The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- September 27, 1999

Women in Sports Day shines present stars on future prospects

While they are in Indianapolis for the NCAA Woman of the Year banquet, the 10 finalists will participate in a program that allows them to touch the lives of girls in the Indianapolis community.

The finalists -- joined by six other state winners chosen to reflect diversity of sport, NCAA division and ethnicity -- will participate in a variety of activities with the girls.

Invited from girls clubs, recreation departments, Girl Scout troops and junior high and high schools from the Indianapolis area, the girls get the chance to hear advice from the finalists, and they also participate in small-group discussions. Typically, the student-athletes speak about how they were able to balance their commitments to athletics, academics and community service, and then they address topics of interest to the girls. The program is in its third year.

"We had all these amazing young female role models coming in for the award, and there are girls in the community who seldom see such role models, let alone get to sit down and have pizza with them," said Sharon K. Cessna, NCAA assistant director of championships and the coordinator of the Women in Sports Day program.

"Giving the finalists an opportunity to reach out into the community, first in Kansas City and now in Indianapolis, seemed like a winning situation for everyone."

There also is a panel discussion featuring other volunteers who speak to the girls about how academics and athletics have affected their lives. The idea behind the panel is to get girls thinking about their futures and their career choices. While most of the girls are aware of opportunities in coaching and teaching, it may be the first time many of them have heard about careers such as athletic training, sports information, officiating, sports statistics, sports journalism or athletics administration.

"We try to give them ideas about how their academic interests can be combined with their athletics interests for a career," Cessna said. "There are many more choices available now to young women, and we want them to be aware of them."

The program also targets parents of the girls, providing them with a panel of professionals for presentations on health and nutrition, sports injuries, academic preparation and NCAA compliance.

"We're trying to help the parents understand their role in their young student-athletes' preparation for college and life," Cessna said. "They also get the opportunity to ask questions addressing areas they are concerned about."

For the past two years, volunteers from the NCAA's national office staff and member schools have joined with volunteers from the Indianapolis Sports Corporation to serve as panelists and otherwise assist with the event.

The girls also get the chance to enter a drawing to win tickets to the Woman of the Year banquet. Cessna said some of the program's most heart-warming moments have been realized at the banquet.

"Imagine a little girl from a group home winning a ticket and coming dressed up in her best duds," Cessna said. "She is awed by the banquet -- the food, the video presentations and all the people -- but she has no problem rushing up to 'her' finalist and giving her a big hug, chatting with her like they've known each other forever. The little girls never forget it."

The "big girls" probably don't, either.

-- Kay Hawes

Award brings notice to accomplishments

Over the last nine years of the NCAA Woman of the Year award's existence, occasionally someone has asked the question, "Why have an award that's just for female student-athletes?"

The answer seems to be that even though great strides have been made in women's athletics in the last decade, women athletes still receive less attention than the men, and less attention than many think they're worth.

"Women really haven't been a part of the NCAA for very long," said Alfreeda Goff, associate commissioner of the Midwestern Collegiate Conference and chair of the NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee.

"Until 1982 (when women's championships became a part of the NCAA), everything was geared toward men."

When the Sara Lee Company helped begin the NCAA Woman of the Year in 1991, the company was looking for a way to bring recognition to female student-athletes whose accomplishments were seldom recognized. The answer was the NCAA Woman of the Year award.

"It was a way to bring recognition to women, and their accomplishments as student-athletes," Goff said. "And it was a way to recognize their entire contribution -- in athletics, academics and in the community."

Now that women's sports receive more notice in the mass media, is it time to change the award or eliminate it?

Cheryl L. Levick, senior woman administrator at Stanford University and chair of the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics, which administers the award, says the award is still a vital way of promoting women's athletics.

"To me, it's important that the NCAA takes an active role in promoting women in sport," she said. "In this case, the female student-athletes need an opportunity for a national award with national recognition for their accomplishments.

"Until we have much more coverage of women's athletics in the print and broadcast media, I think we need a special, unique, national award like this that really recognizes female student-athletes' accomplishments."