Arkansas Tech University observed the 50th anniversary of its Golden Suns nickname by hosting a reception at Hull Building Student Union as part of the ATU Homecoming 2025 celebration.
The nickname Golden Suns was first used for the women’s athletics teams at Arkansas Tech in 1975, but that was not the beginning of women’s sports on campus.
Through the early years of women’s sports at Arkansas Tech, the teams were known as the Wonder Girls or the Wonderettes.
Much of what is known about those early years centers around the sport of basketball.
Agricola yearbook archives indicate that women’s basketball was played on the Tech campus as early as 1914.
Women’s teams from Tech played limited schedules throughout the mid-to-late 1920s under the direction of coaches Nora Brown and Edna Hood Ferguson.
The 1931 team might have been the best of those early Tech women’s squads. Star players such as Myrthinne Moore, Bonna Dale Van Dalsem, Mary Ellen Morgan and Ester Mears led the 1931 Tech women’s team to a 5-2 record, including two wins over both Henderson State and College of the Ozarks (now University of the Ozarks).
In 1955, head coach Dr. Margaret Wilson guided Arkansas Tech to the AAU State Tournament title in women’s basketball with a 38-36 win over Cabot. All-state selections Jean Sanders and Liz Parker were the star players. The Wonder Girls went on to compete in the 1955 AAU National Tournament at St. Joseph, Mo.
Freshman Ann Welch arrived at Arkansas Tech in 1966. She went on to earn multiple AAU All-State awards and an invitation to try out for the first-ever United States women’s basketball team in the Olympics. Welch, her sister Caroline Welch and Carolyn Butler formed the nucleus of Tech women’s teams that finished third in the AAU State Tournament in 1966 and 1968.
The 1969 Tech women’s squad was the first to only play against teams from other colleges. During the AAU days, the schedule often included club teams from around the state and country.
The new era included participation the Arkansas Women’s Extramural Sports Association, which later evolved to become the Arkansas Women’s Intercollegiate Sports Association.
The Wonderettes took second place in the organization’s tournament in 1970, and they finished in a three-way tie for first place in the AWESA in 1972.
The final few seasons of extramural women’s basketball at Tech did not yield as much success on the court, but there was one final contribution to be made to the future of women’s athletics at Arkansas Tech.
That came at the beginning of the 1975-76 academic year, when the female student-athletes on campus voted to change their nickname to Golden Suns.
When the athletic department added women’s basketball, women’s volleyball and women’s tennis in advance of the 1977-78 academic year, the new nickname was adopted as well.
What began with basketball has expanded to include six additional intercollegiate sports for women at Arkansas Tech — cross country, golf, softball, tennis, track and field and volleyball. Each has contributed to the competitive success of ATU athletics at the conference, regional and national levels while simultaneously providing scholarship opportunities that were historically unavailable to women.
Since women’s athletics became part of the intercollegiate athletic program at Arkansas Tech in 1977, Golden Suns student-athletes have earned:
*2 national championships in women’s basketball
*26 regular season conference championships in women’s basketball
*13 regular season conference championships in volleyball
*6 conference championships in women’s golf
*5 regular season conference championships in softball
*4 regular season conference championships in women’s tennis
*1 conference championship in women’s cross country
*53 All-America awards
*520 all-conference awards
*Approximately 3,000 head-to-head victories
“It’s meant a lot to me,” said Dr. Pat Gordon, ATU professor emeritus of health and physical education and women’s extramural sports coach at the time the Golden Suns nickname was adopted in 1975, when asked what the development of women’s athletics at Arkansas Tech has meant to her. “I enjoyed the part I had something to do with, and once it got here (the ATU Department of Athletics), it became something bigger. That was even better. We could have never gone any bigger than we were because we were not financially able to do it. It means a lot to me. It’s something I’ve always kept and treasured inside myself.”
