 I think we're about ready to get started. It's good to see you all here and really thank you for being here to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX. We were lucky enough to have two recent books out about Title IX and athletics and you'll hear a little bit more about them. And we also have a privilege of having Debbie Shriver on the panel who published a book with us called In the Footsteps of Champions a couple of years ago. So we have a great panel and I really want to thank Ashley for agreeing to be the moderator for the panel. I gave her a homework assignment. Two of the books were so recent that I just dropped them off two weeks ago and so she had to read three books in two weeks and so we'll see the fruits of her labor. I'd also like to thank a few people at UT Press, all of our staff which work really hard to keep everything on track and keep things going. And especially I'd like to single out Thomas Wells who was Mary Ellen's editor and also helped Sarah a lot with the book that her group produced. He can't be here tonight because he's working out of town. And I'd also like to single out Kelly Gray and Stephanie Thompson who both helped us meet deadlines and kept the books all on track. And I'd also like to thank my library colleagues all of whom have been really in our corner on everything that we've done since we joined the library two years ago. And especially Anna Marie who really got this event organized and kept us all on track. And with that I want to give you an introduction to Ashley Blamey. As UT Knoxville coordinator Blamey is responsible for coordinating campus efforts to comply with and carry out Title IX responsibilities. Including promptly thoroughly and equitably investigating and resolving reports of prohibited conduct to eliminate prohibited conduct, prevent its recurrence and remedy its effects. Blamey has a bachelor's degree in special education from East Tennessee State University and both masters and doctoral degrees in social work from UT Knoxville. She joined UT Knoxville in 2008 as its inaugural student case management specialist. She has served the campus as the director for the Center for Health Education and Wellness and assistant vice chancellor for student life. She is currently the university's representative on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Action Collaborative to prevent sexual harassment and higher education. Under her leadership UT Knoxville was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to develop best practices related to education about and prevention of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. UT Knoxville continues to push the work forward as a current member of the NA-SBA culture and respect collective. Blamey's work is grounded in access, access to education and opportunities that create individual and community change. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Ashley and she's going to introduce each of the panelists. And if you all want to say a word or two about your books you certainly can before we start the questioning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. My mom probably enjoyed that more than anyone else. So I want to thank everyone who's with us in the room and I think we have quite a robust group watching via Zoom. And so we'll try to kind of keep the conversation going so that people out there can also, you might think of something that you would like to know and probably someone watching would like to know as well. So we'll have time for questions and sort of open that up at the end. I'm just going to take you just a moment to say what a privilege it was to do this little project. I'm not an athlete in any way in fact, but I kind of flamed out in sixth grade with my tennis best attitude award. But I have found so much encouragement and really challenge in the work of athletics at the university and in my role. And the opportunity to read about the history are always reminded. And I think I hadn't thought about this in years, but my oldest child is 13. And when I had her, I just had the hardest time, like the idea of not waiting to go back to work and I didn't know what to do with myself at home. And just none of that seemed supernatural to me. And I read, and I just kept thinking, left foot, right foot, breathe. I can do this. And I would get up at night and I couldn't sleep and I would read her book and think, okay, we can get through this. And it had nothing to with basketball, but just everything to do with life. And that has been the coolest part of this experience in reading your book. So I'm just grateful to be along for the ride. Tonight we have with us Mary Ellen Paffle. The author of Title IX, Pat Summit and the Tennessee Trailbillizers, 50 Years and 50 Stories. Which was incredible for those of you who have not had the opportunity and the unsung heroes of this generation, pretty remarkable. She's an assistant professor on global leadership studies and honors at Belmont University, the author of Athens of the New South, Heartfelt Mission and All Girls Education from Ward Seminary to Harbeth Hall. She's also the project director of NationalSites.org as part of the Metro Historical Commission Foundation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Sarah Hillier is a contributor to Strong Women, Better World, Title IX Global Effect. She's the director of the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace and Society. As an educator and consultant with more than 30 years of experience, she's worked at the U.S. Department of Education, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committees, Islamic Federation of Women's Sports, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association, PGA of America, Women's Tennis Association, Google Proctor and Gamble, Satchel and Sachi, L.A., dozens of national Paralympic and Olympic committees and more. Creating programs that use the unique attributes of sport and physical activity to create innovation of social movements and promote peace. That connection was incredible to make as you looked at the book and to make as you look outside of the U.S. And so we are glad you are here. And Debbie Shriver, the author of Footsteps of Champions, the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers, the first three decades until her retirement, spent her career working with students, parents and staff in the departments of student life and the employee training and development at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. She is the author of Whispering in the Daylight, the children of Tony Almo, Christian Ministries and their journey to freedom. