Joan Joyce
|  | ||||||||
For More information please visit: | |||||||||
Audio Archives: | |||||||||
| A legend as a softball pitcher and one of the best athletes of all time. Joan Joyce is an extraordinary athlete, leading teams to national and international championships, competitively playing basketball, volleyball, and qualifying for the LPGA tour in 1977. However, it was softball where she scored the biggest hit. She is considered one of the best softball players to ever play the game. Throughout her career, Joan has been a champion of female sports, coaching various sports at many universities, and co-founding an International Softball Association for women to compete on a professional level. In 1954, at the age of 14, Joan joined the Raybestos Brakettes, an amateur softball team in Connecticut. She began pitching in 1957, marking the first year of eighteen consecutive years that Joan was selected as an ASA All-American for her outstanding athletic success. One of her most notable achievements is striking out Ted Williams at an overcrowded Municipal Stadium in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1961. Joan attended Chapman College in Orange County, California, where she played for the Orange Lionettes and led them to a 1965 title. Again proving her astonishing athletic ability, Joan competed in Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball, averaging 25 points a game and was named All-American in 1961, 1964 and 1965. In one notable 1965 game, she set an AAU basketball record by scoring 67 points. In 1967, after moving back to Connecticut, Joan rejoined the Raybestos Brakettes, leading the team both as a pitcher and a hitter. Her pitching record while playing for the team was 753 wins and 42 losses, including 150 no-hitters, 33 perfect games, and a .09 ERA. As a hitter, her highest single season batting average was .406 in 1973. Between 1960 and 1973 Joan let the team with the highest batting average. She was the National Tournament Batting Champion in 1971, with an average of .467. 1974 brought a world title for the Brakettes when Joan set many records including most strikeouts (76). Less than a month after winning the world title, she pitched 45 scoreless innings in the national championship, leading the Brakettes to their fourth consecutive national title. The same year, Joan was the first woman to become a recipient of the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance’s Gold Key Award. Joan Joyce began her coaching career in 1973 and has coached softball, volleyball, basketball and golf. In 1977, Joan qualified for the LPGA tour, finishing in sixth place both in 1981 and 1984. She holds the world record for the lowest number of putts in a single round of golf (17). She has been inducted into the National Softball Hall of Fame, the Women’s Sports Foundation Hall of Fame, The Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and one of only three Americans who have been inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. | |||||||||
|