By Fred Altvater
Before they were famous, two Hall of Fame women golfers, Peggy Kirk Bell and Shirley Spork, one of the 13 co-founders of the LPGA Tour, were responsible for early collegiate golf tournaments for women.
Peggy Kirk Bell grew up in Findlay, was a top amateur, played on the fledgling LPGA. She spent her life playing and teaching golf, as well as building Pine Needles into one of the finest golf resorts in the country.
Bell is responsible for helping more women learn the game of golf than any other person. In 1953, she and her husband, NBA star Warren “Bullet” Bell, bought the Pine Needles Resort in Southern Pines and they ran it until their deaths. They later added the neighboring Mid-Pines Golf Club. Peggy died in 2019, but the family business has continued to grow. In 2020 Southern Pines Golf Club was added to the fold as the third course in the family’s golf holdings.
But back in her early days Bell was the coach for the University of Findlay’s women’s golf team. There were no formal women’s golf competitions. In fact, women’s sports were frowned upon.
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.