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for joining us. And the very, I mean, you work here and you live in Knoxville and you get desensitized to the impact of the University of Tennessee. And so it's one of the best parts about working here is that you get reminded periodically, what an amazing place to be. So do you want to start? Maybe we'll start on this end. You just say just a little bit about yourselves and then I've got a thousand questions. You do have some questions. Yeah, I do. I don't want to work these things. That's good. You're doing great. You're doing great. So awkward. Everyone at home can read. Okay. Oh, so everybody at home. As long as you have it on. Yeah, you're good. It's on. Okay, perfect. So this is our cute little amazing book, which was such a blessing. So for, let's see in 1994, I started a nonprofit organization called sports for peace. And I was interested in the way sport gives us inner peace regarding our identity, but then just peace between people. Because even if we don't believe the same or speak the same language or share the same culture, all of a sudden when we step into a basketball court or a soccer field or a tennis court, we have this commonality immediately. So there's a bond. There's a mutual respect. We understand the rules by which we are playing. And with that, the vulnerability and honestly, I see competition. Pat Summit would kill me for saying this, but competition for me. And really, if you go back to the original language of the word competition, we need one another. It is actually about collaboration. So if I'm on the tennis court with Mary Ellen, I need her to be the best tennis athlete that she can be. Because if she's not, she's not going to bring out the best in me. And so I always saw sport. I played basketball at Virginia Tech. My claim to fame is playing against Pat Summit's team and a national championship team. But for me, I would always get in trouble. I was like the worst competitive athlete on the planet. Because if another player on another team would make a shot, like a great move and a great shot, I would just high five them going down the court. But they were my competitor. But I wanted so much for them to be the best they could be because it brought out the best in me. And I saw that about life and about building peace. So that journey, I did bake sales and car washes to fund that nonprofit for 15 years. I was privileged to have the opportunity to go to the Islamic Republic of Iran as the first ever American woman to officially go into the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and help them build the Islamic Federation of Women Sports. And so while I was there in Iran for 10 years, I thought I can't bake enough brownies and wash enough cars to scale and to fund this work. I guess I'm going to have to go back to school and learn how to write a grant and do rigorous research. So I'm coming home with more than anecdotal evidence as to the power of sport to transform lives in communities. So that's how I ended up with the University of Tennessee to do a PhD in sports sociology is to learn how to write a grant and learn how to do research. 10 years later, we started the Center for Sport, Peace and Society as a result, which then led to our global work with the U.S. Department of State. Now we're working with the State Department's funding at a million dollars a year. They've invested almost 15 million dollars into our programs to specifically use sport as a tool for empowerment for women and girls. And we are now working in 99 countries helping the pioneers that these two have written about within our context, but they are the pioneers of the women fighting for similar policies to advance the rights of girls and women in their countries. Awesome, that's awesome. Wow, my story is going to be very much simpler, much simpler than that. Such amazing work, such a fan. Alright, so I grew up playing sports and actually played a year of college basketball at Berry College and then decided I needed to spread my wings in a different way. And so I transferred to the University of Tennessee, much to the chagrin of my dad who had gone to UGA. He took him about three years to forgive me for that. But I was here from 96 to 98, which were some particularly good years for sports here at Tennessee, so I like to take all the credit for that. And so I actually was a history honors major here at UT. And my senior thesis was about women's sports here in Knoxville in the 1890s and early 1900s, that very first generation. And so I ended up then getting a PhD in history and my original academic interest was in that gilded and progressive era. But I was sitting in a coffee shop in March of 2020, not knowing that the world was about to shut down. And someone sent me an email about the first full court high school basketball game in Tennessee, which was 1979. Tennessee was one of the last two states, I believe, still playing the half court game. And they sent it to me just because I wrote a lot about sports and history. And I thought to myself, well, it takes about two years to write a book. Title IX turns 50 in two years. I called Thomas Wells at UT Press and said, what do you think about a different kind of book? Not a typical history monograph, but something that's more narrative and conversational where I interviewed some of these trailblazers. And he floated the idea, gave me an initial green light. