Tribe of Vikings Hall of Fame
A ground-breaking pioneer for her entire life, it should come as no surprise that Diane Schumacher is entering rare air as she takes her rightful place in the Augustana Tribe of Vikings Hall of Fame. She is just the second female honorary inductee to earn the honor. Jane Brissman, longtime physical education instructor and coach during the early days of women’s athletics, was inducted in 2002. Schumacher is the first female coach to be selected who coached during the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin-era for women’s athletics.
The CCIW didn’t include women’s sports under its umbrella until the 1986-87 school year and Schumacher’s team that year won the league’s first ever women’s basketball title.
“This is really quite an honor,” said Schumacher when she was informed of the fact that she would now take her place among the elites at the school where she worked from 1984 through 1999. “Honestly, I had never heard of Augustana when I applied for the job. I had been in the Midwest through my travels in softball so I thought I would see what it was like.”
What she found was a place that embraced her and she did the same back. She coached both softball and basketball at Augustana and also served time as the director of women’s athletics.
“We had a good unit at Augustana, and I really appreciated our coaching staffs,” she said. “I think we worked extremely well together.”
During her 15 years at Augustana she fashioned records of 240-139 in basketball and 226-264-1 in softball. In basketball her Vikings won CCIW titles in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993 and her softball team won the CCIW regular season in 1996 with a perfect 12-0 mark.
Schumacher grew up in a time when opportunities for female athletes were not plentiful, but she made the most of any opportunity she could find.
“My father was a tremendous supporter of mine and one of the first things he did was ask my older brother’s baseball coach if I could go out in the outfield and shag fly balls,” she recalled. “My dad started a girl’s league in West Springfield, Massachusetts where we grew up. I played every sport I could, whether it was recreational six-on-six basketball or a travel team.”
It didn’t take Schumacher long to make her mark as an athlete and she especially honed her skills in softball where, as a member of the nationally renown Raybestos Brakettes, she was a seven-time All-American at the Amateur Softball Association (A.S.A.) level. She played the game well enough to earn spots on both the 1979 and 1983 Pan-American Games for team USA where she brought home gold and silver medals respectively.
After graduation from Springfield College in 1976 she was drafted professionally in two sports (softball and basketball). While a member of the Brakettes she was a member of eight national championship teams and she led her team in hitting five times.
Her honors in softball made her a legendary figure in the sport and she was the first American player inducted into the International Softball Hall of Fame in March of 1994. Other halls of fame that she is a member of include the A.S.A. National (1992), Connecticut A.S.A. (1992), Springfield College (1992), Cathedral High School in Springfield, Massachusetts (2002) and Massachusetts A.S.A. (2014). She was also named the A.S.A. “Sportswoman of the Year” in 1978.
While Schumacher knows that she was part of a pioneering movement in women’s sports, she didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. She never played on her high school teams because the opportunities were not available for young women in those times (early 1970’s).
“I think back now to what women went through back in the day and I know that we have certainly come a long way,” she said. “At the time I just wanted to play, and I thank my family for finding those places for me. I just loved to compete in any way possible.”
Schumacher went to Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, which at the time was the mecca for producing physical education teachers and she picked up her master’s in education from Temple in Philadelphia in 1984. It was while she was at Temple that the Augustana position opened up and she applied for it and landed the job. She had been thehead coach at Princeton for two years (1979 through 1981) before heading to Temple for further education.
After leaving Augustana in the summer of 1999 she was named the director of athletics at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. She held that position until her retirement in 2018. She was named the National Junior College Athletic Association’s Administrator of the Year in 2007 and was also the state of Maryland’s Administrator of the Year in that same year.
