Jeanne Contel, a former longtime ASA softball players in the 1950s and 1960s, passed away this week at age 94.
Contel spent fourteen years playing for the Fresno Rockets and took part in eleven ASA national championships during her career. She earned First Team All-American honors five times, including in 1963, the year prior to her retirement as a player. She was part of three ASA Nationals-winning teams, in 1953, ’54, and ’57.
Away from the softball diamond, Contel was a teacher by trade. She was the Dean of Girls at Fresno High School in the early 1960s and broke yet another glass ceiling when she appointed as the school’s principal in 1976.
Fellow former Fresno High principal Bob Reyes, in a public Facebook post, said of Contel, “She was an avid supporter of girls’ athletics because she herself had been one of the best women athletes. She championed equality and parity for women’s athletics. Those of us who knew her will miss her wonderful smile and that twinkle in her eyes. She was such a positive force and an inspiration to so many.”
In 1969, Contel was inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame, and was later inducted into the Fresno Hall of Fame in 1976 and the San Francisco State Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986.