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last coffee shop that I would sit in for 18 months. And as I was telling both Debbie and Sarah before this, that that's actually what made this book possible. Because a lot of the women that I was interviewing were in their 70s, 80s. I mean, the range was from 20 to 93. And these women, especially those over the age of 60, it accelerated our collective learning curve. They would not have known how to zoom before the pandemic. But they had to learn how to do that in order to have that human contact during the pandemic. And so I did 100% of my interviews via zoom and phone during the pandemic. And took those stories and was able to create short chapters that are sort of thematic essays that are biographical in nature. But, you know, have a hook, tell you their story and then try to pull it back together. Looking at women all across the state of Tennessee. So I'm going to tell you this quick anecdote and then I'll turn it over to Debbie. Because it kind of pulls in the Pat Summit. So I only really met Pat Summit one time. And it was in the spring of 1998. And she had just finished her book about the perfect season going 39 and 0. Entitled Raise the Roof, if you remember that one. And so I was a senior at UT at the time and I went to a book signing on campus. And I handed her the book. We traded some small talk. And I told her I had just finished that history honors thesis. And it was about the first generation of athletes in Knoxville. Well, she kind of looked up that caught her attention and she said the 1970s. And I replied back and I said, no way back. Knickers, not Nike. And she smiled, laughed and said, I'd like to read that. And I know that's just a thing that people say, but I like to think Pat Summit meant that. But she asked about my plans after graduation. I was headed to law school, which is what all overachieving history majors do. And so she inscribed my book to Mary Ellen, Raise the Roof in Law School, Pat Summit. So I say in the acknowledgments of the book, obviously law school didn't work out. History was my true passion in writing and storytelling and teaching. But now as I have this book in my hand, I can't help but think back to that brief meeting with Coach Summit. And I kind of imagine going back in time and saying to Pat, one day I'll write a book about your generation and one day I'll write a book with your name in the title. Well, my story isn't nearly as exciting, I don't think. Is this on? You're on. I'm on? Okay. I came to the university as an undergraduate student. I grew up in Chicago and Andy Holt recruited me. And in 1968, I came here as a freshman. And I absolutely hated it. It was very different back then. But I've never been an athlete, but I've always been a wannabe. And I grew up going to all the men's sports in Chicago, the Bulls, the Cubs, the Bears, the Blackhawks with my dad. So I was a big sports fan. And so I started going to whatever was available here. I remember my first football game and they, everyone was dressed up. And I, you know, I was not dressed up and I couldn't figure it out. And I just had my one ticket and people in the dorm said, you're going without a date. And I said, yes. And I went to the football game and stood up for the National Anthem and then sat down and then they played Dixie. And the person next to me said, stand up. And I'll never, you know, there were just moments like that that marked for me how different the culture was here from where I had grown up. And we were a tiny itty bitty scruffy town back then. And so it took me a while to adjust. But I remember going to the Alumni Hall gym and watching the women play basketball and thinking I have to come to every game because they'll know it if I'm not here. There were that few people there. And I remember seeing Pat Summit when she came sweeping the gym before the games and after the games. And I remember seeing posters all around campus saying tryouts for volleyball, tryouts for track and field, even tryouts for basketball back at that time. Holly Warlick likes to tell the story that she actually tried out for the basketball team. She did not, when Pat came to scout her when she played at Bearden, she didn't do well. And she was really worried about it and she was not given a scholarship, but she got a track and field scholarship. And her sophomore year she came over to basketball and said I want to try out and the rest of the story is clear. She did make it and of course went on to do great things. But my point in starting where I am with you and my story is that the Lady Ball book and the footsteps of champions starts there too. It starts at the very beginning of sports here and at the very beginning of Title IX and how that came about. I was really fortunate to interview Birch Bay who is the senator who sponsored the Title IX bill. And you know the interesting thing to me is a lot of people think the Equal Rights Amendment passed. And you all in this room are educated and know that it did not. But students from this time don't all know that. They just think we have it already and we don't. And in fact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is what gave an opening for Title IX. And Birch Bay and Edith Green from Illinois, the representative, co-sponsored that bill. And Senator Bay said to me as he was telling the story, the first thing he said was when I was a little boy at the kitchen table, my father told me he was going to Congress today to talk about why they should allow girls to have gym classes in school. And the young man Birch said, why should they? And he said because little girls need to have strong bodies to carry their brains around just the way men do. And so from a very early age he was influenced by a family and a father who were advocates of equity in education. And as he told me his story and as he told me about his struggles with Congress to pass this, he said what they didn't expect was the explosion in athletics. They were talking about education. And I will tell you when I came here as a freshman and I came to freshman orientation, I really didn't know what I wanted to do but I thought I wanted to be an architect which is really ridiculous when you think about my skills. But that's what I thought I wanted to be. So when we divided into colleges to go hear the dean from the college or a representative tell us about what we needed to do in that college, I went with the architects and I'll never forget this. This was in the old university center and at the door it was a school of architecture back then. And the dean was standing there and said to me, stop, you must be in the wrong place. We don't have girls who are architecture students. And Debbie said, oh