During that same time, Shirley Spork, who had attended Eastern Michigan University, earned a teaching degree, because her parents demanded it. She later became one of the founding members of the LPGA, but her first job was teaching Physical Education at Bowling Green University. Due to her love of the game, she encouraged the college women to learn the game of golf and formed a women’s golf team. Bell and Spork knew each other from competing in amateur golf events and together decided to organize the first women’s collegiate golf tournaments between UF and BGSU. Findlay and Bowling Green are only a few miles apart and while Bell and Spork were teaching at their respective universities, they staged the first collegiate women’s golf competition pitting the University of Findlay women, coached by Peggy Kirk against Spork’s BGSU women’s team. As they say, the rest is history. Bell went on to win a major championship on the LPGA, own and operate a successful golf resort and become renowned as one of the leading golf instructors in the country. Spork traveled the rag tag women’s professional golf circuit for a few years, but her passion led her back to teaching and she too was known as a leading golf instructor. Both are now in the Hall of Fame and both began their illustrious golf careers as golf pioneers in northwestern Ohio.
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