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In the #�鶹��ƵTBT series, the �鶹��Ƶ News Bureau, along with , will flash back to the past to take a look at �鶹��Ƶ over the years. You will find videos, newspaper clippings, photos and more to celebrate �鶹��Ƶ’s past, while looking ahead to the future. Follow along on Today at �鶹��Ƶ and the university’s ,�������Ի��� pages every Thursday to see what we dig up.

For more than half a century, women’s sports have played a key role on the �鶹��Ƶ campus.

In the 1947 PhiPsiCli yearbook, a section about women’s sports read, “Girls athletics have assumed an important place in campus activities this year. The sports activities for girls are entirely intramural but much rivalry accompanies each contest because of the dormitories and sororities participating.”

Women’s sports at �鶹��Ƶ would soon take a big leap forward with the creation of the university’s Women’s Athletic Association in 1947.

�鶹��Ƶ’s WAA was an elected council made up of representatives from women’s dorms, sororities and day students that planned sporting and social events for the women of �鶹��Ƶ. All women students were members of the WAA, which raised money for activities by selling programs at �鶹��Ƶ football games.

The organization hosted “Gym Nights” where women were given exclusive use of Alumni Gym to play basketball, volleyball and table tennis. The WAA also selected teams for “Sports Day” tournaments in which the top volleyball and basketball players from each of �鶹��Ƶ’s intramural teams competed against squads from surrounding colleges and universities.

According to “From a Grove of Oaks: The Story of �鶹��Ƶ,” by the late George Troxler, the women of �鶹��Ƶ began competing in extramural basketball competitions as early as 1948.

�鶹��Ƶ hosted its own Sports Day competition on March 22, 1959. The basketball tournament featured �鶹��Ƶ, Wake Forest, Salem College, Greensboro College and �鶹��Ƶ’s Beta Omicron Beta sorority team, which had won �鶹��Ƶ’s intramural championship for two consecutive years.

The women of Beta Omicron Beta would go on to win all four games in the competition and claim the title with Wake Forest finishing in second place.

In the fall of 1970, women’s sports would take another major step with the addition of a second gym and pool inside the campus’ physical education facility. The new gym space would soon lead to the birth of varsity women’s sports at �鶹��Ƶ.

After coaching �鶹��Ƶ’s Sports Day basketball and volleyball teams in 1969, Sandra Kay Yow became head coach of �鶹��Ƶ’s first varsity women’s basketball team. Yow and �鶹��Ƶ played their first collegiate game on Jan. 25, 1972, against Wake Forest. �鶹��Ƶ lost that first game by a narrow margin of 30-28 and went on to finish the season with a 5-11 record.

According to “From a Grove of Oaks,” players were responsible for driving themselves to games and even had to purchase baseball-style jerseys from the campus shop, which would later don numbers sewn on by a fellow teammate. The group even had to provide their own basketballs, according to the book.

“Before going home for the Christmas holidays in 1972, Coach Yow encouraged team members to ask their parents for a leather basketball for Christmas,” Troxler wrote. “After the holiday, each girl returned with a ball and ‘threw it in for the team.'”

The group’s dedication would pay off, however, as the team finished 12-2 in their second season and hosted the North Carolina Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women Tournament. The team received strong contributions from Susan Yow ’76, Coach Yow’s younger sister, that season. Susan would later become �鶹��Ƶ’s first women’s basketball All-American and a member of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. Kay Yow also coached sister Deborah Yow ’74, an �鶹��Ƶ trustee, N.C. Sports Hall of Fame inductee and retired director of athletics at North Carolina State University.

In the basketball team’s third season, it finished 20-1, won the women’s state tournament and advanced to the regional playoffs.

The following season, �鶹��Ƶ transitioned women’s intercollegiate athletics from the physical education department to the athletics department. That same year, �鶹��Ƶ established its second women’s varsity sport: volleyball. The team, which Yow also coached, was made up of several of Yow’s basketball players. The squad finished with a 20-6 record in its first season and in third place in the NC AIAW Tournament.

Yow, who also coached women’s tennis at �鶹��Ƶ, would go on to become the fifth woman to be inducted into the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach. After four seasons at �鶹��Ƶ, she went on to lead the N.C. State women’s basketball, softball and volleyball programs. She led the Wolfpack basketball team to 20 NCAA Tournament appearances, 11 trips to the Sweet 16, one Elite Eight and the Final Four in 1998. She also led the U.S. women’s basketball team to a gold medal in 1988. Yow died after her courageous battle with breast cancer in 2009.

Click here to learn more about Yow’s life and legacy.

Thanks to the contributions of Yow and many others, �鶹��Ƶ Athletics is now home to nine women’s sports teams: basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, and volleyball.

“We were just happy to have teams, a conference to play in, uniforms to play in and to be recognized on campus,” said Janie P. Brown about the beginning of women’s sports at �鶹��Ƶ in the Spring 2017 edition of the Magazine of �鶹��Ƶ. Brown served as director of intramurals in the 1960s and is a Daniels-Danieley Award and �鶹��Ƶ Medallion recipient. “To think that we have been able to succeed in all of these sports ever since then, it’s very exciting for me to see that. It makes me smile.”

For schedules and more information about each of �鶹��Ƶ’s varsity athletics programs, visit the .

Do you have any special pieces of �鶹��Ƶ history? Share your photos and videos with us via email at news@elon.edu or using the hashtag #�鶹��ƵTBT on ,�������Ի���.