While Margy Hughes was a student at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1960, she and two other young women provided a ride home to the Iron Range to a fellow graduate of Hibbing High School on the verge of a major life decision.
 
His name was Robert Zimmerman – though the world would soon come to know him as Bob Dylan.
 
"Bob was a year behind me," said Hughes, a 1958 Hibbing graduate (Dylan graduated in 1959). "I had worked with his mom at a department store in Hibbing, and we were both at the U of M at the time.
 
"So one weekend, myself and two other girls picked Bob up at the fraternity house where he was living. He got in the car and he had all this stuff with him. We said 'That's a lot of stuff for just going home for the weekend, Bob.' But he told us he was quitting school. The three of us all looked at each other like 'Oh my gosh!' We asked him what he was going to do and he said he was going to New York.
 
"We finally got back up to Hibbing and dropped him off at his parents' house. When he got out of the car, we all said we wondered what he was going to tell his parents. Because that was a big decision."
 
It was one that worked out well for Dylan, who has gone on to fashion one of the most influential careers in popular music over the last 60-plus years.
 
But Hughes – the daughter of legendary former Hibbing boys basketball coach and athletic director Mario Retica – went on to a pretty influential career of her own at the College of Saint Benedict.
 
She arrived on campus in 1966 as an instructor in the physical education department, and over the years she played a huge role in developing athletic opportunities for students at the school.
 
Hughes became chair of the department in 1982, then was named chair of the joint department after it merged with its counterpart at Saint John's University – a position she continued to hold until her retirement in 2003.
 
She also was a big part of helping CSB establish its foothold in intercollegiate athletics – using her position in the physical education department to push for and facilitate the hiring of full-time coaches, then finding ways to assure those individuals were given the time they needed to focus on coaching their teams.
 
She also was central in the efforts to build new and needed facilities like the CSB swimming pool and Claire Lynch Hall (the school's gymnasium).
 
It is for all those reasons and more that Hughes has been named the winner of this year's Marie Berg Education Award. The award is named in honor of Berg, who played basketball on pioneering girls' teams at Grand Meadow High School from 1929-32 and went on to teach physical education at the school.
 
Hughes will be honored at a ceremony Feb. 2 at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul as part of Minnesota's Celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
 
"She has been an incredible mentor to me," said Carol Howe-Veenstra, the volleyball coach at CSB from 1985-99 and the school's longtime athletic director from 1987 to 2015.
 
"She was always such a great sounding board when it came to discussing ways to meet the needs of a growing department. What made sense financially? What made sense staff-wise? Margy was always willing to serve on every new staff search. She was just as passionate as anyone in the athletic department when it came to finding ways to serve our students and our student-athletes."
 
"The first thing that comes to mind when I think about Margy is that I wouldn't be here without her," added Mike Durbin, the head basketball coach at CSB since 1986. "She and Carol and (former CSB vice president of admissions) Mike Ryan were on the search committee that hired me and she played a huge role in bringing me to St. Ben's.
 
"I hadn't done any teaching at the collegiate level and she was a tremendous mentor. She really encouraged me as I took on some of those responsibilities as part of the job when I first got here.
 
"She's gone on to become really the historian of our early years. Back then she was a vital force in both the physical education department and athletics. And she's always been a tremendous resource to anyone who knows her. She still comes to all sorts of games, and to see her continue to be a presence on this campus on a regular basis is heartwarming to me because of what she's meant and what she continues to mean to this place."
 
Hughes said she is truly honored to receive the award.
 
"It's really humbling to be recognized like this," She said. "It shows that the work I was doing for all those years at both Saint Ben's and Saint John's has turned into something lasting, and that it has only continued to get stronger."
 
Hughes said being the daughter of a coach helped draw her to a career in physical education.
 
"I grew up in a gym," she said. "When my Dad was coaching, I went to all of his games. Hibbing High School had what at that time was the luxury of having a girls' gym and a boys' gym. The boys' gym was bigger, of course. But we had a girls' gym, which meant there was a strong Girls' Athletic Association program. We had the chance to take part in volleyball, basketball and badminton.
 
"Later, when I was looking at a career, there weren't a lot of options in those days. I didn't want to be an office worker and I didn't want to be a nurse, so I chose teaching. It came down to a choice between Phy. Ed. and math. And because I loved sports so much, Phy. Ed. was the path I chose to follow."
 
When Hughes arrived at CSB in the mid-1960s, options for women in sports were extremely limited. But she said that started to change with the advent of Title IX in 1972.
 
"Back then, girls weren't looking for those kinds of opportunities (in sports) when choosing a school because they hadn't been exposed to them growing up," she said. "But that started to change when Title IX arrived and schools realized they had to start offering more of those kinds of experiences to compete for students."
 
Hughes played a huge role in developing them at CSB, and she said she can't help but feel proud when she sees what things are like for students arriving on campus today.
 
"I remember when they were starting to build the soccer and softball complex here a few years ago," she said. "I was able to come in and take a tour. The complex wasn't quite finished yet. But I stood there at the edge and I felt this rush of amazement at seeing this area I had known for so long as cornfields being transformed into these amazing facilities.
 
"So I do feel a lot of pride when I see how far things have come. It's amazing that women have so many opportunities now and can develop these relationships.
 
"A former basketball player here got married recently and a number of her former teammates were in the wedding. Would they have become as close as they are if they'd just gotten to know each other in the dorms? Maybe. But it certainly helps to share that experience of being together as teammates for four years. There is so much they get out of being part of these programs here."