University of Nevada Athletics

The University of Nevada sponsors 10 women's varsity sports featuring more than 200 female student-athletes. The Wolf Pack women's teams have won 22 all-time conference championships, including 10 Western Athletic Conference titles in Nevada's 12 years as a member of that league (2000-12). The Wolf Pack women’s swimming and diving team won the school’s first women’s conference championship as a member of the Mountain West Conference, taking home the 2016 title.
 

Women's athletics have a long tradition of success at Nevada, including a national championship by the 1979 Wolf Pack women's swimming and diving team, while Nevada's female student-athletes have earned 176 All-America certificates and 12 individual national championships. Most recently, diver Sharae Zheng captured national championships in both 1-meter and 3-meter diving at the 2016 NCAA Championships.

The University of Nevada was perennially ranked in the top 10 in the nation in the Gender Equity Scorecard, including best in the country for its commitment to gender equity in 2006 and 2007. The University has also been recognized as a Diversity in Athletics award winner by the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport at Texas A&M University. 

The Wolf Pack has participated in successful legislative lobbying for gender equity funding and private fundraising to add three women's sports. Nevada added women's golf in 1997-98 and women's soccer in 2000, while the University also brought back its women's softball program in 2003 after a 14-year hiatus.

The History of Wolf Pack Women’s Athletics

Women’s athletics at the University of Nevada has a long and rich history dating back to the start of the athletics department in the late 1890s. That success includes 22 all-time conference championships, 176 All-Americans and 12 individual national champions.
 

Basketball is widely considered the first sport that collegiate women played nationally, and the University of Nevada was no exception. Nevada’s team had started playing games in 1896 but did not have a coach. After the team was obliterated in a 14-1 loss to California in 1898, the university decided Nevada needed a coach and turned to Ada Edwards, a young woman who had graduated from Stanford in 1898 and was an assistant in the gymnasium there. She coached the team for a short time in 1899, dropping a 7-3 decision to Cal before turning in a historic 3-2 victory over Stanford. That win was historic because it marked the University’s first victory over a varsity team – men or women.

Women at the University of Nevada continued to play sports over the next 20 years, and Nevada’s Women’s Athletics Association went “national” in 1919 when it was admitted into the National Women’s Athletic Association. From 1913 to 1921, the Gothic N Society was the letter organization recognizing women’s athletics at Nevada. 

But intercollegiate competition was short-lived for Wolf Pack women when it was banned in 1921. Across the country, public sentiment began to turn, and an “anti-competitive” movement had developed in women’s college athletics. Women participating in competitive athletics against other schools was considered unbecoming and unladylike, and therefore opportunities for women in participate in intercollegiate athletics nearly disappeared.

For the next 40 years or so, college women across the country were only allowed to compete in athletics for enjoyment and sportsmanship, resulting in so-called “play days” where several colleges would gather annually to participate in athletics with the goal being to show their camaraderie rather than their competitive ability. During this period, Nevada had numerous women’s athletics clubs and intramurals ranging from volleyball and basketball to saddle and spurs, tobogganing and skiing, while other women competed in athletics through the women’s physical education department.
 

During this time, women’s athletics received almost no funding, and women competing on teams often had to provide their own equipment and if they traveled, had to pay their own expenses or sleep in vans. Members of the women’s ski team even reported that they had to make their own uniforms, so being able to sew was considered a qualification to join the team.

Ruth Russell arrived on campus in the women’s physical education department in 1939 and would go on to serve as the director of women’s athletics from 1948-69. To this day, Nevada’s highest honor awarded to the top female senior student-athlete is named the Ruth Russell Award. At that time, women’s athletics was housed in the University’s women’s physical education department and was separate from both the men’s physical education department and the men’s athletics department. 

Upon Russell’s retirement, the University hired Dr. Luella (Lue) Lilly as the chair of the women’s physical education department in 1969, and Lilly helped Nevada women’s athletics make great strides during her eight years at Nevada both as women’s athletics director and head coach of the women’s basketball and volleyball teams. In 1971, Nevada joined the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and began competing as a member of the Northern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1971, a league made up of 18 four-year colleges. At the time, Nevada women’s athletics fielded teams in basketball, gymnastics, softball, tennis, track and field and volleyball. 
 

While teams still struggled with low or non-existent budgets for travel, uniforms and equipment, some scholarship money started to become available for female student-athletes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Women’s gymnast Candy Oliver Borda received an in-state athletics scholarship in 1969, becoming the first female student-athlete in the history of Wolf Pack Athletics to receive an athletics scholarship. By 1975, the first full-tuition out-of-state scholarships were awarded to Cindy Rock for women’s basketball and Denise Fogerty for volleyball in addition to several in-state scholarships.

Those changes continued after the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the federal legislation commonly known as Title IX that requires institutions that receive federal funding to provide equal opportunities for men and women. In the mid-1970s, Wolf Pack men’s and women’s athletics were combined into one department. After some contention, Lilly became an associate athletics director until she left in 1976 to become the first women’s athletics director at the University of California, a position she held until 1992.
 

