Marilyn Kropf Appel

In 1947, with the blessings of coach Art Smith and while a junior attending Lincoln High School, Marilyn Kropf challenged and won a position on the Lincoln boy's varsity tennis team. She became the first girl in the history of the school to play on an interscholastic boys' team and to compete against teams from other Cross-State League schools.

The number five man on that team was Jim Beaty, a sophomore, who played on the school hockey team. "I was the low man on the totem pole and that she did beat me in a challenge match. She wasn't real powerful but no matter what you hit or where, she'd always hit it back." "Our challenge matches were marathons. The first time she beat me the scores were 4-6, 6-4 and 12-10. The next time she beat me 6-4, 4-6, 8-6. "

"Back then I got my tennis equipment at Dill Howell Sporting Goods, like most people did, and the guys down there felt sorry for me for losing to Marilyn so they chipped in to get me a membership at the Tacoma Lawn & Tennis Club my junior and seniors years which was pretty nice," he said.

When some of the opposing all-boys teams refused to play her, the Associated Press picked up the story and published her picture nationwide. When Lincoln baseball coach Bill Mullen heard what was going on he declared, "if there are any good girl baseball players in school who can beat the boys on the team, I want them to turn out--and now. We can use them!"

Marilyn, who was born in Tacoma on June 29, 1930, won every match for two years and became the first girl to win a varsity letter at the school. Although unsubstantiated, she may very well have been the first female in the United States to play on a boys' varsity sports team. The Lincoln Letterman's Club Constitution had to be rewritten to allow a female to participate.

From 1946 to 1948, Marilyn won every Club and City championship. Sponsored by the Tacoma Lawn and Tennis Club, she toured throughout the Northwest and won many titles, among them the Pacific Northwest Junior Women's Singles Championship in 1948.

After high school, Marilyn attended the University of Washington and became the All-University Women's Tennis Champion. During her lifetime, Marilyn continued participating in local and national tournaments. In 1974 she won the Women's "40 and over" National Indoor Doubles Tennis Championship.

While raising the family, Marilyn taught and coached their four daughters-Judy, Jill, Jenny, and Janie--throughout their high school years at Mercer Island high where they were on championship teams from 1970-1980. She then assisted Vic Braden at the Jack Kramer Country Club and later served as a tennis instructor at the Blue Ridge Tennis Club in Seattle for 15 years. Marilyn and husband, Jim Appel, are current members of the Seattle Tennis Club.

Several years after she became the improbable source of a firestorm in 1947, Marilyn Kropf was invited to a cocktail party with her husband, Jim Appel, before a University of Washington football game.


As she and Jim were socializing with the other guests, Marilyn noticed a vaguely familiar face in the room: an opponent from her tennis-playing days at Lincoln High School.
"You might remember me," she said. "I'm Marilyn Kropf."

"Kropf?"

That was the end of the conversation. The ex-opponent turned and walked away, still stinging over once having lost a tennis match to a girl.

"Before he faced Marilyn, he had said he was going to bury his tennis racket if he ever lost to a girl," Jim Appel recalled Saturday. "Maybe he did. Nobody ever checked."

It wasn't Marilyn Kropf's intention to make headlines as an athlete who inspired a gender-equity debate more than a quarter-century before Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in their famously one-sided "Battle of the Sexes" match. But that's what happened in 1947, when a 16-year old junior made Tacoma history - and possibly national history - as the first girl on a boys varsity team.

Marilyn's ability was no secret - she was Tacoma's junior girls champion in 1946 - and when the Lincoln tennis coach saw her practicing one day, he figured: She can play for us. There were no girls sports at Lincoln, or anywhere else, in 1947. The boys on the team didn't see any big deal in bringing on a girl.

"We didn't think we were part of something historic," Marilyn's teammate, Jim Beaty, said the other day. "I had gotten to know her from the tennis games we used to play in the park during the summer. We were friends. If she was good enough to make the team, it would've been unfair not to give her the chance."

As it turned out, Kropf made the team by successfully challenging Beaty for the No. 5 spot.

"She beat me, but the truth is, Marilyn could've beaten just about everybody else on our team, too," said Beaty. "Everything you hit to her came right back. I used to plan different kinds of strategies, but nothing worked. She was tenacious, consistent, and had all kinds of stamina. And she never wanted to be treated any differently than any of the rest of us. She was just a cool kid."

Marilyn was supported by more than her teammates. Lincoln principal Burt Beal gave his OK, as did such faculty members as baseball coach Bill Mullen.

"If there are any good girl baseball players in school who can beat the boys on the team," Mullen said, "I want them to turn out - and now. We can use them."

Even the tennis coach at Lincoln's cross-town rival was accommodating.

"What's the difference if she's a girl?"asked Stadium's Isador Epstein. "If she can beat every boy, more power to her."

Marilyn never lost a match in either of her two seasons with the Lincoln varsity, but she was denied a full schedule. Bremerton and Everett, fellow members of the Cross-State League, refused to take the court against any team that included a girl.

"As far as Everett is concerned, we are going to abide by the state association rules," athletic director Chuck Smith wrote in defense of the school's policy. "These rules are all worded in the masculine and custom, furthermore, has frowned on mixed competition."

Lincoln proposed a compromise with Everett: our best four versus your best four, with two doubles matches. But when Everett demanded the Abes replace Kropf with a boy at No. 5, Beal, the Lincoln principal, held his ground, and the team was forced to forfeit.

"The Associated Press picked up on the story, and it ran in papers across the country," Bill Scholle, the captain of Lincoln's '47 tennis team, said from his home in Discovery Bay, Calif. "Some people just didn't know what to make of it - nobody had ever heard of a high school girl playing on a boys team - but we didn't understand the fuss."

After lettering twice at Lincoln - the school's letterman's club constitution had to be rewritten to admit a girl - Marilyn Kropf's tennis career followed a more conventional path. She won the Pacific Northwest Junior Women's singles championship in 1948, and the women's intramural championship at the UW. (The Huskies didn't even field an intercollegiate women's tennis team until 1975.)

A mother of four daughters, Marilyn went on teach at the Blue Ridge Tennis Club for 15 years. In 1974, she was part of a doubles team that finished first in the 40-and-over division of the National Indoor Doubles Championships. Such an achievement would make her worthy of her June 4 induction into the Tacoma-Pierce County Sports Hall of Fame, but Marilyn Kropf's legacy is that of a trailblazer.

"She wasn't the type to seek publicity, but publicity never changed her," said Jean Anderson, Marilyn's sister. "Looking back, to think she was probably the first female in the U.S. to compete against boys on a high school level, that's quite a story."

Though Marilyn is in the care of Providence Mount St. Vincent Hospital and won't be able to attend the Banquet of Champions, 29 family members will be on hand to share her honor and celebrate the achievements of a true pioneer.

"It's interesting to learn she may been the first girl on a boys team," said Gerald Hedlund, the Abes' No. 4 player in 1947. "It kind of makes me feel important, and I had nothing to do with it."

John McGrath: 253-597-8742; ext. 6154
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com