The story of Terry Crawford, who led track team to first national title won by Tennessee women

Before the glory of eight national championships in women’s basketball at Tennessee, there was a team who set the tone.

In 1981 – only eight years after its inception – the track and field team won the first national title by any women’s team at Tennessee. Twelve years before that, there was Terry Hull Crawford, the first woman to win a national title at Tennessee. So it was only fitting that Crawford was asked to be the first UT track and field coach in the fall of 1973 and lead the Lady Vols to the first four women’s SEC outdoor titles and the first SEC indoor title.

Crawford, though she found success quickly with the program, said everything was a challenge because the university had never viewed women’s sports as more than casual club sports before Title IX. Women weren’t necessarily denied, Crawford said, but they were fighting the perception that women participating in sports wasn’t on the level of intercollegiate status.

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There were the other factors that made getting women’s sports off the ground difficult before Title IX was passed in 1972, such as the NCAA only sponsoring men’s sports. There wasn’t an organization to oversee women’s intercollegiate athletics.

The Division for Girls' and Women's Sports began hosting national championships in the late '60s – Crawford competed in the first outdoor track and field championships in 1969 – and then the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women took over in 1971.

“It was like a new adventure going down this path that you didn't know where it was going to end up, and what was the right turn to take, and who was going to help you and so forth,” Crawford said. “So everything was a challenge, but also that challenge presented opportunity. It was exciting. It was thrilling to the women who loved sport, for them to have an organized effort.”

It was a strange time, Crawford said. On one hand, you had a “rumbling throughout America” in support and women who had been sitting on their desire to play sports at a higher level. On the other, you had the pervasive misogyny that made people question if women deserved the funding and support to do so.

“It was a movement, so it was exciting to be a part of it,” Crawford said. “But it certainly had its challenges because it was a slow-moving movement in terms of the progress that could be made.”

Crawford wasn’t giving up easily. She was motivated by her own experiences at two national championships where she became a three-time All-American and national champion in the 220-yard dash, 440, and 880. She was loaned a men’s uniform to wear and decided the thrill of representing her university and winning national titles was one every woman deserved. She also made lifelong friends at those championships and discovered the camaraderie sports provided.

Her experience at the championships was also the first time she realized that she could make a career out of the sport she discovered she loved.

Luckily for Crawford, her coaching career began at Tennessee, which was one of the more supportive universities of women’s sports in their early stages. She said the administration, which included a separate women’s athletic department, was committed to moving women’s sports in the right direction.

“For all the hardships – and I think everybody can relate to this – for all the hardships in the early '70s there was also a lot of excitement, and enthusiasm and really moving forward,” Crawford said. “The vision was always forward. It was never negative or discouraging at UT, we had support.”

Crawford said the women’s athletic department was a family. Coaches and administrators – like Gloria Ray, the first women’s athletic director – supported each other and so did the community. There was also a standard early on that everyone strived towards.

“We didn't want to just compete and play – that was not what we wanted to do,” Crawford said. “We wanted to be national champions … that sort of became the mantra and the mission of our women's athletic department, that we wanted to be national caliber. We weren't in this to play games. We wanted to be outstanding."

Cora Hall: Covering UT women's athletics
Twitter | cora.hall@knoxnews.com
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How Terry Crawford made UT track and field champions from the start