School of Dentistry faculty member, Mary Owen, is one of twelve Golden Gopher greats who will be inducted into the University of Minnesota “M” Club Hall of Fame on October 29, 2006.
An elite multi-sport athlete, Owen set the standard for Minnesota softball in its early years. As a junior, she helped lead the Gophers to a third place finish at the National Collegiate World Series in 1978, batting .349 and tying for the team lead with 36 RBIs. Known as "Sparky", she led the team with six home runs, 52 hits, 43 runs scored and 82 total bases, all school records. As team co-captain her senior year, she hit .309, and her single game tallies of four runs scored and two home runs still leave her tied for first in the Gopher record books. After lettering four years, she ranked second on the Gophers' career list with 77 RBIs, 122 runs scored and nine home runs.
Owen was a co-winner of the Women's Intercollegiate Athlete of the Year Award, as well as the Patty Berg Outstanding Graduating Senior Award in 1979. After graduating, she played professional softball with the Mount Vernon (NY) Explorers and was named 1979 Rookie of the Year. In amateur softball, Owen earned All-American honors in 1981 and a spot on the United States team that competed in the Tri-Nation Championship against Japan and China. In 1986, Mary was named an inaugural member of the University of Minnesota Women's Softball Hall of Fame and as a member of the Minnesota State Softball Hall of Fame.
Owen is a graduate of the U-M School of Dentistry in 1986 and earned a master’s degree in Oral Health Services for Older Adults in 1997. Today, she is a clinical dental specialist in the Division of Health Ecology at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry where she teaches geriatrics and helped develop dental clinics for underserved older adults at the Wilder Senior Dental Clinic in St. Paul and at Walker Methodist Health Center in South Minneapolis. She also maintains a private practice in the Glen Lake, Minnesota area.