Top Soccer Player to Speak at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — Saskia Webber, back-up goalkeeper for the 1999 Women’s World Cup Champion Team (soccer), will be a featured speaker at the 25th annual Women’s Studies conference on Saturday, November 6 at SUNY New Paltz. Webber’s topic will be “Ode to Title IX: Lessons from the Field.”

A graduate of Rutgers University in 1992, she led the Scarlet Knights to four consecutive East Coast Athletic Conference tournaments and three championships between 1989 and 1992. Webber still holds Rutgers’ career records for shutouts and saves. As a senior, she was named the top collegiate goalkeeper in the nation, winning the Missouri Athletic Club Goalkeeper of the Year Award. In 1998, Webber became the first female soccer player to be inducted into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame.

For most of 1993, she was USA’s starting goalkeeper, and in 1996, was named as an alternate for the Olympic Team. Webber played three seasons in the Japanese Women’s Professional League, in 1996, ’97 and ’98, and was named to the international all-star team in 1998.

In addition to Webber, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College and editor of Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought, will speak on “Educating Women and Girls for Global Leadership,” and Lee Ann Bell, professor of educational studies at New Paltz and author of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook, will speak on “Something’s Wrong Here and It’s Not Me: Consciousness Raising with Elementary School Girls.”

The one-day program is co-sponsored by the department of intercollegiate athletics, and will take place in the Lecture Center on the campus. Registration will begin at 8:00 a.m.; the keynote addresses will begin promptly at 9:00 a.m. There is a $20 conference registration fee.

For additional information, write Women’s Studies, Southside House-SUNY, 75 So. Manheim Blvd, New Paltz, NY 12561-2499 or call (845)257-2975.