By: Troy MacNeill

ORLANDO, Fla. (March 2022) – AAU alum and legendary multi-sport athlete, Joan Joyce, was one of the greatest athletes to ever compete in the history of organized sports.   A well-rounded competitor, Joyce’s impact on the landscape of sports was immeasurable – she changed the way women were viewed in the sports industry. The AAU and sports enthusiasts the world over have lost one of its best players, coaches, and ambassadors.

AAU  Alum, all-around athlete, and a life-time champion for women’s sports, Joan Joyce passed away over the weekend at 81 years old. We are here to celebrate everything she accomplished in her life and pay tribute to one of the greatest athletes to ever play.
 
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut in August of 1940, Joyce was destined for greatness at a young age. It wouldn’t take long for her to start competing in any sport possible.
 
“She just wanted to play,” Janis Joyce, Joan’s sister, said in an interview. “It didn’t matter the game or the sport. She just wanted to play.”
 
Joan left a lasting impression no matter where she went or what sport she played, whether it was on a field, a golf course, or a court. Joyce wanted to be the best at everything and sports surrounded her since she was young. She played golf, bowling, tennis, volleyball, basketball, and softball and she excelled in each.

 

The first sport Joyce would try would end up being the sport she became most known for. At 14 years old, Joyce joined the Raybestos Brakettes, an amateur softball team in Connecticut. Three years after joining the team, she began pitching and began an 18 consecutive year streak of being selected as an Amateur Softball Association All-American. But we will get back to her dominance on the softball diamond shortly. First, let’s discuss all of the other sports Joyce would pick up and become a natural at.
 
Joan Joyce was one of the best basketball players of her time. She is in the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and played for the USA Women’s National Team. While playing softball professionally, Joyce was also playing basketball for the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), averaging 25 points a game. She was named an AAU All-American in 1961, 1964, and in 1965. During her 1965 playing campaign, Joyce would go on to set the AAU basketball record for most points scored in a single game. She finished with 67 points that night.

 

Volleyball was the next sport for Joyce to conquer. After starting her own team, the Connecticut Clippers, Joyce became a player coach. She competed in the United States Volleyball Association’s national tournament four times. She was selected for the All-East Regional team multiple times.
 
After volleyball, Joyce decided to take up bowling. Less than a month after she started bowling, Joyce was winning the Connecticut state title. She turned down an offer to become a professional bowler. Joyce was also naturally good at tennis, where she would be the runner-up in ABC’s Superstars tennis competition.
 
At 35 years old, Joyce decided to try her hand at golf. Only 2 years later, Joyce qualified for the Ladies Professional Golf Tour (LPGA). She would continue to compete on the LPGA tour for 19 years. Golf became easy for Joyce. She had a career low score of 66, drove the ball 30 yards further than most of her opponents, and in 1982 would grab a tour record and a Guinness record for fewest putts in a PGA or LPGA round with 17 putts. 

 

While Joyce could’ve been named one of the best female athletes off of these accolades alone, her playing and coaching days on the softball diamond are what turned Joan Joyce into a living legend in the sports world. Saying that Joyce was the greatest softball player of all time may be an understatement.
 
Joyce joined the Raybestos Brakettes at 14 years old and pitched for the team from 1954 to 1963 and again in 1967 to 1975. In between, she would attend Chapman College in Orange County, California, playing for the Orange Lionettes and leading them to a softball title in 1965. Throughout her time with the Brakettes, Joyce would lead the team both as a pitcher and a hitter, breaking records along the way. After nearly two decades of softball at a national and international level, Joyce complied a staggering 753-42 win-loss record. Her famed slingshot windup would help her throw 150 no-hitters and 50 perfect games. Joyce struck out more than 10,000 batters and had a lifetime earned run average (ERA) of .090. She wasn’t a bad hitter either, setting a softball record for highest batting average in the national tournament, hitting .467. She would lead the Brakettes to 4 consecutive national titles.

 

While she was feared by her fellow softball opponents, Joyce’s name was entered into folklore when she began taking down some of the greatest hitters to ever play in Major League Baseball (MLB). Joyce had faced a lot of hitters in her playing days, but perhaps her two most legendary matchups were against ‘The Splendid Splinter’ Ted Williams, and ‘Hammering’ Hank Aaron.
 
Ted Williams is known as one of the greatest hitters to ever play baseball. He could read the letters on a baseball as it was coming at him. The Boston Red Sox great is the last player to finish the season with a .400 or above batting average. Ted Williams could hit just about any pitcher he ever faced, until a warm August night in 1961. Just one year after the Hall of Fame hitter retired, he stepped up to the plate in front of a jam-packed crowd at Municipal Stadium in Waterbury, Connecticut. Standing 40 feet away on the mound with a softball in hand was the 20-year-old slingshot pitcher, Joan Joyce. The charity fundraising exhibition to raise money for the Jimmy Fund had everyone’s eyes glued to every pitch.
 
“I was never gonna let anybody beat me at anything. I was so competitive,” Joyce said in an interview. “When I was facing Ted Williams, I was facing Ted Williams. Yeah he probably should've hit me, but he didn't."

 

For 10 minutes, the left-hander swung and missed. Joyce threw her entire arsenal of pitches at the ‘Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.’ And after 10 minutes, as Joyce recalled, Williams threw the bat down and said “I can’t hit this.” Years later, Joyce met a man who fished with Williams in the Florida Keys. The man said he had once asked Teddy Ballgame to name the toughest pitcher he ever faced. "And he said, you won't believe this, but it was a girl."
 
Joyce was already a legend after that night, but her time striking out some of the greatest hitters ever was not over. In another charity exhibition, Joyce was set to face the homerun King, Hank Aaron. In 1978 in West Hartford, Connecticut, the 37-year-old Joyce would step to the mound across from the 44-year-old Aaron. Hank saw a few rise balls and swung. Like Williams, to no avail.
 
"She was something else," Aaron said at the time. "That softball comes at you and rises up around your head by the time you swing at it."

 

Joyce was the greatest softball player of all time and she did not let her knowledge of the game go to waste. Shortly after retiring from playing in 1976, Joyce co-founded the Women’s Professional Softball League. Joyce also began her coaching career in 1973, coaching softball, volleyball, basketball, and golf. In 1994, Joyce took over as the head coach of Florida Atlantic University’s women’s softball team, where she would stay and touch the lives of thousands of athletes. Joyce took the FAU Owls to 11 conference championships, 11 NCAA postseason tournaments, eight conference Coach of the Year awards, and a record of 1002 wins and 674 losses and 1 tie in 18 seasons. She was coaching until her final day.

 

“A lot of people feel I should be bitter about not being able to get the big-time money that a man with talents comparable to mine would receive,” Joyce told The New York Times in 1975. “I don’t care about the money, I enjoy the game, and that’s the most important thing. I’d play this game even if it meant being broke the rest of my life.”
 
While Joyce was humble, gracious, and modest, she also knew just how great she was.
 
“I would have hated to bat against me.”
 
Inducted into as many as 20 Halls of Fame, there may never be another Joan Joyce. Joyce has been inducted into the National Softball Hall of Fame, the International Softball Federation Hall of Fame, the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, to name a few. She loved to win, she loved to play, and she loved to coach. Most of all, Joan Joyce loved the competition and the game.