50 Iowa moments since Title IX: Iowa names field hockey venue after Christine Grant

Editor’s note: This is 15th 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.

In Christine Grant’s early years at Iowa, the field hockey program didn’t have enough money to cut the grass.

“I pleaded with the head of the physical science plant to mow the Hubbard field, to line it and to please not charge me,” Grant said.

Fast forward to 1991, and Iowa’s first and only women’s athletics director didn’t have to do any pleading. She was the honoree that day.

Hunter Rawlings, the president at the time of the University of Iowa, dedicated Iowa’s field hockey venue to Grant.

The field, previously called Hawkeye Field Hockey Field, then bore the name Grant Field that it still has today.

The 411 people in attendance gave Grant two standing ovations, according to the article in the next day’s Gazette.

Grant, who was choked up, said it was a “weekend I will remember for a long time.”

The happy occasion got happier as the Hawkeyes shut out New Hampshire, 3-0.

“We finally played the way we can,” then-head coach Beth Beglin told The Gazette. “And we did it for both halves.”

Iowa rededicated Grant Field in 2006 after it moved farther west to its current location just off Mormon Trek Boulevard. The Hawkeyes also won on the day of the second dedication with a 3-1 result over Northwestern.

Iowa will honor Grant, who died in December, on Sunday with a Celebration of Life at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The event starts at 3 p.m. and is open to the public. Doors open at 2:30 p.m.

Comments: (319) 398-8394; john.steppe@thegazette.com