I didn't know that and turned and walked away. And I thought what am I doing? I just felt so out of, I felt so intimidated. But that's what Birch by, I actually told him the story and he laughed about it too. But he said that's what he was wanting to fight. They were looking at educational programs, engineering, architecture, math, sciences, the programs that did not open themselves to women. And the professions that were not open to women really at that time. And he said no one could have been more surprised as he was to see all of a sudden the platform be on athletics. And he loved it. But it was just amazing how colleges and universities saw that's where we're really going to be vulnerable. And here at the university we were actually progressive and more prepared for that than most things that we're not prepared for. In the early mid-70s, early 70s our administrators kind of saw that these things were happening. And they said we really need to get things in order. And we also had some other women. Women's athletics was housed in the College of Education back then. In the early stages we were just clubs. Pat Summit would tell you today and you all know from reading about her. She was a grad assistant and became head coach just because the person who was going to do it left. And she was a grad assistant. You don't make a whole lot of money doing that. And she was going to school at the same time. And that's how our sports were existing at that time. So we've come a long, long way. And here at the university they decided we need to be prepared. Title IX compliance has to be indicated by 1978. And so in 76 we opened a separate University of Tennessee women's athletics department. And so we were way ahead of the game. And in my book, then after the introduction, I have 30 decades, 30 years of the Lady Vols goes through 2007. And I've selected someone, 10 individuals, student athletes to interview in each of those decades. And I was so lucky because I got to be a fly on the wall. Joan Cronin gave me full access to do this book. So I was in locker rooms. I was five in the morning with the rowing team out on the Tennessee River. I experienced it all. And it was really wonderful to learn from the inside out, especially a wannabe athlete like me. But the biggest thing, takeaway, was the community of Lady Volunteers that we have. There's a richness of the community and the tradition that is unlike many other programs. And even though we're now back under one umbrella, there's still that strong identity and pride. And I know you'll find it in these other books. But that's, I'll stop. That's too much, but I'll stop then. Can I add one thing to that? They both talked so much about community. And I would just say that that was one, something I'm not surprised about, but it's something that was so clear that came through when I was working on this. I did not set out to have 50 different people. It was supposed to be a much shorter project. But the more I would interview people, you realize that they were competitors on the court. But they were all trying to advance the game of women's sports. I would talk to people in West Tennessee and they would say, well, have you interviewed so-and-so? Or you need to include this person? And so my list kept growing and growing in a good way. And then in Middle Tennessee, I was connected to different voices. A lot of universities there. And then I got in touch with John Cronin. It's funny that you mentioned her because John Cronin was the mother load. Because I asked her, you know, I interviewed her. She pointed me to Anne Furrow and then she pointed me to several other people. Anne Furrow being the first really lady vol, being on the men's golf team before there were women's athletics. And she said, well, I'm going to help you get in touch with people. And so one morning I woke up, I guess Eastern Tom Central Tom. I wasn't quite awake yet. And my phone just started blowing up. And so I finally looked at it. And she had sent me like the email address and phone numbers for every lady vol you could ever imagine. From Candace Parker to Tamika Ketchings to Holly Warwick. And I thought, I wonder if she cleared that before she just sent me. She didn't. But John has been so indispensable. And I think we could all speak to the power of John Cronin and her chapter title is aptly titled Good for the Game. Because that's what she did. She really recognizes that greater sense of community. Did we answer all your questions? That was outstanding. We're going to go now. No, you are. Communities, that was the one in collaboration. And I think when you see groups of people make social change and find space in the gaps, it always takes that collaboration. It struck me the whole experience of reading was about that feeling of what it means when people come together to create. And so would anyone like to talk a little bit? And this is because this is something I wasn't aware of in the way that I wish that I had been before I read the book. Can anyone talk about a Tennessee State's role? And I want people to hear that story because I don't think that's one that's well-known. And y'all can chime in, too. But one of the big questions that, I mean, so this book has a really long title, but it's because we wanted to be sure that everybody knew what was in it. So obviously Title IX, Pat Summit touched so many people's lives in one way or another that we wanted to include her name. And then, of course, but also make sure they knew it wasn't just Pat Summit, it was all these other trailblazers and then the 50 years, 50 stories. But one of the questions that I get is, or that I tried to answer in the book, is why Tennessee? Why did Tennessee emerge as a national leader in women's sports? And it predates Pat Summit because it really begins with two organizations. It begins with the Nashville Business College, which was an early semi-pro, semi-collegiate league that was run by the AAU. And they had a team in Nashville that was internationally famous. I mean, won the World Championships in 1957 with most of their team members, led by people like Mira White and Sue Gunter, if you know some of those names. And then secondly, the Tennessee State University Tiger Bells, the TSU Tiger Bells. The most famous