Francie Kraker Goodridge & the Michigammes' Olympic Legacy
Francie Kraker Races Against Two Boys in Physical Education Class, May 1962
A decade before Title IX would establish equal access to sports across the sexes, Betty and 'Red' Simmons founded the Michigammes Track and Field team for girls and women. Six years later, three of the club’s alumni were competitors in the 1968 Olympics. One was Ann Arbor native Francie Kraker.
The Simmons’ Support
As spectators at the 1960 Roman Olympics Kenneth 'Red' Simmons and Elizabeth 'Betty' Simmons noticed how poorly the United States women's team performed in the 800m track and field event. They recognized an opportunity.
Red (nicknamed for his hair color) and Betty had met studying physical education at Michigan State Normal College (now, Eastern Michigan University). Red had earned accolades in high school and college athletics. As an undergraduate, he participated in the 1932 Olympic trials, but fell short of making the team. After college, he spent 25 years as a Detroit Police detective before returning to Eastern in 1959 to earn his Masters in Physical Education.
Francie Kraker Trains at Yost Fieldhouse with Red and Betty Simmons, February 1965
The Simmons' moved to Ann Arbor when Red was offered a job as an instructor in the University of Michigan’s physical education department. Betty found employment as a P.E. teacher at Slauson Junior High. It was Betty who saw 14 year old Francie Kraker run the 600m physical fitness test in a flash. Francie finished in less than two minutes, easily outrunning every member of her class, regardless of their gender. Betty shared the news of Francie’s feat with Red. They had discovered their Olympic hopeful.
Francie was the founding member of the Ann Arbor Ann’s Track Club in 1962. The team was renamed the Michigammes in 1965, by which time their membership had grown to include at least 14 girls and women from throughout Southeast Michigan. They participated in indoor and outdoor track and field, and cross country, becoming dominant in them all.
Red was a trailblazer not only as an early champion of girls' and women's competitive sports, but in his embrace of weight training. He designed programs for the University of Michigan Football team and for Francie. She would later credit his strength building instruction as the reason she was able to avoid many injuries.
Road to the Olympics
Francie Kraker, 'Speediest' Waitress in Town, November 1967
Francea 'Francie' Kraker was the middle child of Dr. Ralph and Norma Kraker. She attended Slauson Junior High, graduated from Pioneer High School in 1965, and went on to the University of Michigan, competing as part of the Michigammes all throughout. The Ann Arbor News profiled Francie less than a year into her training when she was already aiming for the Olympics.
Francie had all of the elements that make a good athlete. Red commended her natural stride, intelligence, ability to take instruction, and quick learning. In the lead up to the 1968 Olympic trials Francie needed to be pushed by a higher caliber of competition, but traveling to events required money. Local supporters started fundraising to aid Francie. She took a semester of college off to train and work as a waitress at the Old German restaurant to finance her dreams. She faced more challenges when she was sidelined by appendicitis and tendonitis.
After years of anticipation the Olympic trials finally arrived, but she finished just short of the top three 800m qualifying spots. Red attributed her performance to anxiety, “She wanted to make the team so much that she just couldn’t hold herself in. She thought she could hold the pace.” Despite the shortfall, her accomplishments didn’t go unnoticed. She was offered a spot at the U.S. team's training camp at Los Alamos to prove her high-altitude running abilities that would be required for the Mexico City Games. Francie didn’t squander this second chance and she secured a spot on the team.
1968 Mexico City Olympics
In 1968 Francie made history as the first Michigan-born woman to represent the United States as part of the Track and Field team. Her Games were short-lived after she was eliminated in her first race. She had gotten an unlucky draw of tough competitors that included the eventual 800m bronze and silver medal winners. If she had participated in any other first round she would have advanced to the semi-finals. The disappointment provided motivation to keep training for a chance to race again in 1972.
The Olympics are an occasion for countries to project an idealized national identity, but what is ignored in order to present this vision? Ten days before the games began in Mexico City the Mexican Armed Forces had killed hundreds of student demonstrators in the city. For the United States, the fight for civil rights made its way to the international stage when Black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a gloved first on the podium during the medal ceremony for the 200m sprint. Francie was in the audience during this demonstration and in a 2013 oral history interview recalled her reaction, “I think it was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen anybody do.”
1972 Munich Olympics
Francie Kraker reunited with Michigammes coach Red Simmons before Olympic training camp, July 1972
After graduating from Michigan Francie moved to Boston and maintained her conditioning routine with the 1972 Munich Games in mind. The Simmons’ had identified a weak point in the women’s 800m and Francie did the same years later when she recognized an opening to excel at the newly introduced women’s 1500m event.
