In 2022, women’s golf and gymnastics each reached the Final Four. We’re passing it to the next generation.”Īuburn women’s basketball reached national prominence, advancing to the NCAA Tournament championship game in 1988, 19.Īuburn’s 12 women’s programs have played on their sport’s biggest stage, from the Final Four to the Women’s College World Series. I’m so happy to share this with my former teammates. “We definitely made history here,” said Bolton, who played at Auburn from 1985-89, returning this season to celebrate the program’s 50th anniversary. Women’s teams have produced 12 of Auburn’s 22 national championships: six in equestrian, five in swimming & diving, and one in track & field.Īuburn women have won Olympic medals, including double golds for swimmer Kirsty Coventry and basketball’s Ruthie Bolton, and most recently, gymnast Suni Lee, who claimed gold in the all-around in Tokyo in 2021. Thirty years after Title IX, swimming & diving won Auburn’s first women’s national championship in 2002, the start of a three-peat in the pool.

Moore and Meredith Jenkins as SEC Trailblazers during the SEC Women's Basketball Tournament in Nashville in March, part of the conference’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Why can’t you? One advantage we had at Auburn was that all departments worked together to make it happen.”įor their roles in advancing women’s athletics at Auburn, the Southeastern Conference honored Nunnelly and administrators Dr. “Auburn made a significant difference in other programs when they saw that we made it work. “I always took pride that at Auburn, Physical Education, Recreation and Athletics worked together with everything.”Īuburn’s cooperation in sharing facilities between athletics, recreation and academics served as an example to other universities, Nunnelly explained. “We talked about what we wanted to do, and then we took action,” recalled Susan Nunnelly, who coached Auburn’s women’s basketball team to a 43-20 record from 1973-76. Other schools in the state and region looked to Auburn for Title IX integration leadership.ĭirector of Athletics Lee Hayley worked with Newkirk to determine how Auburn would comply.

“Without Sandra, I don’t know who would have led the program forward.”įive years before the passage of Title IX, in 1967, Newkirk took Auburn’s intramurals volleyball team to Memphis for a tournament, leading to the formation of Auburn’s volleyball program. “I think she was the foundation,” Clanton said of Newkirk, who also directed Auburn’s intramurals program from 1966-75. “Looking back, it was a pivotal point in my life to be a part of structured athletics.”Ī 40-year Auburn University faculty member, Sandra (Newkirk) Bridges served as Auburn’s first women’s athletics director from 1974-76 after serving unofficially in that capacity from 1967-73. “That was a huge social change and people were just trying to figure it out,” Clanton said. Within ten years after Title IX, the NCAA had taken over sponsorship of women’s athletics.

One year before Title IX, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was founded to govern women’s sports and administer national championships. “Sports were a byproduct because our sports are tied to our education system.” “I don’t know that we knew at the time the impact that it would have on athletics,” said Clanton, an Auburn standout in volleyball, basketball and softball whose athletic abilities would have been even further developed had she been afforded the opportunity to compete in high school sports. Title IX changed that as varsity programs were eventually created and supported.įormer team handball Olympian Reita Clanton, who graduated from Auburn University in 1974, was a student when Title IX passed. In the summer Title IX passed, women at Auburn had already been competing in athletics for 75 years, beginning in 1897, first in intramurals, then on club teams, often paying their own way on road trips. – Signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Doors lvl 50