is Wilma Rudolph, and she wins her gold in 1960. But the TSU Tiger Bells, which had coach Ed Temple, who was the legendary coach there, so not a female coach, but a male coach leading that charge, they won Olympic medals from 1952 to 1984 in every Olympics, except for 80, which of course was the boycott. In total, they won 23 medals in those years, so they're still the most successful track program in not only the history of the state, but I believe in the country. And so there's so many other names besides Wilma Rudolph, but they really set the stage for that. And then I think when Title IX comes along, you've got the legislation to then back it up. But they didn't even, TSU did not give athletic scholarships until 1976, as everybody was trying to get into compliance. And the last TSU Tiger Bell to win a gold medal was Chandra Cheeseboro in 1984. If you get a chance, go to YouTube and just Google 4x400 Women's Relay 1984 Olympics. And she's the anchor leg. And if you don't get chills watching that race, then it's just amazing. And she finished her competitive career. She has a chapter in the book. She finished her competitive career, was coaching high school down in Florida, and Ed Temple called and said, I'm retiring in 1994, would you consider taking the job? She said, no, I'm not interested. I'm coaching high school. I'm happy. She was from Florida also, known as the Florida Flash. And so three days passed, and she got another phone call, and it was from Wilma Rudolph. And Wilma, her nickname was Cheese. Wilma said, Cheese, we need you to come take the job. And Chandra Cheeseboro is the director of TSU's track and field and cross country teams today. And has been for 28 years. So I think we do a huge debt of gratitude to the TSU Tiger Bells. I thought about that just a lot throughout the book. And I feel like it was something that Pat Summit did routinely was credit the people who came before you. And it's another thing about community that you don't always see. And you see it across the board in this. And I love that part. Can each of you take a moment and talk about the interview or the experience that, if you only told us one thing about writing these books, tell us the experiences like that was your moment. You want to start? Go ahead. Sure. I'll start. It's hard to pick, but what pops into my head right away is the 1981 track and field team. That was a group. There were 10 women, and they were called the 10 that made one. And Terry Crawford coached them, and they were the very first lady ball team to bring home a national championship. We often think of basketball, but track and field did it in 1981. And when I started calling these student athletes, they started saying, oh, have you talked to so-and-so? Have you talked to so-and-so? They hadn't stayed together. So I would say yes, and she's doing great, and I talked to all of them, and Terry Crawford ended up sending them all notes and said I have a big box of pictures and stuff, and I know y'all would like to see them, and they ended up coming back here for a reunion together. It was for the Dogwood relays that we would have in the spring here. And they made me an honorary member of their track team. Oh, that's awesome. And I'll tell you a couple of funny stories. Pat Passara was on that team, and I was interviewing her, and she was talking about, you know, I would always say, you know, what drew you to the sports, what drew you to Tennessee, you know, why is this special to you? And she would tell me, and I just kept listening to her, at one point I said I've always wanted to be an athlete, and she said I've always wanted to be a rider, and I said no you haven't, and she said you're right, I just wanted to make you feel better. And then another great story is Susan Thornton from Harpeth Hall, and Susan was a thrower on that team, and throwers have a lot of stuff, a lot of equipment, and we didn't have great facilities in 1981, we didn't have a place for her to keep all that stuff, she had to keep it in her dorm room and bring it to practice. So she got a red wagon, and dragged it around campus in a red wagon, and she was known as the girl with the red wagon, and they just had such great stories, and such camaraderie, and when they were in Texas, for the final event, for the national championship, they said it had been raining all day, and it was raining really hard, it was just an awful day for outside sports, and for the very last event, a rainbow came in the sky, and they swore it did, they all said it independently, so I believe them, and it was just one of those incredible moments, and they're all very proud of it still, and two members of that team have passed since the book came out, and they all were just so proud, and had that flavor of community that we've mentioned earlier. So I can't take credit for writing any of our book, but the beautiful thing about it, and kind of my favorite part is, with the women through the State Department program that we run in partnership with ESPN and ESPNW, is that in wanting to start to document the seeds of Title IX-like, so in other countries, their sports systems are completely different than ours, it's club system, it's professional system, it's not built within education, so to copy-paste Title IX is not relevant within their cultural context, but what they are taking are the lessons of Title IX, the idea of equity and access in the ways that the unintended consequences of that have impacted so many women and girls through sports that they are now within their context trying to change policies and laws and using sport and what they want to do in and through sport to advance gender equity. So same, very similar, during COVID, our cycles of programming, where we bring about 17 women from 17 different countries a year for a five-week mentorship. In fact, I just got off the airplane now, we just finished our five-week mentorship, we had 15 women from 15 countries that have been with us for the last five weeks in Washington, D.C. for a week, then we deploy all of them, they have a mentor host organization, so the National Hockey League, Sachi and Sachi ad agency, U.S. Tennis Association. So we match these young women, 25 to 50 years old, 50 is still young, I just want everybody to know that. And