The switch paid off, and Francie finished second in the event's U.S. Olympic trials to qualify for the team. In a diary of her 1972 Olympic experience Francie described the buildup to her first race in Munich, “As I get into my warmup I feel perfect, to my surprise, yet still have a sense of unreality that this mere physical effort is made confusingly out of proportion to all this preparation and waiting.” This time, Francie advanced to the semi-finals.
Francie Training, July 1972
The Games are a global event and in 1972 violence was used to command the attention of the international media. Eight Palestinian militants affiliated with the group Black September captured nine Israeli athletes as hostages and killed two in the process, demanding the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. A failed rescue attempt ended with nine athletes, five gunmen, and one West German police officer dead. The International Olympic Committee suspended events for one day to hold a memorial.
Francie wasn't left with much time to process what had occurred. The following day she was back on the track to compete in the 1500m semi-finals. She finished with a time of 4:12.8, which would have ranked her sixth in the world the year before, but it wasn't enough this time. Her second Games were over. She left Munich before the closing ceremonies and later wrote, “My own feelings are still mixed about these and future Olympic Games. It must be a reflection of the confusion we feel to the roots of our society, this lack of agreement as to the value and meaning of these Games and our part in them. The place of nationalism must be redefined, the emphasis redirected to the competition of athlete between athlete.”
The Michigammes, including Francie and Sperry, June 1965
The Michigammes' Medal Contenders
Francie was not the only Michigammes alumnus to take part in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. In 1968 Sperry Jones Rademaker competed in kayak doubles alongside her sister, Marcia Jones Smoke. As a University of Michigan student Sperry was one of the earliest Michigammes members in 1963 and excelled at cross-country. Francie cheered her on in Mexico City and the two were close friends.
Maxine 'Micki' King, a Pontiac native, was also member of the Michigammes at one time alongside her training with diving coach Dick Kimball. A repeat national diving champion, Micki was highly favored in 1968, but ended up fourth after she was injured mid-event. She forged a comeback in Munich to earn gold in the 3m springboard.
Lasting Legacies
After her second Olympics, Francie vowed to keep training for more international competition, but she decided to hang up her spikes in 1975 after accepting a position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She became the women’s athletic director and track and cross country coach, the first role in a career path made possible by Title IX's passage in 1972. She later returned to Ann Arbor where she coached Greenhills' girls' track to the school’s first State Championship, then moved on to East Lansing.
The same year that Francie ended her competitive track career, Red retired from coaching the Michigammes. Betty had recently passed away after battling cancer and her contributions to the team were indispensable. Sustaining the club often came down to personal contributions from the couple, who would cover entry and travel fees when girls couldn’t afford them. “It’s a long ways to build a club,” Red later said, “But I never really got discouraged. Every now and then, I would see a little spark and determination in the girls. That’s all I really needed."
Red was coaxed out of retirement three years later when he was offered a job he couldn't resist: inaugural coach of the University of Michigan Women’s Track Team. He spent four years building up the team's roster and skills before passing the reins to the next logical successor: Francie.
Red Simmons with Francie Goodridge, U-M Women's Track Coach, 1983. Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library.
Francie had never had the chance to race for any of her alma maters. She later reflected, “It would have been something special if I could have been running for my high school or my university but they didn’t have women’s teams and I missed that.”
Now, she was able to provide that chance to the women who came after her. While the law stipulated equal funding for women, enforcement didn't come without persistence and long-held beliefs weren't changed overnight. In 2013, Francie described leadership in the University's athletic department that didn’t believe in the value of women’s sports. “By the time I started coaching at Michigan it hadn’t gotten much better because the same people were in place… it was a battle all the way.”
The fight continued at Wake Forest University where she and her husband, John Goodridge, both coached. A decade after Title IX, Francie was combatting inequalities regarding medical and safety concerns, scholarships, and staffing. In 1999, Francie was fired from Wake Forest and John quit in support, alleging her departure was retaliation for her support of her athletes' rights. They returned to Ann Arbor where Francie worked in the University's admissions office and John coached at Eastern.
Red passed away in 2012 at the age of 102, leaving a legacy of coaching women and girls to challenge themselves and society’s expectations for them. He took pride in the impact he had on Michigammes’ members, “The main thing I try to teach the girls is an attitude about training and about life that will carry on into other activities as they get older. You have to bring them along gradually because they don’t understand a lot of the time what it takes to become a well-trained athlete, but they do learn about themselves both physically and emotionally.”
Reflecting on her career as an athlete and coach in 1982 Francie said, “I’ve always felt a few years ahead of things, I was too old to wait for things to happen, so I took the opportunities as they came.” In 1995 Francie became the second person inducted into the Michigan Women’s Track Hall of Fame; the first was Red Simmons.