Mary Bell, Northern Illinois Program Architect, Passes Away

Inaugural Northern Illinois head coach and program architect Mary Bell has passed away.

“It is with great sadness that the founder of our program will now be our biggest fan from the sky,” current NIU head coach Christina Sutcliffe wrote on Twitter on Monday morning. “Rest easy Mary M. Bell. Thank you for being so feisty and pushing for female equality.”

Bell’s association with the sport of softball goes back to the early ’50s, to 1951 when she edited the national softball rule book. She helped form the state Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women in Illinois, served as a national president of officiating in addition to officiating in three different sports, and coached six different sports at NIU.

On the softball field, Bell led the Huskies to a 84-37 record from 1959-74 and owns the best winning percentage in program history; she was also the longest-tenured head coach in NIU softball history, leading the squad for sixteen seasons. She was inducted into the Illinois State Hall of Fame in 1982 and the NIU Hall of Fame in 1987.

NIU’s home park, dedicated in 1998, is monikered Mary M. Bell Field in her honor.