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Illini Women’s Summit celebrates, reflects on 50 years of Title IX | University-illinois



Janet Rayfield, center, 21-year women’s soccer coach at the University of Illinois and a former soccer standout, answers a question during a panel at Friday’s Illini Women’s Summit at the Colonnades Club at Memorial Stadium in Champaign. She was joined by former Olympian and UI gymnast Nancy Thies Marshall, left, and Joni Comstock, a former UI associated athletic director who is now the NCAA’s senior vice president of championships and senior woman administrator.


CHAMPAIGN — A woman’s voice emanated out of the radio in Joni Comstock’s childhood home in Lincoln. In an interview, the guest spoke of Title IX legislation, the bedrock of women’s participation in athletics.

The voice belonged to Dr. Karol Kahrs, athletic associate director at the University of Illinois.

All the while, Comstock’s father, then the president of the local school board, was listening intently, she said. It wasn’t long before her father helped start the process to form girls’ sports teams in his school system.

“I want to think that Karol, with her voice through the radio, influenced my father,” Comstock said. “It was like the voice of God through the radio.”

This is one of many anecdotes shared during Friday’s Illini Women’s Summit, a celebration and discussion around the progress in 50 years of Title IX, attended by hundreds of UI alumni and former athletes.

“Fifty years ago, we passed the most meaningful piece of legislation in the history of sports,” UI athletic director Josh Whitman said. “It revolutionized the opportunities for girls and women today.”

“It’s not just about putting a bat in a young girl’s hand, giving her a ball or teaching her how to run,” he said. “It’s about the benefits that come from that participation. It’s about the strength; it’s about the teamwork; it’s about the leadership.”



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Attendees mingle at Friday’s Illini Women’s Summit at the Colonnades Club at Memorial Stadium, where the UI celebrated 50 years of Title IX and associate athletic director Karol Kahrs, who built its women’s athletics program from the ground up.


The summit, hosted at the Colonnades Club in Memorial Stadium, was dedicated to D r. Kahrs, the foundational figure of the women’s athletics program at the University of Illinois.

dr Kahrs started at the UI in 1966 as an instructor in the College of Physical Education. Two years after Title IX passed, she joined UI Athletics to begin its women’s athletics program. She was later promoted to athletic associate director and senior woman administrator on campus.

dr Kahrs retired in 2000 after 26 years in the athletics department, and died in 2020, a few years after being inducted into the UI’s Athletics Hall of Fame as a member of the inaugural class.

Dozens of legendary figures of UI women’s athletics were in attendance Friday, like Nessa Calabrese, a former track-and-field and volleyball athlete who sued the UI’s athletics association in 1977 along with teammate Nancy Knop, pointing out disparities in funding, access and treatment of the women’s programs compared to the men’s.



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Illinois Athletic Director Josh Whitman speaks with Nessa Calabrese, former track and volleyball standout who sued the University’s athletic association in 1977 about unequal treatment of women’s programs.


There was Beverly Washington, a member of the first track-and-field team, high-jump expert and four-time Big Ten champion; Champaign-born Becky Beach, the first female two-sport star in the university’s history; Paula Smith, the 28-year women’s golf coach, and many more.

The event was emceed by UI grad Taylor Rooks, an Emmy-nominated sports journalist and previous Big Ten Network correspondent.



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Sheila Johnson, University of Illinois alumna and business magnate, was the keynote speaker for the school’s Illinois Women’s Summit, celebrating 50 years of Title IX in the US Johnson was the UI’s first African American cheerleader, a few years before the legislation passed.


Sheila Johnson, a UI alumna and co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, was the event’s keynote speaker. She is the first African American woman to own a stake in three professional sports teams — in her case, the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics franchises.

Johnson struck a somber note in his remarks, connecting the landmark legislation with the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that affirmed abortion as a constitutional right.

“Today, that landmark piece of legislation is no more secure, and its future no more certain than the right of a woman to have the final say about the most important, intimate and perhaps spiritual part of her body,” Johnson said. “Everything in this country, including Title IX, is back on the table.

“Title IX was not perfect as a piece of legislation, but what it was: a vitally, vitally important law. And its impact on the social fabric of America cannot be overstated, even now,” she said.

Johnson’s time at the university narrowly preceded Title IX’s passing.

“Rather than being able to test my limits as an athlete or as a competitor,” Johnson said, she instead in 1970 became the first African American cheerleader in UI’s history.

“Like it or not, the closest I got to center court or the 50-yard line was at the out-of-bounds marker,” she said.

Johnson called for more female leadership in the sports world, including business and managerial positions, and for continued participation and investment in youth sports.

“Sports, especially pickup and playground and variety, can teach a young person so much more than how to win,” she said.

The discussion shifted to a decorated panel of UI graduates who’ve made dents in the world of women’s sports, whose lives and careers were each shaped by Dr. Kahrs’ influence.



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Gia Lewis-Smallwood, former Olympian and University of Illinois track and field standout, answers a panel question at the Illinois Women’s Summit, a celebration of 50 years of Title IX.


Janet Rayfield, the 21-year UI soccer coach and former University of North Carolina standout, is the winningest coach in the UI’s history and a self-professed “Title IX product.”

She won the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women soccer championship — a tournament run by women — in her junior year — then won the first-ever NCAA women’s soccer championship — which was run by men — the following year.

“Now, I can be a part of an athletics department that is excited about women’s leadership,” Rayfield said. “I’m going to correct my boss on one thing; we will have arrived when we are not just hiring women to lead women, but we are hiring women to lead — period.”

Nancy Thies Marshall, the only UI women’s gymnast to compete in the Olympics, making the 1972 US team as a 15-year-old from Urbana High School, joined the UI as part of the second class of women to arrive with intercollegiate programs in place .

“That’s what the U of I and Title IX offered me, what a chance to stay in a sport I loved. And to actually grow up,” Marshall said. “And you know the story of gymnasts in the gym — it takes us a while to grow up.”

Gia Lewis-Smallwood recalled knocking on the doors of neighborhood boys during her grade school years, challenging them to foot races and “beating them all.”

The former Centennial High School star later became a four-time US discus champion and eventual American record-holder in the event, who set UI records for the 20-pound weight throw and discus that stood still today.

“Ironically, my first understanding of Title IX was from Dr. Kahrs,” she said.

During a family outing inside Memorial Stadium, a young Lewis-Smallwood was dashing around the field when the athletic administrator spoke to her. dr Kahrs spoke to her with an adult respect, she said, and Lewis-Smallwood pledged to “play for her one day.” Her mom later explained Dr. Kahrs’ impact and legacy to her on the car ride home.

As a doctoral student at the UI, Comstock set an appointment with Dr. Kahrs, offering to volunteer in the athletic department and Dr. Kahrs gave her a shot; she served as an associate athletic director for six years at the UI.

Today, Comstock is the NCAA senior vice president of championships and senior woman administrator. In the late ’80s, it was Dr. Kahrs’ words that persuaded Comstock to become senior associate athletic director at Purdue.

“She said, ‘The reason you’re going to go, is we don’t have enough women in leadership positions. And we have to continue to add, we have to continue to push,’” she said.

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