Photo courtesy of Mount Holyoke Athletics.
Penny Schneider Claf '68 accepts a trophy at the 2023 Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
By Emily Tarinelli ’25
Sports Editor
Penny Schneider Calf ’68 did not expect to be inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame.
“I was totally surprised,” Calf said. “I didn’t even know Mount Holyoke had such a thing.”
Calf was inducted as an advocate for women’s sports alongside Elizabeth Kennan ’60, as opposed to being inducted as a player like Catherine Herrold ’00, Langhan Dee ’04 and Mary Mazzio ’83. According to a press release on the Lyons Athletics website, Calf’s 13-year tenure as a distinguished field hockey coach at Walpole High School saw the team win seven Division I state championships and 274 games.
The pinnacle of her leadership at Walpole came between 1994 and 1997, during which the team remained undefeated for 94 games and claimed a three-year streak of state titles. She also coached athletes who went on to achieve greater heights as collegiate players, coaches and even Olympians, such as 2008 national team member Dina Rizzo.
Calf was an accomplished athlete in her own right, too. Growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, her high school only offered four sports for girls: field hockey, basketball, softball and tennis. Calf played all of them, save for tennis, and only because it was the same season as field hockey. According to Cald, during her senior year, the team attended the first state tournament for girls’ basketball in Massachusetts, where she achieved All-Star honors.
“I loved it,” Calf said. “[I thought,] ‘Give me a ball, give me anything, and I’ll play it.”
Having been so involved with sports even before the inception of Title IX, the landmark legislation that significantly expanded athletic opportunities for women, Calf said her induction as an advocate is all the more meaningful.
“You know, we were in the little gym. The boys had the big gym. The boys practiced on the football field, and there was another 60-yard field that was for access parking where the field hockey field was,” Calf said. “I mean, the first year we played basketball, the kids didn’t even have uniforms. They wore the same things they wore for gym class.”
She continued, “I wasn’t the most vocal voice, but that whole time during the 70s, even once Title IX passed, you had to convince the school committee that if the guys get $4,000 for coaching, the comparable girls should get the $4,000 dollars, and should have access to the big gym for practice, and should have access to the football field for practice … and certainly we got the uniforms and all that.”
At Mount Holyoke, Calf played basketball during her first year before leaving the team to focus more on her studies. She majored in English, but her heart was truly set on her minor: Latin.
“The first day of Latin — it was three times a week at 8:00 in the morning — [Professor Betty Nye Quinn] would come to class with her cocker spaniel named Poppaea Sabina, which was the name of Nero’s wife,” Calf said. “It just made it kind of cozy and homey.” The class, she added, was about more than translating Latin. “It was about what the words mean,” she said. “You know, what Cicero is really saying here and is that relatable today.”
Calf knew she wanted to pursue a career in education. “I always wanted to be a teacher, from the day in second grade when the teacher asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’” she said.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Calf received her master of arts in teaching from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From there, she became a teacher at Walpole, where she taught classes in the fields of English, Spanish and — her favorite — Latin.
“When I came to Walpole High School in the fall of 1969, there was one Latin II class of eight girls,” Calf said. “When I left Walpole High School, there were two full-time Latin teachers and a part-time Latin teacher who taught three classes a day. And we were all on the same curriculum, which I wrote.”
“It wasn’t just about translating Latin. My quote was, ‘Latin is all around us.’ That’s how I opened every Latin I class in the fall of every year,” Calf said, adding that one of her proudest achievements is “building the Latin program from not even existing to being substantial.”
She continued, “So many people over the years have said, ‘Is Walpole a Catholic high school?’ It was like, no, it’s a public high school. ‘And you have four years of Latin?’ Yes, and we have three Latin teachers. And I want to say, ‘Because I was a damn good Latin teacher!’”