Featured photo by MTSU Sidelines
Story by Paige Mast
For years women have made their mark on sports, National Girls and Women in Sports Day highlights the importance of women’s sports for everyone, including MTSU’s athletes and associates.
In 1987, National Girls and Women in Sports Day was created to recognize the grit and hard work women put into athletics on and off the field.
Diane Turnham, MTSU’s deputy athletic director, senior women’s administrator and a major advocate for equal opportunities in athletics, has been working towards such for 41 years.
After seeing the differences between basketball and volleyball when coaching the women’s teams, Turnham decided to start making some changes for all athletics. Turnham’s first step and only step was to not take “no” for an answer.
“People are like ‘How’d you do that?’ and I said, ‘You know? I was professional, so I did what I said I was going to do and people respect that.’ You just have to provide the same opportunities,” Turnham said in regards to gaining equality in sports. “They might not be identical, but we have to provide similar opportunities for all of our sports. If everybody pushed for that because of Title IX, men think about it more and women think about it more.”
Title IX created a gateway for equality in education and this law prohibits gender-based discrimination in sports. Turnham lives up to her nickname “Title IX Trailblazer” as she will forever fight for equal opportunities on each side.
Soccer player and MTSU junior Megan Carroll saw soccer as an opportunity to beat her older brother to prove him wrong as a kid. But now, she uses soccer as an outlet to prove that women are just as capable as a man is in any sport. Carrol said that as a kid she looked up to the women who were soccer players, and she gets to do the same for younger girls now.
“At the collegiate level, it’s allowed me to be a role model to younger girls,” Carroll said. “I know that when I was growing up, I always liked looking at the colleges around me and wanted to be like the girls playing. It gives me an opportunity to show them that they can do the same thing that I wanted to do.”
Courtney Whitson, a member of the women’s basketball team and graduate student at MTSU, has been playing basketball since she was five years old and never looked back.
“I think it’s so awesome to think about all the people that have fought for women to have the equal opportunity that men do have,” Whitson said, “So being able to say, ‘hey, I have a platform to show little girls that they can do this too’ and being able to have that platform is just changing my whole life.”
Whitson feels as if the sport has created many opportunities for her, especially motivating and creating confidence in herself and the younger generations in sports. The future of women’s sports is on the rise and Whitson plans to help increase it by becoming a coach.
Basketball created empowerment for Whitson and inspired her to do the same for others.
“You think about what women can continue to accomplish through the sport,” Whitson said. “So as a future coach, I just hope to continue to see the game grow. I hope to continue to see women have the same opportunities because of people who fought before us.”
Hrudaya Shah, a junior tennis player at MTSU, said that her father paved the way for her in tennis and motivated her to seek out equal opportunities. Opportunities like coming to MTSU to pursue a college education and play tennis.
Like Whitson, Shah sees her career in tennis as an opportunity to inspire and empower other women to pursue their dreams.
“I feel like I’m creating opportunities for myself, and women in India don’t really get these opportunities,” Shah said. “When I do something and people hear about it in India, like my college and tennis achievements, I feel like I inspire a lot of people.”
Shah believes the future of women’s sports is bright and she hopes that it will continue to grow so that it breaks down gender stereotypes for women around the globe, but especially for her home in India.
Her teammate, Lilly-Sophie Schmidt, said that without tennis she would not be at MTSU pursuing the opportunities the sport has provided for her. Schmidt believes that women’s sports are extremely important and that you can do more than sit in the background.
“It is important for our young girls to see that you don’t have to stand behind the man,” Schmidt said about why it is important to have women in sports, “You can be your own person, you can do whatever you want to do, and I feel like in sports, you can be yourself and show what you can do.”
National Girls and Women in Sports Day celebrates women’s inclusion within sports and its industry as a whole. Following Turnham’s example of not taking “no” for an answer, it broadens the horizons for women in sports, but also the generations to come from it.
Paige Mast is a contributing writer for MTSU Sidelines. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com. Also, follow us on Facebook and Instagram @mtsusidelines, or on X @MTSUSidelines.
