On Silverman's plaque: She was the first Ivy League Player of the Year in program history, in 1982, and three-time first-team All-Ivy (one of just four players in program history so honored). She was captain of Penn's 1982 team that went 41-9—a program record and still the most wins by a varsity program in a single season—and co-captain of the Quakers' 1983 team that won the Ivy League title. Overall, Penn went 23-4 in Ivy play during her career including 7-0 her senior season. At the 1983-84 Ivy Day she was the University's James Howard Weiss Memorial Award recipient. She also was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Societies.
 
By Joe Juliano
 
Gail Silberthau Silverman was an important piece in the building of the Penn women's volleyball program in the early 1980s, a young woman focused on her academics and her sport, plus an outstanding outside hitter and three-time All-Ivy player who led the Quakers to the 1983 Ivy League championship.
 
Just as important, however, was her role as a generous and even-keeled leader who encouraged her teammates.
 
"She was very steady, no drama, never yelled," teammate Sue Ambrose said. "It was just matter-of-fact like, 'Come on, we have to do this. This is what we do. Let's go.' I saw her excited. I never saw her mad, never saw her frustrated, never saw her dump on anyone. I really looked up to her."
 
"Gail was very driven, a very good player, and always optimistic about being able to turn a match around," said Sandy Schuchart Chockla, another teammate. "She was like, 'We can do this, just give me the ball.' She was always a very consistent player.
 
"Because she was one of the star players, she had a lot of responsibility for the team's success. She did take that on. I would say it was more leadership by example—just do it, don't give up. I don't recall her ever getting angry at a player. She treated everybody with respect."
 
Silverman, a member of the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Class XII that will be inducted in May, was committed to her education in the Wharton School (where she received a degree in Economics and Marketing) and her sport—in that order—and nothing else during the season.
 
"I was very, very focused," she recalled. "So no parties, no dressing up, no nothing.
 
"I absolutely loved the curriculum. So I loved volleyball, and when you love something you're going to go full speed ahead the whole time. It's a great school. I was so prepared. I was prepared by my high school for Penn. And I felt prepared when I left Penn for the work force. It was a great education."
 
Silverman, who was born, raised and still lives in Tenafly, N.J., was introduced to volleyball when she was 9 or 10 years old. Her father put up a volleyball court in the backyard of the family home and aunts, uncles and cousins who lived nearby would often come over on "any and all holidays that were on the calendar that Hallmark said was a holiday," she said.
 
But when the grown-ups took the court for the one adult game that day, she was on the sidelines as the youngest sibling and cousin because she hadn't reached 13 yet.
 
"In my mind, that made no sense," she said. "I was the youngest, but I wasn't the most unathletic if I could put that in a nice way. But it gave me a lot of fuel because I realized I needed to become better than everyone who was playing."
 
By the time she got to Tenafly High School, she was the one setting the rules.
 
"I got to teach everyone else how to play correctly, which was also nice," she said. "It was motivating for me to become better than everyone there, play correctly, share that information. I was very lucky and blessed that we were all able to get together and do that."
 
Tenafly High was a powerhouse in volleyball, a perennial league champion that went undefeated her junior year and won the county championship. She received interest from Penn, Princeton and Rutgers but the attraction of the Wharton School, the city and coach Ralph Hippolyte led to a commitment to the Quakers.
 
One of those lures was short-lived. Hippolyte left the program at the end of her freshman year and was replaced by Joe Sagula. Silverman said that while she was initially disappointed by Hippolyte's departure, she appreciated him for molding her into a better offensive player and spiker.
 
With Sagula, she learned more about defense and all-around play, areas that she said "made me better in facets of the game where I was probably lagging behind."
 
Sagula, who spent eight seasons at Penn before moving on to North Carolina—he will begin his 33rd season with the Tar Heels this fall—said that although Silverman had played just one season of college volleyball, he felt she would be a successful player and a good communicator.
 
"She was one of the first people that I looked to, to kind of help me make a transition to Penn, and then I could help coach her with the knowledge that I had," he said. "I think it was a great start, a good relationship to help each other, and she didn't disappoint me. I felt that Gail had a lot of trust in me, and I certainly trusted her because she had the team's best interests at heart."
 
For role models, Silverman needed to look no further than her parents, Inge and Ralph Silberthau, who always encouraged her and told her to strive to be her very best. They also served as a cheer squad of sorts, following the team everywhere and doing little things for the players.
 
"We would spot them in what we called the Silberthau vehicle," Ambrose said. "They were like the team parents. Her mother knitted booties for the whole team, like slippers to put on on the way home. We had a reunion in 2018 and she made a whole new set for us."
 
The Quakers went 22-11 in Silverman's sophomore season. The next year, Penn played an almost unheard-of total of 50 matches and went 41-9 as Silverman, in the first of her two years as co-captain, won Ivy League Player of the Year honors. However, the team lost to rival Princeton for the Ivy championship.
 
The defeat was a crushing one but as Silverman said, "It absolutely made us hungrier for the following year."
 
The team began the season in an energized state knowing that it would be playing its home matches in the Palestra, the first program other than basketball allowed to play there. Alexa Colgrove Curtis, also a senior during the 1983 season, felt a strong core group led by Silverman would put the Quakers over the top.
 
"We had a cohesive team that was extremely determined to make this Ivy League championship happen for the love of the school, for the love of the sport, the love of our coach and each other," Curtis said. "Gail certainly was instrumental in contributing to pull the team together in that spirit."
 
It all came together for Penn on its home floor in the championship match against their perennial nemesis, the Tigers. In the midst of her team's victory celebration, Silverman found herself holding an open bottle of champagne.
 
"Someone handed it to me," she said "I can't imagine they do that now. I was holding the bottle of champagne in one hand and the Ivy bowl in the other hand on the Palestra floor. It was a pretty good feeling. That's one for the memories."
 
She went out a champion but Silverman's days in volleyball weren't over. She played for two years in the United States Volleyball Association based in New York. She competed in the Empire State Games and represented the USA at the World Maccabiah Games. In 1988, she served as head coach at New York University, where she received an MBA from the Stern School of Business.
 
She had to stop competing after suffering several ACL tears, but volleyball means a lot to her.
 
"I met my husband playing volleyball on the beach in the Hamptons," she said. "So that's why I feel like I was so blessed because I had great teams, great teammates, a very strong career and then met the love of my life. It can't be better than that."
 
And now there's the Hall of Fame, to boot.
 
"I'm honored. I'm really honored," she said. "I think to myself, wow, my name will be there for generations to come. That's a little bit of a numbing feeling but in a good way. I could have never done it alone."