Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

When Marcy Schwam graduated from IUP in 1975, she started running…and running...and running. Seriously.
How seriously? Well, she became the first woman ever to complete a six-day race, a five-time world recordholder in ultradistance running, and once won a 100-mile race. Yes, you’re reading right; that’s days, and that’s I 00 miles. The latter rated her a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Ultramarathons (any race longer than 26.2 miles) became her specialty, and in 1977 she captured both the Metropolitan AAU and New York Road Runners Club titles for 31.25 miles.
The following year she became the first woman ever to finish the 73.5-mile Lake Tahoe loop, in 12 hours. In '79 she traversed 147 miles in 48 hours, and later set a world record for fastest 100 miles on any surface (15:44.27).
Not that she hadn't already established a record as an IUP undergrad that would have rendered her a legitimate candidate for today’s honor, as in three women’s tennis seasons competing for coach Mary Louise Eltz she won 35 matches, and lost only one.
Schwam then toured the Virginia Slims pro circuit for a time, capping 17 years of playing tennis.
Her professional resume makes Schwam a leader in athletics as well. For 10 years (1980-90), she was operations and program manager for the Women's Sports Marketing Group in Boston, a firm providing a complete range of services for such clients as L'eggs, Hasbro, General Foods and Reebok.
Just this summer Reebok invited Schwam to accept a new post as product manager in customer footwear with crossover directives to help design new running lines.
She has also been co-founder and operations director for Barbano Fitness Enterprises, in Massachusetts, which built a first-rate reputation for women's sports promotion, publishing, conferences and seminars. Schwam is nationally known as a spokesman, media interviewee and running-event coordinator.
After graduating from IUP as a health and physical education major, Schwam completed graduate studies in exercise physiology at Adelphi University, in New York, and at San Francisco State.
Away from full time involvement in sports, Schwam devoted the 1990s to work as operations manager for Federal Express (three years) and as import manager for UPS (two), both in Stockholm, Sweden, and for the past six years had been a corporate account and regional sale manager for Kinko's in Boston.