Growing up in South Carolina in the 1950s and 60s, Gloria Crosby knew she wanted to coach.

"From the time I was little, I was organizing groups of people and we had pickup games," Crosby says. "Coaching and teaching has been with me for as long as I can remember, probably as far back as elementary school."

There were no girls in Crosby's neighborhood as a kid. She played football, basketball, and baseball with the boys. By the time she reached high school, Crosby had picked up volleyball and softball as well. 

A 1969 graduate of the University of South Carolina where she majored in education, Crosby also studied there as a graduate student, earning a masters in teaching in 1973. 

It was during her time as a graduate student that Crosby first coached college athletes. 

In 1972 and 1973, she led the newly formed South Carolina softball team to back-to-back appearances in the Women's College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. This was almost a decade before the NCAA started sponsoring women's sports, and it was also before the university upgraded the softball team to varsity status, which they did in 1974. The school gave Crosby's squad $700 for the season. It cost them more than $1,000 just to travel to the World Series. 

"We held a lot of car washes to cover meals and gas," Crosby recalls. "And we had to carpool to Omaha. We slept overnight in rest areas on the way because we couldn't afford motels. But it was a fantastic experience for the team." 

In the fall of 1973, Crosby left her home state for Ames, Iowa, where she spent two years coaching volleyball, basketball (one season), and softball at Iowa State University. While volleyball and softball programs already existed as clubs, they became varsity teams under Crosby. She helped launch the women's basketball program from scratch.

"Iowa State was different in that I was in a total women's facility," Crosby says. "It was brand new. We had our own gymnasiums. We had our own offices. There was no competition at all that way. So it was an unusual setting because everywhere else it was not like that." 

But Iowa State also had tornadoes. And on June 18, 1974, a particularly devastating one ripped through the area.

"I was living by myself, and heard sirens go off," Crosby says. "I went outside, and people were all standing out on the road. The guy that lived next door to me said, 'look, as soon as we see the funnel, everybody's got to go to the basement.'  I had never seen a tornado. And we saw it coming down the road and everybody was saying, go to your basement. Go to your basement. We did. It was dead silence." 

The tornado somehow avoided Ames but ended up 30 miles away, devastating the town of Ankeny. 

Crosby had seen enough. She immediately started looking for jobs back east, and soon enough Crosby read about a job opening at Bates.

The first person Crosby met during the interview process was long-time Bates head of women's physical education Evelyn K. Dillon. Dillon stood out to Crosby for her organizational skills and attention to detail in an era before computers. 

"Evelyn was fascinating and her accomplishments were so impressive," Crosby says. "The men's and women's athletic departments at Bates had merged recently, and that happened because of her work and her encouragement." 

It would be a passing of the torch, as Dillon was retiring after a 13-year career as a highly-respected administrator at the college, and Crosby was being hired as an assistant professor of physical education and associate athletics director, in addition to her usual volleyball and basketball head-coaching duties. 

But before she took the job, she asked the hiring committee an important question.

"Have y'all ever had tornadoes here?" Crosby asked the committee. "And they all laughed because they thought it was funny. I didn't tell them why I was asking that. They said 'no' and that's all I wanted to know. However, they failed to tell me about Nor'easters." 

Dillon proved to be the perfect mentor for Crosby, who was still in her 20s when she started at Bates. 

"I was able to call her anytime if I had questions, and she dropped in a few times as well," Crosby says. "She always got back to me and she laid the groundwork for what was to come." 

Crosby wasted little time in any of her endeavors. She came to Bates in the fall of 1975 and led the volleyball team to a 22-10 record and women's basketball to an 8-7 mark in her first year. The first mention of her in the Bates Student newspaper makes her coaching philosophy clear.

"New to the Bates College Athletic Department, Coach Crosby managed to shock even a few of the veteran players as well as influence some other Womens' teams on the importance of conditioning (rumor has it there were a few jump ropes out on the tennis courts)," reported The Student. "Proficiency in all positions is fundamental in the specialized game of Power Volleyball. It was within this framework that Coach Crosby initiated her 2-hour non-stop sessions." 

