Multiple-time Hall of Fame inductee Joan Birkland — who made a lasting impression with her sports prowess, volunteerism and the Sportswomen of Colorado — is the subject of a new documentary film
By Gary Baines – 7/21/2025
Joan Birkland played golf at a very high level and was a very prominent member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. But in many respects, she transcended the game.
Perhaps that’s why now — more than six years after the Denver native and lifelong Coloradan passed away at age 90 in 2019 — some people who didn’t know her at all, or well, are gaining a newfound respect for Birkland. That’s coming about because a new film — about the woman who became a prominent all-around athlete at a time that was very rare for women — is making the rounds.
The film that debuted early this month is revisiting the life of Birkland — and the impact she had. A production of the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame — and of Denver-based executive producer Elizabeth (Betty) Heid — it first aired on Rocky Mountain PBS on July 3 and is gaining exposure as word spreads. It can be WATCHED HERE.
Birkland certainly shined in golf, but she was also a high-level tennis and basketball player, an accomplished skier, and she was an early and big-time advocate for women’s sports, co-founding and long running the Sportswomen of Colorado organization, in addition to being a volunteer leader in athletics. Is it any wonder she’s been inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, the Colorado Tennis Hall of Fame, the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame? She’s the only person to earn spots into both the Colorado golf and tennis HOF. Yes, she led that kind of life.
As Birkland told ColoradoGolf.org in 2012, “I’m not a sit-arounder.”
Indeed, good friend Judy Bell, the first female president of the USGA, said when Birkland passed away that “She was a prize — a Colorado prize. That’s for sure. She was a wonderful player, but even more than that she was a mentor to younger players and got kids involved (in the game). I know a lot of kids that got their encouragement from her. I can’t think of something she didn’t do.”
Which made her an ideal subject for a documentary, as Heid certainly found it through the process of researching and putting together the nearly-30-minute film “Joan Birkland: A Colorado Sports Legend”.
“Joan was amazing in that people think of her as this athlete — and she was a great athlete,” Heid said in an interview last week. “She was someone so skilled at golf and tennis and basketball and skiing and other athletics. But I think the thing that most people didn’t know about Joan was how much she gave back to the community — and gave to children and to other people. She formed the Sportswomen of Colorado; that will be a legacy of hers that will go on hopefully forever.
“But the other thing she did was she helped kids who were not privileged, and she’d pay for lessons or she would give them lessons. Most people didn’t know that side of Joanie, didn’t know how much she really gave back to the community. That, for me, was one of the aha’s or one of the least-known things was just how just generous she was — and how caring she was.”
Birkland (left) with Jennifer Kupcho at Denver Country Club after the latter won a CWGA state championship. Kupcho has gone on to capture four LPGA Tour titles, including a major.
The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame — thanks largely to the efforts of Heid, a former CWHOF chairperson who volunteers her time to create the films and fundraise for them — has produced and released 33 films over the last decade on selected members of its Hall of Fame. Birkland (induction class of 1996) is the latest in the series entitled “Great Colorado Women”. (Another Colorado Golf Hall of Famer — Babe Zaharias, part of the CGHOF’s inaugural class of inductees — was the subject of another such film, roughly five years ago.) Four of the Great Colorado Women films have earned regional Heartland Emmy Awards. Heid said roughly 1.25 million people around the world have watched at least one of the films. For a list of all 33 films in the series, CLICK HERE.
“I produce films that tell the stories of these women because women’s stories have not been recorded,” generally speaking, said Heid, who indicated she spends “hundreds and hundreds of hours” on each documentary. “Women’s stories are just not known; they’re not in the newspaper, they’re not on TV, they’re not in magazines, so women’s stories are not well known. … I’m really committed to telling women’s stories and to getting women’s stories preserved for history.”
The Great Colorado Women documentaries have all sorts of themes, given that the variety of accomplishments for the subjects runs the gamut. Just a couple focus primarily on athletes, but in so many respects, Birkland couldn’t be ignored.
Birkland was a force with which to be reckoned on the tennis court.
Birkland, a longtime member of Denver Country Club, packed a lot into her 90 years of life.
In golf, she won seven major CWGA championships during the 1960s — the most of anyone during that decade. She “three-peated” as champion of both the Match Play (1960, ’61 and ’62, in addition to ’64) and the Stroke Play (1964, ’65 and ’66). Twice — in 1962 and ’66 — she won state golf and state tennis titles in the same year. Including her women’s open singles crowns at the Colorado State Open in 1962 and ’66, Birkland claimed 21 big-time championships in Colorado and the mountain region — six in singles and 15 in doubles.
