Philosophically, it placed tremendous emphasis on student-athlete welfare, the benefits of participation and the importance of athletics within the educational framework. Women in athletics founded it, and women ran the organization themselves, emphasizing the values that they found important.

"The AIAW was trying to develop an ultimate model for intercollegiate athletics," said Christine Grant. "The AIAW did not buy into major and minor classifications (of sports), because in their thinking, to every participant and every coach, if you've got the right people, their sport is major. So, there was an effort to treat student-athletes and coaches in a comparable fashion, and I still believe in that today."

The AIAW also provided a place for women to exchange ideas about athletics administration on their own campuses. It also provided them a forum to seek the sympathetic ear of other women who were trying to lift women's sports across the country.

"The camaraderie at the institutional level and at the national level was unbelievable, especially when we had the AIAW. You know, we were all fighting the same battles, and it gets a bit stressful at times. But when you went to the AIAW annual meeting, you came back completely rejuvenated and ready to take on the world again for another 12 months," Grant said.

"And it was because of the excitement of the revolution and the fact that we were all in it together and helping each other to the best of our ability. It was a totally uplifting experience. And I think that camaraderie was enhanced by the fact that we had our own department at the University of Iowa. We were in control of our destiny, unlike at the conference level or at the national level."

The last bit of national control for women ended at the 1981 NCAA Convention when the membership voted to offer women's championships in Division I, a step that many women thought would result in the end of the AIAW.

Grant was president of the AIAW in 1980. She spoke on the NCAA Convention floor in opposition to the proposed action. Copies of her words were distributed to women all over the nation, and those copies ended up posted on bulletin boards and carried around in notebooks for years, where they became a symbol for the battle lost.

Grant said at the time, "In 1980, I traveled extensively throughout the country and met and spoke with more than half of the women athletics directors in our nation. Virtually without exception, those to whom I spoke did not want, and do not want, the NCAA involved in women's athletics. And they do not believe that the choice, in the end, will be theirs if you vote to adopt the various motions before you. ... This is an opportunity for you to send a message to the leadership of this organization and to the hundreds of women who cannot speak for themselves that you will not take the women against their will."

As the final proposal regarding women's athletics came up for a vote, Grant spoke again:

"This is the last motion before you on women's athletics, and I rise in symbolic opposition. ... I, and many other women, came here convinced that the desire for mutual accommodation between the AIAW and the NCAA would far outweigh any thirst for selfish actions. Obviously, I was in error. Obviously, it was not persuasive to you that by your actions, women's athletics, students and professionals, were losing control of their own destinies ... The AIAW is a governance organization, but it also is an idea. While I can't know what the future may hold for that organization, I do indeed know that the idea will never die."

Grant said the experience was extraordinarily hard. "I was president right up until two or three days before the NCAA did the vote in Miami," she said. "And I think for the first couple of years, I kept going over, 'Was there something else we could have done to save the organization?'

"It took me two or three years to decide, and I gave it a lot of thought, that we could not have survived. I eventually concluded that when there is a huge dominant force in society pitted against a lesser force, the dominant force is always going to win. But it took me a while to conclude that and accept it. So, I think for the first few years I retreated back into our own program at Iowa and directed my energies toward that and stayed out of the national scene.

"And then I very gradually decided that if I really cared about what was happening to student-athletes then I should try and make an effort to see if I couldn't contribute to making it a better experience for both men and for women. And I'm glad I did that. Particularly in the last few years, I've had a really good time doing it."

-- Kay Hawes