Abigail Sumpter, a Westminster College senior history major, earned one of the book prizes for best paper at the Western Pennsylvania Regional Phi Alpha Theta conference.

Sumpter presented "Blonde-Haired Blue-Eyed Betty or Hard-Hitting Hannah: Projections of All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players in the Press, 1943-1954" at the meeting of the national history student honor society meeting at Clarion University April 2.  This paper is based on Sumpter's honor's thesis at Westminster.

Her research indicated that the image of All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players portrayed by national publications was quite different from that in local newspapers.  While national magazines described the players as feminine women, the local press described these players only in terms of their on-the-field accomplishments.

"Abby's work, based on her archival research in South Bend, Indiana, and at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is important for several reasons," said Dr. Timothy Cuff, Sumpter's honors advisor and assistant professor of history at Westminster College.  "She has shed new light on the way in which women athletes were portrayed by American journalists in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in her identification of a divergence in the image projected at the national level from that projected on a daily basis in local papers.  More generally, she has highlighted the need for historians to examine how local situations vary from national level developments.  Abby's paper is a valuable addition to the academic literature on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League."

Sumpter is a daughter of Linda Sumpter, Corry, and a graduate of Corry Area High School.

For more information, contact Cuff at (724) 946-7291 or e-mail cufft@westminster.edu.

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