Crosby's emphasis on the importance of conditioning had its roots to her time as a volleyball and basketball player at South Carolina. 

"The sports programs weren't what you see now where you have a 25 or 30-game season," Crosby says. "You went to what were called invitational tournaments, and you would play multiple games a day, whether it was volleyball, which is still done to some degree, and basketball was the same way." 

"Gloria Crosby and Title IX arrive almost simultaneously" reads a short line from the "Senior History" section in the 1977 Bates Mirror, the college's yearbook. 

Indeed, Title IX had passed in 1972, but implementation of the famed law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, proved to be slow. Crosby was at Bates to speed things up.

One of Crosby's first roles at Bates beyond coaching was becoming a member of the task force responsible for implementing Title IX at the college. This included administrators, deans, and faculty members. 

"Most people equate Title IX only with sports," Crosby says. "But it really required you to review your whole system that existed to make sure men and women had equal access."

Sports were a big part of that review though, and one of the first things Crosby did in her position as a member of the Title IX committee was conduct a massive survey on what men's and women's interests across the board were in terms of sports at the college. A nascent women's lacrosse program had played three games in 1975, but besides that there weren't any opportunities for women to play a spring sport at Bates. Tennis was a fall sport at the time and Bates didn't have a women's outdoor track and field team until 1983.

Softball soon emerged as a good fit. And who better to coach it than the woman who had twice led South Carolina to the College World Series? 

"Gloria was incredible, and just what Bates needed at the advent of Title IX," recalls Vicki Tripp Gordon '77, who played basketball and softball for Crosby. "Her lovely Southern drawl belied a fierce spirit, intensity, resilience, and a purpose-driven mission. She was driven to do what was equitable and fair, and she was not cowed by any of the men in control of athletics at Bates at that time." 

The first Bates softball team only played 10 games in 1976, going 5-5. Their home games were on the all-grass football practice field behind Garcelon and they wore jersey tops borrowed from women's basketball. But it was a start.

"What I recall the most is how enthusiastic and determined the players were and how excited they were to do something they loved," Crosby says. "I think that's the thing that is most impressive, and how hard they worked. We didn't have ideal conditions, but nobody complained. I'm sure they didn't like it, but they got through it so they could get to where they wanted to be in the years to come." 

Crosby led the team through some tough practices, including head-first sliding sessions on the dirt floor of the Gray Cage. Conditioning and fundamentals were at the core of who she was as a coach. 

"Gloria was a really intense, good coach," recalls Clara Smith '76, one of the Bobcats on the first Bates softball team. "Very no nonsense. I was just a warm body 'riding the pine' and occasionally getting put in right field. However, Gloria taught me to keep score and allowed me to travel with the team. That was really nice!" 

Crosby's assistant coach that first softball season was Bates athletics Hall of Famer Sherry Deschaine, at the time Sherry Yakawonis. "Coach Yak" had already been at Bates since 1968, serving as the head field hockey coach for most of that time. A pioneer who had coached the first Bates women's basketball team in 1968-69, Yakawonis was an ideal partner in helping launch the softball program.

"Sherry was remarkable," Crosby says. "I was so happy when she was elected to the Hall of Fame. She is so deserving. Sherry is honest and straightforward, and she worked beyond the field with the players to support them. That was so important because we all wanted to know what their goals were in life and where they saw themselves in the future."

Crosby's administrative duties made coaching three sports somewhat unrealistic. So after one year leading the Bates softball team she turned things over to Coach Yak, who ended up being the program's head coach for the next 21 years. 

Despite coaching softball for just one season at Bates, Crosby left a significant impact on her players.

"I am so grateful to have had such a powerful role model who advocated for equal opportunity for women, and who refused to back down," Gordon says. "She taught me a lot. It wasn't always easy playing under her, but I am so grateful for the experience and what it taught me." 

