When Val Ackerman began her basketball playing career at the University of Virginia, she shared the only scholarship available for the women’s basketball program.

Twenty-five years later, Ackerman has watched opportunities for women grow exponentially — an outcome in which she has played a significant role.

For that work, Ackerman was named one of six recipients of the 2006 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award. The honor recognizes former student-athletes who completed successful collegiate careers in various sports 25 years ago and went on to excel in their chosen professions.

She is joined by Danny Ainge (Brigham Young University, basketball), Charles E. Davis (Vanderbilt University, basketball), Terry Schroeder (Pepperdine University, water polo), Michael Singletary (Baylor University, football) and Susan D. Wellington (Yale University, swimming and softball). Each will be recognized at the January 7 Honors Celebration during the NCAA Convention in Indianapolis.

This year’s honorees also will help the NCAA kick off its Centennial, which is themed “Celebrating the Student-Athlete.”

Like the careers of her fellow recipients, Ackerman’s deserves to be celebrated. The current president of USA Basketball also is a recent appointee to the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. She also served as the first president of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). 

“I was surprised, honored and flattered that I was a (Silver Anniversary) recipient,” Ackerman said. “It reminded me of how my experience at Virginia shaped my life in such a major way. It brought back a lot of happy memories of my days as a student-athlete. I was playing women’s basketball when it was really on the ground floor, and not like it is today as a more developed sport. It’s a huge honor for me.”

Ackerman was a four-year starter with the Cavaliers, a three-time team captain and a two-time Academic All-American. She also was named the Atlantic Coast Conference scholar-athlete of the year and received the Jettie Hill Award for the highest grade-point average among all Virginia female student-athletes.

She accomplished most of that without the benefit of a full grant-and-aid. Today, women’s basketball programs are allowed to provide scholarships to as many as 15 student-athletes.

“There was one grant, and my roommate who came in the same year as I did had the other half,” Ackerman said. “My joke is I got tuition and fees, and she got room and board. That meant I got to go to class, and she got to eat. The next year, there were a few more scholarships and then a few more. By the time I got out in 1981, most of the team members were getting either full or partial aid.”

Ackerman said her female student-athlete peers at Virginia were aware of how they lagged behind their male counterparts at virtually every turn. The Cavaliers’ men’s basketball team, led by Ralph Sampson, advanced to the Final Four in Ackerman’s senior season.

The women’s program drew about 200 fans per game, even though Ackerman and her teammates had progressed from winning eight games during her freshman season to qualifying for the national tournament, which was in its last year of sponsorship by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

“The notion that someday women’s sports would have a national stage — and that there would be more teams, more scholarships, first-class facilities and treatment — was unimaginable for someone like me,” said Ackerman, who serves on the National Board of Trustees for the March of Dimes and the National Board of Directors of Girls, Incorporated.

Ackerman, who described herself as a self-absorbed student-athlete preparing for graduation in the spring of 1981, didn’t give much thought to the NCAA sponsoring women’s championships. But looking back, she sees the move as integral in the growth of women’s intercollegiate athletics, particularly in basketball.

“The women are benefiting from being under the NCAA umbrella,” she said. “The television ratings have been impressive. The women’s game is moving in a positive direction like it has for a long time. The future continues to look bright.”

After graduating from Virginia, Ackerman played professional basketball in

France for a year, then she returned to America and began working on her law degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. She worked for a private law firm in New York City before accepting a job as staff attorney for the National Basketball Association in 1988.

Ackerman served as a special assistant to NBA commissioner David Stern from 1990 through 1992 and helped facilitate the use of NBA players in the Olympics that led to the original Dream Team for the 1992 Summer Games.

She was a key figure in the formation of the 1995-96 U.S. Women’s National Team, which was the first to train together for a year. The concept culminated with the U.S. women winning the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

The event sparked the re-birth of women’s professional basketball in America. The American Basketball League folded after two and a half years, but the WNBA is still providing an opportunity for players to continue their development in the U.S. Presiding over the feldgling WNBA was a career highlight, Ackerman said.

“I remember as a player coming out of college, there was a struggling league in the U.S.,” she said. “It lasted for a few seasons. It wasn’t taken seriously. So the notion that there could be a viable, respected women’s basketball league in this country was something that I remember thinking about when I was in college. To be a part of that has been a career high.”

Ackerman, the recipient of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association President’s Award and also the inaugural Sports Business Woman of the Year Award given by the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, also is eager to serve on the Knight Commission.

 She said anything she can do to help preserve the ideals of intercollegiate athletics is a worthy endeavor to her.

“I would put women’s sports at the top of the list,” Ackerman said. “I would like to help keep an eye on what’s happening and suggest improvements and make sure not only that the academic and athletics objectives are mutually served, but also to help keep an eye on how Title IX is implemented. There are clearly a lot of people and organizations — the Women’s Sports Foundation, the National Women’s Law Center, the NCAA — who are united in the mission of making sure that women’s sports at the collegiate and high school level continue to be advanced and protected.”

Ackerman’s daughters, Emily, 13, and Sally, 11, have experienced a different world of opportunities, and she wants to make sure those doors remain open.

Her children have competed in sports for years, which is something that wasn’t available to their mom.

“My first experience was playing on the junior varsity field hockey team as a freshman in high school,” Ackerman said. “That was my first organized team sport opportunity. I played basketball and was on the varsity my freshman year. I ran track, and once I got to college, I concentrated on basketball. I had to wait so long to play organized team sports. Girls don’t have to wait so long now — that’s a real thrill for me to see.”