The expansion in participation and funding in girls’s sports activities for the reason that 1972 passage of Title IX has propelled many ladies to tackle management roles within the skilled world.
Regardless of institutional boundaries on the earth of sports activities recruiting and selling, many Northwestern girls alums have gone on to have extremely profitable careers in teaching and sports activities enterprise.
Listed here are just a few of Northwestern’s most well-known alumni within the sports activities and enterprise worlds.
Karen Stack Umlauf
When Stack Umlauf was a student-athlete at NU, her mom inspired her to enter speech and language pathology. However a 12 months taking part in basketball overseas confirmed Stack Umlauf’s ardour for the sports activities world and kicked off a long-term profession with the Chicago Bulls starting in 1984 — coinciding with Michael Jordan’s rookie season.
“They have been changing into so fashionable,” Stack Umlauf mentioned. “I received in on the proper time, and was capable of construct from there.”
She spent over 30 years with the Bulls, together with three as their first feminine assistant coach in franchise historical past. It was initially overwhelming to tackle the function, she mentioned. Even after many years within the basketball world, she discovered herself “bombarded” with new vocabulary and ideas daily.
Stack Umlauf mentioned the expertise additionally taught her in regards to the dangerous nature of teaching. She was on employees only a few years earlier than the Bulls’ present coach Billy Donovan arrived and changed her and several other different assistants.
Now the director of operations for NU girls’s basketball, Stack Umlauf continues to embrace her love of the sports activities world.
“It doesn’t really feel like work if you get to come back to work (dressed) like this,” Umlauf mentioned, carrying joggers and an athletic jacket. “It’s fairly cool.”
Anucha Browne
Browne enrolled at NU in 1982 — only a decade after the passage of Title IX — and shortly emerged as one among faculty basketball’s brightest stars. A dynamic offensive menace, Browne earned a number of All-America and Large Ten honors throughout her time in Evanston. She completed her profession because the Large Ten’s main scorer and ranks seventh in NCAA historical past in profession scoring common.
Browne has since taken on management roles in a number of organizations, together with the NCAA, IBM and UNICEF. In one among her most outstanding positions, she served because the NCAA’s vice chairman of girls’s basketball, wherein she labored to develop the Division I, II and III girls’s basketball championships.
Browne additionally labored for the New York Knicks however was fired in 2006 after bringing complaints about office sexual harassment to administration. Following her departure, she sued Madison Sq. Backyard and then-Knicks coach Isiah Thomas relating to the harassment. Browne gained in a landmark victory.
Lindsey Munday
By the point Munday graduated in 2006, she had achieved feats that positioned her as a contender for not solely Northwestern’s best lacrosse participant, but in addition among the finest collegiate gamers in historical past.
With two NCAA championship wins and plethora of nationwide awards and program data, Munday continued to stay with the game, working as an assistant coach at NU for 4 years and head coach at Mount St. Mary’s College for one 12 months.
Munday now coaches at USC, the place she was employed on the age of 26 to steer the college’s first-ever girls’s lacrosse staff in 2011.
Since then, she has collected a number of coach of the 12 months awards, 5 NCAA Match appearances and the glory of being named Lacrosse Journal’s 2013 Particular person of the 12 months.
Katie Krall
A growth coach for the Portland Sea Canine –– the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Crimson Sox –– Krall just isn’t your typical baseball coach.
Having held numerous analytical jobs on the MLB, Cincinnati Reds and Google all earlier than the age of 25, Krall has already proved herself as a trailblazer on the earth of sports activities.
“Being a lady in a male-dominated trade, there are two burdens that you just carry,” Krall mentioned. “The primary is to do your job and do it nicely. After which the second is, particularly in the event you’re in a excessive visibility function like teaching or in the event you’re a entrance workplace govt, you’re a function mannequin for different younger girls and the embodiment of what’s doable for them.”
This previous June, not solely did Krall earn her MBA from the College of Chicago, however she was additionally featured on the duvet of a Sports activities Illustrated problem commemorating 50 years of Title IX. Krall was pictured with Crimson Sox coach Bianca Smith who, together with Krall, made the Crimson Sox the primary MLB group with two feminine coaches.
It was significantly highly effective for Krall, whose mom was a tennis participant and a direct beneficiary of Title IX. Krall’s mom had competed for her highschool’s first ever girls’s tennis staff as a junior.
“She and I each cried once we noticed that I used to be on the duvet due to Title IX and what it’s finished for each of us,” Krall mentioned.
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Twitter: @lucaskim_15
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Twitter: @charvarnes11
Associated Tales:
— Mother-daughter athletic duo reflect on Northwestern and impact of Title IX
— ‘Compete and win’: Former Northwestern women’s sports figures discuss the early years of Title IX
— Q&A: Former Northwestern tennis player, USTA chair Katrina Adams talks Title IX and NU athletics