Crosby continued to coach winning teams in volleyball and basketball at Bates until 1980, all the while fighting for equal practice time at Alumni Gym, equal access to athletic trainers, locker room space, and much more. Crosby even taught a women's history of sports class designed for women who might be interested in coaching in the future. And when Bates athletics Hall of Famer Nancy Ingersoll Fiddler '78, advocated for a women's cross country program, Crosby facilitated its creation.

Crosby's impact was felt beyond campus, as Crosby also served as the Secretary of the United States Olympic Team Handball for Women Committee. She encouraged one of the greatest athletes in Bates history, field hockey and basketball star Priscilla Wilde '77, to try out for the U.S. team. Wilde, despite having never played handball before, made the national team.

"I call Wilde a Renaissance player because she could do anything," Crosby says. "And she proved it when she went out for the handball team, with minimal training, and was one of the top players in the camp. She had so many interests. Above all, I remember her competitive spirit and her enthusiasm in whatever she was doing. It wasn't a hundred percent, it was a thousand percent." 

Crosby had aspirations to be a Director of Athletics. At Bates, she worked closely with the A.D., former head football coach Bob Hatch. Hatch was also an advocate for women's sports, although he and Crosby had their disagreements at times. Crosby recalls thinking that Hatch had found a way to clone himself, because he attended seemingly every sporting event, men and women, to support the Bobcats. Hatch was firmly entrenched in the role, so if Crosby was to ascend to the A.D. position, it would have to be someplace else.

In 1980, an opportunity opened at Rollins College in Florida. The job appealed to Crosby because it was similar to her role at Bates, but closer to her mom who still lived in South Carolina. 

It wasn't the A.D. position at first, but due to an early retirement, it soon became that for Crosby. And in 1981 at the age of 34, she became Rollins' Director of Athletics. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel from that time, she was just the 12th female A.D. in the history of college athletics, and the first at a private college. She also served as the school's head women's basketball coach.

"One of the things that happened during that time, we had a group of women faculty that met and talked about how we could help support women in the workplace and how we could accomplish different things," Crosby says. "And it was called the 'What's Next Club?' What would you like to do next? I also got involved with consulting and training during that time as far as working with women to develop them in leadership."

In 1985, Crosby's good friend Dick Goding, the head coach of Florida Southern women's basketball, died suddenly due to a brain aneurysm during the middle of a summer training session. 

"It made me stop and think, is it time for me to try something new? Crosby says. "Because in coaching you are always recruiting, and it's a year-round thing. It's 24/7 really." 

The constant work Crosby had put in from her days at South Carolina, Iowa State, Bates, and at Rollins, had taken its toll. And with the death of Coach Goding, Crosby realized she wanted to make a change, and quickly. 

So she left college athletics and went into consulting full-time until 1994, when a double whammy of a car crash and a breast cancer diagnosis forced her to once again reevaluate her life.

"I'm one of the lucky ones, [as] the breast cancer was identified early enough that I was able to recover," Crosby says. "Going through that recovery, a couple different people said to me, 'you need to do something that would be fun for a while. What would be fun for you while you're going through this recovery?'''

"There was no way I could keep up the pace you had to in consulting and training and development," Crosby says. "And I said, well, 'I've always thought about Disney.' I thought that would be fun. Maybe go out to the studios and get a job and see what they're doing in animation and movies."

So from 1995 until her retirement in 2011, Crosby worked at the "Happiest Place On Earth", Disney World.

"I was still coaching teams," she laughs. "It's Team Disney. Instead of 20 on a team, you're responsible for hundreds of people on the front lines working at the park. It was a great experience and a wonderful atmosphere to be in and I still got to do the things that I love the most."

While she enjoys sports immensely, Crosby's passion for teaching and developing people is what shines through the most when speaking to her.

"Every once in a while I think maybe I should go down to the Y or maybe I should go to the Boys and Girls Club," Crosby says. "And then I start thinking about all that coaching sports entails. What you have to do. And I think, no, I'm good. I'll just enjoy helping other people reach their goals."

And as Bates celebrates 50 years of softball, Crosby's leadership is still felt as hundreds of Bobcats have been able to pursue their goals thanks to her relentless work toward putting women and men on an equal playing field.