Hall of Fame
With its roots going all the way back to the early 1900's, basketball is the oldest sport that women have played at Slippery Rock, but it was Anne Griffiths who oversaw the growth of the sport at The Rock to varsity status.
How successful was Griffiths in her 13 seasons in charge of the women’s basketball program? She is still The Rock’s all-time leader in coaching wins (111) and winning percentage (.665).
Originally a product of East Stroudsburg University where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Griffiths would go on to receive a doctorate from the University of Iowa prior to teaching at Southern Lehigh High School for three years before eventually accepting a position with the Slippery Rock faculty in 1965. She remained at SRU until her retirement in 1999.
More important than all of her documented on-court success was the effect she had on the lives of all the women she coached, taught and mentored at SRU including C. Vivian Stringer, one of the most successful women’s basketball coaches in collegiate history.
“Dr. Griffiths taught me that it is okay to be a strong woman,” Stringer said in an interview with ROCK magazine in 2009. “I loved the way she spoke, the way men responded to her with admiration. I tried to emulate her when I was a young head coach at Cheyney. Both she and Dr. Zimmerman are my professional best friends. I can’t think of doing anything without talking to them. I can name on one hand the people I talked to during the Imus affair, and that includes them.”
In what should be a surprise to no one, Griffiths was also a champion of Title IX legislation both behind the scenes and publicly at Slippery Rock in the years leading up to the passing of the now-historic civil rights law that was adopted in 1972.
“It was more than equality on the playing field, it was the responsibility I felt for standing up and speaking for young women and coaches,” Griffiths told ROCK Magazine in 2009. “When Title IX was having trouble getting through Congress, we got a van and hauled our students and athletes to Washington D.C. to protest. We had to educate them about their rights, make them believe and teach them to stand up for themselves. That was my goal. As a faculty member and administrator, I wanted to mentor young women to take our places one day.”
Before her career at Slippery Rock concluded Griffiths would become The Rock’s first woman chair for the department of physical education and eventually earn the title of provost and vice president for academic affairs.
