Gordon Receives Lifetime Award for Promoting Women’s Athletics

PULLMAN, Wash. — Carol E. Gordon, former professor and chair of the Department of Physical Education for Women at
Washington State University, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Collegiate
Women Athletic Administrators. She was one of eight inaugural recipients of the new award presented last week at the
NACWAA Fall Forum in Monterey, Calif.
The award recognizes “outstanding individuals who have retired or resigned from intercollegiate athletics administration
and who have rendered meritorious service to promoting intercollegiate athletics for women.”
Gordon joined the WSU faculty in 1962 and retired in 1983. During her 21-year tenure at the university, she served as an
administrator, teacher and coach.
From 1962-66, she coached both Cougars’ field hockey and women’s tennis teams, in addition to teaching. Her teaching
specialty was psychology of sport.
Well-respected by her peers, she served as 1971 president of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the
first national intercollegiate organization for women.
She began her teaching career at the University of New Hampshire in 1948, and later taught and coached basketball,
volleyball, field hockey and tennis at the University of Utah from 1956 to 1962, before moving to WSU.
Throughout her professional career she championed women’s athletics and tried to elevate the status of women’s collegiate
sports to a national level.
The native of Goffstown, N.H. received her bachelor’s degree in education at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1948 and
completed a combined master’s degree and doctorate in psychology and educational psychology in 1958 at the University of
Utah.
Marcia Saneholtz, senior associate athletic director at WSU, was one of the keynote speakers at the NACWAA forum. She
spoke on football event management.
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