And, mind you, she didn’t take up golf until her 20s, shortly after she married her husband, Ormand, who played the game. But, as with about any athletic endeavor she took on, Birkland excelled at it. In addition to Denver Country Club, she played considerably at Willis Case and City Park golf courses.
Given all her accomplishments, is it any wonder that many of her friends referred to Birkland as “The Legend”?
“She’s certainly a legend among her friends — and we sure miss her,” fellow Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Maggie Giesenhagen said in the film.
If what she did in golf and tennis weren’t enough, during her athletic peak, Birkland played on a traveling AAU basketball team called the Denver Viners.
“She was one heck of a competitor.” Bell noted.
Back in 2012, Birkland laughed when she thought about how far things have come for women athletes during her lifetime.
When she was young, “We were told it was bad for you to compete,” she said. “They said not to run more than 100 yards. You tell people that now and they say, ‘What?’”
Birkland (right) with World Golf Hall of Famers Patty Sheehan (left) and Hollis Stacy.
For the film, Heid and her team interviewed numerous people regarding Birkland — some on camera and some as background. There were family members, friends, fellow competitors, fellow DCC club members, a prominent coach, Sportswomen of Colorado representatives, various athletes, etc. Among them featured in the film are former University of Colorado women’s basketball coach and administrator Ceal Barry, a fellow Colorado Sports Hall of Famer; and fellow Colorado Golf Hall of Famers Giesenhagen and M.J. Mastalir.
“If you were lucky enough to know her, she made your life better,” Marsha Heitzman, a former DCC assistant golf professional, said in the film.
Indeed, as noted in the film, while Birkland was very competitive, she competed graciously. And she was quick to mentor new players. But she also had an irreverent sense of humor, and a couple of “Joanie-isms” — some still repeated to this day — were pointed out in the film:
If a fellow player was getting ready to hit a golf shot, she’d say “Show me what you’ve got, princess.” If a fellow golfer left a putt short Birkland might say, “Oh baby girl.”
One of Birkland’s favorite memories from her days as a peak performer was facing Althea Gibson, the first African-American woman to win a Grand Slam title in tennis. They met in the first round of the Colorado State Open during the 1950s, just after Gibson scored her breakthrough internationally.
“Because of the altitude, about every forehand she hit early in the match landed about a foot out,” Birkland once recalled. “I was up 5-3 (in the first set), and you could see the (tournament officials) squirming. They had paid her probably $1,000 or $2,000 and she was their draw for the week. They were thinking, ‘What if Joanie wins?’ But she got her feet under her, and I think I lost something like 7-5, 6-2. They laughed about that for years.”
Birkland was an upbeat presence on the Colorado sports scene since for many years.
From the 1970s until 2014, Birkand was the executive director of the Sportswomen of Colorado, which champions female athletes and promotes equal opportunity in sports for women. Appropriately, the Sportswomen now present a Joan Birkland Leadership Award.
Birkland also served at high levels of volunteer golf administration. In fact, overlapping when Bell was the first female president of the USGA in 1996 and ’97, Birkland was the chairperson of the USGA Women’s Committee in 1997 and ’98, following on the heels of fellow Coloradan Barbara McIntire in that role. Birkland also served on the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame board of directors for decades and on the CWGA board.
She was also a big supporter of the CU women’s basketball team — she attended CU back in the day — as she provided partial scholarships to players and was a friend and mentor to coaches.
At Denver Country Club — where Birkland put together a remarkable streak of 30 straight years (1955-84) as the women’s golf club champion, she served as general chairperson of the 1982 Curtis Cup, the biennial USGA event between the best female amateurs from the U.S. and Great Britain & Ireland. Also, the J.B. Match Play Tournament, named for Birkland, is a mainstay at DCC.
“One of the things I think I learned about Joanie that I didn’t know (before making this film) is how much she was respected and how much she was loved — and not just by her family,” Heid said. “I’m talking about a wide group of people. I played golf this morning and even today the people (there) said, ‘I watched Joanie’s film. I didn’t know all that stuff about Joanie.’ (Among) people who knew her or knew of her — she was just very much admired, respected and loved. It was very heartwarming to see. Here she’s been gone for (six) years and there’s still that feeling about Joanie Birkland.”
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com