I picked that number because I wanted to still be young because I just hit that number. But so we match them with an executive level at these organizations to mentor them and kind of walk them through their own Title IX experiences and help them find the points of connection. So when COVID hit and we were no longer doing these in-person programs and moved to virtual, it gave us the gift of time to say, okay, we see the 50th anniversary of Title IX coming. How and who is talking about the unintended global ripple effect of that and the way that other nations are looking to us and saying what has happened in 50 years as you all have experienced Title IX and how can we bring something similar to our countries? So we mobilized through, right now we have 160 alum women from, like I said, almost 99 countries. So we mobilized our journalists and our educators and said, do you want to be the authors and tell the story of your sisters? We call them our, it's a global sisterhood of sporty, spiced change makers, we call ourselves. So several of them volunteered and they interviewed other women that had been through the same program. Then we mobilized and said, okay, all of our sisters that are athletes and artists, who wants to do all the artwork? Who wants to volunteer to contribute to the artwork? So this book is about them, but it's also written and designed and illustrated by them, which is part of our philosophical commitment is that we're not doing social change work and we came up with this coin working on it together during this time, that social change is a team sport. Social change is not an individual sport, it is a team sport. The diversity of the team, the unique experiences and skill sets of a team, whatever diversity we bring, that is where social change happens. So my favorite part of this is that I actually did nothing. But have a vision and a dream and then had the opportunity to collaborate with brilliant women who are so proud of this. We sent all of them a book and then we also gave a book for them to gift to their U.S. embassies, public servants who are working on behalf of peace building and investing in women and see the value of sport. So awesome. If you haven't looked at the design and the illustrations, they're amazing. Well, and I think he said you didn't do anything but have the vision and that's really the story of all of this, you know? I mean, thinking about just one person saying you can, you and then do, and that is so much these lessons of, especially the historical women, which is so fascinating to me and you describe that perfectly. Well, I already told you a little bit of the origin story so I won't elaborate too much more on that but I'll say that I knew that with Title IX becoming 50, I knew that a lot of these women were older and we had already lost Pat Summit and Elma Rone who helped start the Tennis College Women's Sports Federation, which by the way predated Title IX by four years and so that's another reason why Tennis C we were four years ahead in organizing statewide and so I knew I wanted to try to capture their stories while they were still with us and so that was really the motivating factor and to be able to tell their stories so that, A, it's, you know, that we've got it for historical posterity but also that we can pass down to this next generation because we're really in our fourth generation of athletes now. We started with the original athletes and administrators mostly being baby boomers then we went to Gen X and that's me and I benefited a lot from Title IX obviously and then we went millennials and now we're in Gen Z so I wanted to be able to pass that down as well but then in writing the book, I mean, oh man, what an education I got and so I hope that I'm able to pass that down because what I realized was that there was such a fine line for this first generation that they really had to walk a tightrope, they had to cultivate relationships, they had to pick their battles, some people use Title IX more as sort of an offensive weapon, others used it sort of defensively, kept it in their back pocket when they needed it so they used it in many different ways and on the one hand they had to show that women's athletics were not going to challenge men's sports or compete with men's sports but on the other they had to show that women's sports were worthy of respect and recognition and so that was something that I had not really thought about or realized in the bigger picture that tightrope that they had to walk and there's lots of great stories of these coaches and administrators especially who were having, that were doing that on a regular basis. Joan tells a great story about wanting that the men were going to get an expanded locker room and Thompson bowling and the women were not and she was insisting that they should and one of the ADs on the men's side said that that would happen over his dead body and so Joan being practical but also so charismatic she said it got back to her and she said she could have marched to the president's office holding up Title IX but she decided not to and said she just called him and she said, when's your funeral? and he said, what are you talking about? and she said, you said we'd expand the locker room over your dead body so I just wanted to know when was your funeral? I'd like to come and she said that broke the ice and they both laughed and she went down to his office they worked it out and the women got that locker room but there's so many different stories of how they used Title IX differently and Lynn Dunn will tell you who went to UT Martin and didn't get to play competitively it started right after she graduated but coached at Austin P and then of course had an illustrious college career at many places including Purdue and is still with the Indiana fever as the general manager right now she said she lost a lot of jobs because of Title IX she self-described pot stir that liked to rock the boat and so just being able to listen to them and put together like, look, see patterns but also piece together these different strategies that they used and being able to then pass that down to these current generations of female athletes it was a learning process for me and also seeing my place in Title IX's history and realizing