Nevada also continued to make progress in women’s athletics. During the 1976-77 season, the Wolf Pack women experienced a banner year, winning NCIAC championship in volleyball, basketball and softball. In 1978, Nevada hired its first athletics trainer to work specifically with its female student-athletes, while in 1979, led by three-time national champion Ann Belikow and several other All-Americans, the Wolf Pack’s women’s swimming and diving team won the AIAW Division II national championship, the first national title by a Nevada women’s team and only the second national team title in school history.
 

In 1981-82, the NCAA sponsored its first national championships for women, and schools had the choice to compete in the AIAW and/or NCAA in 1981-82. Nevada competed in the AIAW in 1981-82 before moving to the NCAA the following year. Nevada’s softball team enjoyed great success during this era,  advancing to the AIAW Division II College World Series in both 1980 and 1982.

The 1990s marked one of the most exciting eras in Nevada history as the entire program moved from NCAA Division I-AA to I-A in 1991. That was also the same year that Nevada first determined to be compliance with Title IX. Nevada’s women’s teams also got a big boost in 1992 when the Wolf Pack men’s and women’s programs all joined the Big West Conference. The women had been in the Mountain West Athletic Conference, an all-women’s league in 1987 which had then merged with the Big Sky Conference, the conference the Wolf Pack men competed in. In 1994, the Wolf Pack women’s basketball team also moved into Lawlor Events Center, the same venue as the men’s basketball team. Prior to that, the women had played in the Virginia Street Gym. 

Pack PAWS was founded in 1995 as a membership organization committed to Promoting and Advancing Women in Sports at the University of Nevada. Founded by Nevada’s former senior woman administrator Angie Taylor as well as a host of prominent women in the community, the group helped to expand women’s athletics at Nevada by helping provide funding for championship rings, letterman jackets and scholarships to the women’s programs as well as helping to put on the Salute to Champions Dinner.
 

In 1997, then senior woman administrator Angie Taylor secured the first $1 million gift to Nevada’s women’s athletics program from the Wilbur May Foundation. Taylor, who played basketball at Nevada and then started her athletics career as sports information and promotions director before moving into administration, helped Nevada increase its women’s athletics budget from about $700,000 to over $2 million in the 1990s.

The Wolf Pack women also saw tremendous athletic success in 1990s and early 2000s. The women’s tennis team won a Big Sky championship in 1992, while the volleyball team earned the first of its five trips to the NCAA Championships in 1998. Nevada’s swimming and diving team dominated the Big West Conference, winning five consecutive conference championships and finishing in the top 20 at the NCAA Championships in four straight years.

Nevada added women’s golf to its varsity lineup in 1997-98, and the Wolf Pack program climbed quickly. Just four years later, the Wolf Pack made the first NCAA Regional appearance in program history in 2001. The Wolf Pack added women’s soccer in 2000, and it didn’t take the Wolf Pack long to climb to the top of the WAC. In 2006, just six years after its first season, Nevada won the Western Athletic Conference tournament and earned the program’s first visit to the NCAA Championship. 

In 2003, Nevada reinstated its softball program, its 10th women’s team, after a 14-year hiatus. Nevada had fielded a softball team from 1973-89 but dropped the sport after the 1989 season. It didn’t take long for the Wolf Pack to get going again with Nevada winning the Western Athletic Conference Tournament and earning the Wolf Pack’s first bid to the NCAA Championship in 2006, the first of three NCAA appearances that decade.

The Wolf Pack rifle team turned in a second-place finish at the 2004 NCAA Championships, and Holly Caraway became the first woman on Nevada’s rifle team to earn All-America honors that year, while Nevada’s cross country and track and field programs enjoyed great success winning the Big West outdoor title in 2000, Western Athletic Conference cross country and indoor titles in 2003 and the WAC indoor championship in 2004.
 

Success has continued for the Wolf Pack since joining the Mountain West Conference in 2012. The women’s swimming and diving team captured its 10th conference championship and Nevada’s first Mountain West women’s championship in 2016, while diver Sharae Zheng captured national championships in both 1-meter and 3-meter diving at the 2016 NCAA Championships. Nevada’s softball team has earned a spot in the National Softball Invitational in each of the last three years, while the Wolf Pack women’s basketball team advanced to the championship game of the 2018 Mountain West Tournament and advanced to the semifinals of the Women’s Basketball Invitational that season. Nevada’s track and field team has seen tremendous success with 12 All-America certificates since 2011, including a historic four All-America honors earned by Nicola Ader in 2019.

The Wolf Pack also gained a historic partnership with Mountain Lion Aviation as the presenting sponsor of Nevada Women’s Athletics in 2018, the first partnership of its kind in the NCAA.

Now 120-plus years after the first Nevada women hit the hardwood, Wolf Pack women’s athletics continue to thrive with more than 200 female student-athletes competing for the Silver and Blue. Things have changed since the days when female student-athletes had to sew their own uniforms and fund their own programs as the Wolf Pack now sponsors 10 women’s sports with 99 scholarships for the next generation of female student-athletes.