50 Iowa moments since Title IX: Christine Grant named president of AIAW

Editor’s note: This is 39th in a series counting down the Top 50 moments in Iowa Hawkeyes women’s athletics history in the 50 days leading up to the 50th anniversary of Title IX in June.

Longtime Iowa women’s athletics director Christine Grant had a second role in 1980-81 — leading a collegiate sports governing body with more members at the time than the NCAA.

Grant became the president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, becoming the second person from Iowa to lead the group in a five-year span. Peg Burke, the chair of the University of Iowa’s department of physical education and dance, was president from 1976-77.

By 1980, when Grant’s term began, the AIAW was the largest sports governing body in the country, according to NCAA managing director of inclusion Amy Wilson’s thesis paper when she studied at the University of Iowa.

The 1980-81 directory had 967 colleges participating in 12 sports, Wilson’s research found. It also had a TV deal with NBC.

Grant did not have an easy task as president — “to try to save the organization,” she said in a 2008 interview with a University of Iowa student.

“That is all I did when I was president,” Grant said.

The NCAA was the “strongest opponent of Title IX” in the 1970s, Grant said.

“They fought Title IX tooth and nail,” Grant said in the 2008 interview.

When it couldn’t defeat Title IX, it then fought to take over women’s athletics.

Grant was not on the winning side of the fight between the AIAW and the NCAA, with the NCAA members voting narrowly to have women’s Division I championships in 1981.

The NCAA then offered financial incentives that the AIAW “was not yet in a position to offer on a broad scale,” Wilson wrote. By 1982, the AIAW folded.

“They were determined to put us out of business, and they did,” Grant said. “We gave it our best shot. We nearly pulled it off, but we didn’t.”

Then the Iowa women’s athletics director worked to influence the NCAA — so much so that the NCAA’s national headquarters in Indianapolis has the Christine Grant Ballroom.

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