that I would be in what you would call a daughter of Title IX generation growing up completely underneath the protections of Title IX came of age in the mid-1990s and looking at that you give one generation one full generation the protections and the opportunities afforded by Title IX and you end up with what they call the Title IX Olympics with soccer, softball, basketball, track and field gymnastics all winning team gold you see the advent of the WNBA you see Brandi Chastain rip off her shirt at the 1999 World Cup so I think that's where you can really see the longer arc of history I think I'll have one thing there I think too the growth of women's athletics here at the university came from the community and not from the student body the student body wasn't very interested in fact there were articles in the Daily Beacon without a whole lot of support for them but eventually the students started to be interested but Gloria Ray and Joan Cronin both as athletics directors realized they really had to go to the community and they had programs families for Lady Vols they did the booster club which has now come back interestingly enough but it really came out of the community and so that gives it a different flavor and a different sense of support Add to what you think seeing a woman participate as an athletic representation of their institution what does that mean to a young girl if you had to capture that that she can do it that she can do it if you don't see it you don't know you can do it so I think for me and it's also wonderful to see the little boys at games and the fathers and the men that are now supportive but I think for little girls it's that I can do it it's a whole so it's nine stories from nine different countries for the anniversary of Title IX that was so clever we went 50 for 50 years overachiever attorney 59 I'm a sports person but every single one of these women was the first in their country to do something so the first chapter is Elina Arsova from Macedonia she became the first Macedonian woman to climb all seven of the world's highest summits another chapter about Cynthia from Kenya she was sent by her mother to go to the store and her sister and they get to the store coming from rural Kenya they were in the city at the time but they get to the store to get eggs and milk before school and they walk up on a crowd of people and the people are all surrounding the outside of the store and say this man is dead and so as little girls they weave their way in and they realize that it is their father who's dead and he had been murdered so she's dedicated her life and has developed the first entrepreneurship school to help girls gain financial literacy and job skills so they can support themselves quickly her mom could not support the six girls with the loss she also because gender-based violence is such an issue in Kenya started a program called Footsteps and Box Girls Kenya so she's teaching girls self-defense skills so I think to your point Debbie if you can see it you fully realize you can be that and without seeing it there's just this gap this ignorance you're missing and so all nine of these women one is the first ever sports journalist female sports journalist in Mexico so much like our Jessica Mendoza that became the first female sports broadcaster for Major League Baseball she's doing the same and many of these women will say through pop culture they looked to women or some woman in the United States that had done something because they didn't have anyone else to look to in their own country but they could look to someone else and say well if she can do it why can't so I wholeheartedly agree that the importance is that when we see something we have hope that we can be something I think for the first are still happening too obviously you're looking at women that are the first I mean in just the last couple of years right in many cases they're still first that are being made now I write about Candace Story Lee who is the first black female AD in the SEC Sarah Fuller I write about in the book the soccer player turned kicker who was the first to score in a power five football game and so one of the things about title nine I think is that it produced so many but we're not done yet and I think we also have to recognize that despite all the gains that we have with title nine some percentages is that since 1972 there's been a over a 600% increase in the number of collegiate female athletes and we went from one in three girls playing sports in high school to sorry one in 27 in 1972 playing high school sports to now one in three but we can't be complacent there's still room to grow there's still things that we need to be vigilant about as evidenced by the gender equity report that the NCAA did in 2020 the weight room controversy of the tournament not too long ago and also just new frontiers too dealing with name, image and likeness and the transfer portal you know how is title nine going to be shaped by some of these new developments in collegiate sports but yeah to see it to be it you have to see it and so many of the women that we've all written about became then you know they blazed they're called trailblazers for a reason they blazed the trail and now others can look up to them and that you're looking at a Serena Williams or a Candace Parker or a Monica Abbott and you're saying like I can do that too as you read your collective work you think I thought a lot about and probably because my orientation to things is sort of so short but I thought a lot about what beauty is and how and redefining what beautiful was and how that meaningful I think that that was across a number of these texts and I found that interesting you brought up name, image and likeness and I'm interested in your perspective what do you think that will do for women in sport? I'd like to pass because you want to know so much more and can you briefly I mean I think largely anyone who's here likely knows what name, image and likeness is but can you say a couple of things just to kind of contextualize your comments I'll give that to you I am well basically it's a way for college students to be able to make money off of their name, image or likeness in a commercial market largely for female athletes but obviously male athletes