Jane Gross, Groundbreaking Former Sports Illustrated Reporter, Dies at 75

She was the first female journalist to step foot into a men’s professional basketball locker room.

Jane Gross, a sportswriter best known for being the first female sportswriter to work in a pro basketball locker room, died on Wednesday. She was 75 years old.

According to Richard Sandomir of The New York Times, Gross’s brother confirmed that she had a series of falls that led to a traumatic and fatal brain injury.

Gross grew up as the daughter of a New York Post sports columnist before becoming a sportswriter herself. She first started working for Sports Illustrated as a reporter in the late 1960s, then moved to Newsday covering basketball. While attending a Knicks game in 1975, Gross became the first female journalist to enter a male locker room for a professional sports team, breaking down that barrier. Within a few years, leagues mandated that women journalists be allowed into locker rooms.

Following her work at Newsday, Gross moved to The New York Times to write about both basketball and baseball. She then moved off sports coverage into general news, primarily covering health and aging for the paper until her retirement in 2008.

Gross wrote a book in her retirement titled A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents–and Ourselves, which was released in 2011, and ended her career as a five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.