Millikin to welcome athletes and supporters of women's athletic teams back to campus May 13-15
Millikin University will welcome athletes and loyal supporters of women's athletic teams back to campus May 13-15, 2022, for a celebration weekend to honor 50 years of women's athletics at Millikin.
Millikin's Women in Athletics celebration will be full of events that allow the university to recognize athletes as part of a Big Blue tradition of trailblazers.
Millikin University has a long history of nurturing lives of meaning and value in its students. It was important to the university that its female students be validated when they expressed their desire to receive more from their collegiate experience. In 1970, two full years before Title IX legislation was passed, Millikin put that value into action as Harriett Crannell pioneered the charge and assembled Millikin's first women's basketball team, marking the beginning of MU's storied history of women's athletics.
Now, 50 years and 10 NCAA teams later, Millikin has been at the forefront, participating in the vastly changing landscape of women's athletics, celebrating a proud tradition of women wearing the Big Blue.
From Crannell, to influential and life-changing role models such as coaches Debbie Kiick, Linda Slagell, and Lori Kerans, along with those currently coaching and mentoring young women in sports, every year of Millikin's 50-year history of Women in Athletics is bright, and most importantly, Big Blue.
"The women before the 1970s found joy at Millikin with what they had, and our student-athletes today find joy in what they have, and athletes 50 years from now will have joy because we are doing the work to ensure equality and opportunity," said Lori Kerans, Class of 1985, director for alumni engagement at Millikin.
Lori Kerans and Molly Berry of Millikin University talk about the events planned around the celebration of 50 Years of Women in Athletics at Millikin.
For more information about Millikin University's Women in Athletics celebration, please visit millikin.edu/women-athletics. The Women in Athletics weekend celebration will feature the following events:
Friday, May 13
- Big Blue Golf Outing: Shotgun start at 1 p.m. at South Side Country Club
- Special Screening of "The Last Gold" at 7 p.m. at the Avon Theatre
Join us at The Avon Theatre in Downtown Decatur for a special screening of "The Last Gold" (2016), which reveals one of the greatest untold stories in Olympic swimming history. "The Last Gold" tells the story of the women's 1976 US Olympic swim team, including member and alumni Marcia Morey, Class of 1978.
- Welcome and Social: 9 p.m. at Lock Stock & Barrel
Saturday, May 14
- Fun Run with Cross-Country: 7:30 a.m., University Commons
- Cross-Country & Track and Field Reunion: 8 a.m., meet at Frank M. Lindsay Field
- Swimming & Triathlon Reunion: 8 a.m., Griswold Pool
- Softball Reunion: 9 a.m., Workman Family Softball Field
- Golf Reunion: 9 a.m., Decatur Indoor Sports Center (DISC)
- Volleyball Reunion: 10 a.m., Griswold Gym
- Tennis Reunion: 11 a.m., Tennis Complex
- Soccer Reunion: 11 a.m., Frank M. Lindsay Field
- Reunion Lunch: 12 noon – 1:30 p.m., Miller Quad and University Commons Banquet Rooms
- Basketball Reunion: 2 p.m., Griswold Gym
Women in Athletics Anniversary Museum: 4 – 6 p.m. at the Decatur Conference Center & Hotel
Walk through the Millikin Women in Athletics Museum and learn more about the past, present and future of powerful athletes.
Women in Athletics Gala Celebration: 6 – 8 p.m. at the Decatur Conference Center & Hotel
