th
# 70 • OCTOBER 19 , 2015
garnered two
gold medals as
a member of
two American
Olympic teams.
Throughout the
1930s
Italian
American women competed
on the American
Olympic
gymnastics
team and numerous Italian
female athletes starred in
a variety of sports thereafter. The impetus of Title
IX after 1972 increasingly provided many more
sport opportunities for
girls and women, and by
the third generation Italian Americans had largely
developed an American-Italian identity, no longer
adhering to past traditions
of sheltering girls from the
public. By the end of the
twentieth century, Donna
Lopiano, a multi-sport star,
and head of the Women’s
Sports Foundation, was
considered to be the most
powerful female sports
executive in the nation.
in the home and saddled
with domestic chores until
their own marriages, they
quickly adopted to new
freedoms in the United
States. By 1897 Clementine Brida, better known by
her married name of M