a meeting with Kentucky High School Athletic Association Head Commissioner Joe Billy Mansfield to inquire about what it would take to start a sanctioned girls conference in Northern Kentucky.

Mansfield said there was no rule against starting one, Mitchell writes in her letter, and Mansfield gave his approval to start a local girls conference. “The NKAC refused to have a separate conference for girls but did agree to incorporate all girls’ sports programs into the NKAC,” Mitchell writes.

Wolfe said this allowed the girl athletes to “be picked for all-district, all-regional [and be] given better recognition to try to get a college scholarship.”

Through the advocacy over their careers, Wolfe, Mitchell and other members their cohort successfully secured pay for women coaches in Covington and inclusion of women on the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control. They also successfully advocated for opening membership eligibility on the Board of Control to people who were not principals or superintendents. A Title IX complaint Wolfe filed led to volleyball becoming a sanctioned sport with its own state tournament.

“Back in those days, football was the state sport for boys in high school,” Wolfe said. “There was no state sport recognized for girls.”

Wolfe also advised on a different Title IX complaint that led to softball becoming state-sanctioned.

Mitchell and Wolfe both coached multiple sports for over 20 years. Mitchell won four NKAC titles in volleyball during her time at Holmes. In softball, her team won all but one of the league titles they played during her 15-year tenure as coach. Wolfe led her teams to NKAC championships in all three sports and is a member of seven sports halls of fame.

“Joan and I, along with some other people, did a lot to make sure girls sports was going to get the same recognition as boy sports,” Wolfe said, “and in my opinion, they should.”