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‘She always showed up.’ Carol Tumey was a pioneer in girls sports for Center Grove.

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‘She always showed up.’ Carol Tumey was a pioneer in girls sports for Center Grove.

“She was just a terrier. She stood up for women’s sports at Center Grove, back when we were lucky to get one night a week to practice.”

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When Pat Grimm entered her freshman year at Center Grove in the fall of 1963, she had little idea of how drastically the landscape of girls athletics would change in the next decade. She also had no clue how influential the newly hired health and physical education teacher, freshly graduated from Franklin College, would have on her experience as an athlete and the opportunities for girls at Center Grove.

“The thing you can say about Carol Tumey,” Grimm said, “is that she always showed up until the day she died. She showed up at class reunions, she showed up for people in their personal lives, she showed up for kids. She always showed up.”

Tumey, a pioneer in girls athletics at Center Grove, died Tuesday at 82. She won many awards during her 40 years as a coach and administrator, including the Sagamore of the Wabash, induction into the Franklin College Hall of Fame, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and Indiana Track and Field Hall of Fame.

More: First woman enshrined in Indiana Basketball HOF didn’t play — but she changed the game

But in the fall of 1963, of course, all of the accolades and honors were in the distant, unimaginable future. Tumey, who played volleyball and basketball at Franklin College, was a 21-year-old coach in the days still long before the Indiana High School Athletic Association would crown its first champion in 1975-76.

“She was just a terrier,” Grimm said. “She stood up for women’s sports at Center Grove, back when we were lucky to get one night a week to practice.”

Tumey, who was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011, graduated in 1959 from tiny Leavenworth High School, which consolidated in 1976 with three other schools to form Crawford County. The former Carol Summers married husband Dale the summer before she took the teaching job at Center Grove.

In those pre-IHSAA days, Tumey coached the girls sports in the Girls Athletic Association (GAA), which were barely a step above intramurals by current standards. But Tumey had an ally in principal Melvin Vandermeer, who supported her in building up the girls programs.

“She was a tough coach,” said Nikki (Anderson) Cerbone, who ran track for Tumey in the 1980s for two years before focusing on volleyball and basketball. “But she definitely cared about her athletes. I don’t think I truly appreciated her at the time as a pioneer for girls sports until later. I really learned more about how much she meant when I was an adult. It wasn’t something she talked about.”

Cerbone, who went on to set Johnson County and school scoring records at Center Grove and earn Indiana All-Stars honors in 1987, went on to coach girls basketball at Center Grove, Greenwood and Franklin Central.

“Looking back now you think about how even when we were playing it was only about 10 years after Title IX,” Cerbone said. “We always practiced late. But we were appreciative of those opportunities that we had. Now (at Franklin Central), we trade with the boys teams. One week, we’ll have the main gym and the next week they will. But when you look back further to the women in the 1970s, they barely had any opportunities. Mrs. Tumey was in that first line of fighting for opportunities for girls to even be able to play.”

Basketball was the only sport for girls when Tumey started. She coached basketball for 12 years, adding volleyball, cross-country and track and field. She later served as Center Grove’s physical education chair, intramural director and assistant athletic director before retiring in 2003 after 40 years at the school.

In 2017, Tumey told IndyStar that Vandermeer and Patricia Roy, the first director of girls athletics for the IHSAA in 1972, were instrumental in her success.

“Some schools couldn’t get buses to transport our teams to away games,” Tumey said. “We did things that are hard to believe now. But we had to weather the storm. I had a supportive principal and Pat was the real thing. She came to our games and visited our school. She was a catalyst for getting us started.”

Tumey did not fade into retirement in 2003. She served three terms on the Center Grove board of trustees and worked as an adjunct professor at Franklin College. She remained a fixture for many years at Center Grove athletic events.

“Any Center Grove event, she was always there,” Cerbone said.

Cerbone got the news about Tumey’s passing from Carol’s husband, Dale. “To hear the heartbreak in his voice, it made me emotional,” she said.

Center Grove volleyball coach Jennifer (Gandolph) Hawk played on Center Grove’s 2000 volleyball state championship team. When the team returned home that night to celebrate in the gym, volleyball coach Deb McClurg took the microphone.

“I would also like to single out Carol Tumey,” she said, “because girls, she started this program.” The team, and fans, clapped and whistled. The camera cut to Tumey, who was wiping the tears from her eyes.

“She was really touched and excited for us,” remembered Hawk. “She was always really involved with our teams and so supportive. She put her hands in everything to help it grow and to help us get recognized.”

In 2021, Center Grove named its track in Carol Tumey’s name. The girls holiday basketball tournament at Center Grove was also named in her honor last year and she was able to attend the tourney.

“Carol was an iconic program builder,” Grimm said. “She never stopped caring about us as people, even 50 years after we graduated. She was so persistent.”

Tumey’s funeral will be Saturday at 10 a.m. at Mount Auburn Christian Church.

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

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