13th Annual Snell-Shillingford Symposium Begins Friday at Haverford
Eleanor Snell and Jen Shillingford
by Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D., Professor, Department of Sport Management, Drexel University
This upcoming weekend, the Centennial Conference will host the 13th annual Snell-Shillingford Symposium. Female athlete representatives and coaches from the conference’s member schools, including Bryn Mawr, Dickinson, Franklin and Marshall, Gettysburg, Johns Hopkins, McDaniel, Muhlenberg, Swarthmore, Ursinus, and Washington College, will converge on Haverford College to participate in sessions designed to empower women in the coaching profession and to encourage them to take up the legacy of those who have gone before them.
The symposium honors the contributions and commitment of two of
the most influential women in the coaching profession, Eleanor
Frost Snell and Jen Shillingford. Miss Snell, as she was known to
her students, served Ursinus College as a professor of health and
physical education, coach, and head of the women’s physical
education department for four decades, from 1931 to 1971. In
keeping with the program’s emphasis on mentoring and passing
on the education of coaches from one generation to the next, the
symposium also bears the name of Snell’s student and
mentee, Jen Shillingford, who served as field hockey coach and
athletic director for over 20 years at Bryn Mawr and president of
the United States Field Hockey Association (USFHA).
Participants in the symposium will learn about the remarkable
accomplishments of the legendary and iconic Eleanor Snell, who
inspired generations of young women who called themselves
“Snell’s Belles”. Described by her former players
as a woman well ahead of her time in outlook and aspiration, she
was possessed of a quiet intensity and competitive spirit that
permeated a program of women’s sport unique in its time.
Conventional wisdom during the decades she coached encouraged
polite and restrained engagement in athletic pursuits for women.
Under Snell, Ursinus women cultivated more expansive dreams of
athletic excellence, dreams that would lead two of her former
athletes to take up the mantle of head coach of the U.S.
Women’s Field Hockey team and countless others making an
impact throughout the athletic world as competitors, coaches,
officials, physical educators, administrators, and academics.