and that's where some of the debate comes in because you're going to have D1 quarterbacks that now can be millionaires or are millionaires but it's it's something that's part of a debate that's long overdue about college players putting so much time in representing their universities and communities but not really being fairly compensated in a way I guess is one way to look at it or at least that's an argument but it's funny so in the intro and conclusion of this that's where I either set up title none and how it passed in the conclusion I try to talk about issues that are relevant to title none today and some of it's about media and still like continued equity and other sort of cultural issues but with the name, image and likeness very different answers the Nashville swimmer Alex Walsh who graduated from Harpeth Hall who won Silver in Tokyo and then Gold at the World Championships she swims for the University of Virginia she was all for it because for her now she's got this influence and she's actually got some social and economic capital that she can use to benefit from it's very different than what you hear from Candace Story Lee who is the AD at Vanderbilt who says you know she's open to I mean I'm also interviewing them literally three months after the change was made that you know it's going to have this entirely new landscape and her words that we're all navigating it together but she said she was all for like being open to some of these changes as long as there was a clear line between amateurism and professionalism and that if it began to lean towards professionalism she was less on board and so I think that I think we're still in a waiting scene moment. Oh we are but let's be honest Division 1 college athletes male and female were called amateurs but they live a professional's life the expectations, the demands I think the whole thing is so complicated I'm a capitalist so for that sake I'm like yeah I think but I also know how hard it was being a student and an athlete and then all of the social expectations to show up at things and not everything that the student athletes are showing up for now are they being compensated for right there's still the there's still the charity work and some of that and people are trying to help them monetize on that so that they can also monetize on that and we're so young in college 18 to 22 so in some ways I fear this hyper professionalization and that we're not only asking young people to be athletes to be students to like develop as socially responsible humans but we're also if they're not taking advantage of that then they feel like they're being left behind or they're leaving something on the table and we're also asking them to now be business people or entrepreneurs and I fear the demands with the mental health crisis that's happening in college athletics and with everything that's happened the overwhelm and I think the mental strain on what we're gonna see for our student athletes is gonna be tremendous so I feel for me to get a scholarship and granted nobody was monetizing on Virginia Tech Lady Hokies in 1990 but like for me it was and it was way my dad so growing up I was born in 71 so I always say I grew up on the heels of Title IX and I was fortunate enough to have a father and a mother that paid attention to that so I remember I was playing baseball with the boys football with the boys, basketball mostly with boys I grew up in a town of 800 in Kentucky some girls were playing basketball and I was probably 10 years old and my dad and I were out throwing baseball so we come in and he says okay family meeting it's time to call a family meeting so we all huddle up as a family I have a younger brother we huddle up and my dad says alright Sarah there's this thing called Title IX and what it means is you have greater access and opportunity to sports but what it also is going to mean is that perhaps in exchange for a greater education we could financially provide you as a family you could have sport as your job and it will pay for your school so would you like to bear down and focus I was 10 and maybe think about having sport be your job when you get old enough to go to school so we can send you to a better school I mean what 10 year old obsessed little girl athlete isn't like I get to play basketball or football for a job sure I'll do it the coolest thing and the most transformative thing about that is I said yeah of course I would love to and this is the most empowering thing that's ever happened to me my dad said that's great I'm not saying you have to pick one because I want you to play any and everything you want but maybe you need to start in the next few years to focus on one more than the other not to the exclusion of all of them but just focus on one which would you like for it to be football baseball or basketball and he gave me that choice luckily I was smart enough to say basketball because I knew the base path was going to increase and I was way too slow as a 5-5 white girl and football I was not going to be big enough but I have no idea what the question was but I digress I I want to say something first about your parents how awesome that they did that I wrote a book with Jenny Moschak who is athletics trainer with Pat Summit and we wrote about youth and sports and there's a real danger of parents pushing their kids from a very early age so they get that college scholarship and in fact they spend so much money on coaches and sports and travel teams that they could have saved that money for college and the child's burned out injuries are happening more because they haven't had different sports as their muscles are developing so your parents did a really good job with that thank you I'll relay the message going to NIL there's one thing going forward that's an interesting thought and I have lots of conflicting feelings about it as well but I wonder if as women in college have that opportunity to have more earnings in college I wonder if that's going to push the pros to have to pay women athletes more and that actually on down the road may be a good thing in that respect because as you know women cannot have a real good living as a professional athlete just a thought I just looked down and we've got like two minutes and I'm going to take four