SACO – A career in sports can take many forms, especially for today’s young woman. It is an exciting time for sports-minded women who are, increasingly, finding themselves able to enter careers usually dominated by men.

Take the career of Nancy Storey DeFrancesco, for example – wife, mother, sports professional, competitor.

The proud parents of 3-year-old Justin Storey DeFrancesco, Mark and Nancy DeFrancesco split parenting responsibilities along sports lines.

During the school year, Justin’s dad coaches track at Thornton Academy in Saco, a career that affords him more relaxed hours in the summertime.

Dad’s schedule fits in fine with mom’s heavier summer schedule as club manager of the Biddeford-Saco Country Club.

Nancy DeFrancesco is a 1983 University of Maine graduate with a degree in journalism. Her first professional job was with the sports staff of the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune.

During the three years she worked for that paper, she covered the Maine Guides’ professional baseball team and the Maine Mariners’ professional hockey team. She had the added responsibilities of covering high school sports, which translated into long hours and multiple deadlines.

At Maine, DeFrancesco played two years of basketball for former Coach Eileen Fox. Today, she stays active in the sport in the winter, playing as a member of the Portland recreation league’s championship team.

That team, by the way, is loaded with former college talent, including DeFrancesco’s sister Donna Storey, Barbara Krause, Sue Whittum, Debbie Duff, Marjorie Haney, Robin Blattenburg and Diana Duff.

DeFrancesco was happy she had worked, during college, at the Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono, because she knew a little bit about the golf business when she was hired in 1986 to fill the newly created position of business manager at Val Halla Country Club in Cumberland.

Today, DeFrancesco oversees the management of BSCC from her second-floor office in the old homestead which serves as the clubhouse.

Interviewed during the 62nd annual Women’s Maine State Golf Association Championship there earlier this month, DeFrancesco was fairly relaxed.

That WMSGA tournament, after all, was her second, following the 1988 event at Val Halla when local club member Holly Anderson won her WMSGA title.

The 31-year-old manager oversees the day-to-day operation of a club that she understands is one of the five busiest in the state, with 300 rounds played daily. Open to the public, Biddeford-Saco has 500 adult and 110 junior members, plus a heafty waiting list.

As one of BSCC’s three department heads, DeFrancesco is responsible for everything that goes on inside the clubhouse from finances to membership.

In the midst of a golf tournament, for example, you might find a young couple in her office planning their winter wedding reception. Or you might find her making sure the next food order will be delivered on time.

Working hand-in-hand with golf professional/pro shop manager Tim Pooler and course superintendent John Dion, DeFrancesco finds this sports career about as diverse as she could imagine. She’s even “managed” to take time to fine-tune her handicap, playing to a 20.

Nancy Storey DeFrancesco knows well the twists and turns one takes pursuing a sports career, but admits that back in her early days as a female sports writer, she never imagined one day she would be counted among those few individuals who manage golf clubs, and who just happen to be female.