A focus on women’s sports at NC State

NC State athletics is as much about Kay Yow as it is about Jim Valvano.

Join us online for a virtual talk on the history of women’s sports at NC State—and a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX—on Wednesday, March 16 from 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required; sign up here to be notified when registration opens. 

Tim Peeler of NC State Communications will be joined by Nora Lynn Finch, former senior associate commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference and associate basketball coach and head volleyball coach at NC State. Finch was the first full-time female athletics administrator of any school in the ACC or North Carolina and the first chair of the NCAA women's championship in 1982. In her long career, the native of Henderson has helped shape the future for generations of women's athletics at every level.

Finch and Peeler—recognized as NC State's unofficial athletics historian—will talk about the athletes, coaches, and administrators that created NC State’s formidable women's athletic program. They will discuss topics including:

• NC State had women's athletes long before the passage of Title IX (as early as 1967)
• NC State's women's basketball team is the only varsity sport that has been integrated since its inception (1973-74, under head coach Peanut Doak)
• the transition from the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women to the NCAA (1981)
• the expansion of budgets and how the NCAA evaluates gender equity at all levels (Division I, II and III)
• NC State's history of excellence in women's athletics, including the No. 3 women's basketball team and the reigning NCAA women's cross country team