(APRIL 18)  Please join us Friday, May 2nd from 1:00 to 4:00 in the Morris Library Rotunda as we celebrate the rise of women’s sports over the past 50 years! We will be introducing an exhibit honoring trailblazing women boxers and the Southern Illinois Women’s Rugby Club during its Old Loads Weekend reunion.

A reception in the Rotunda will feature stories from SIU rugby alumni, including our local champion boxer Britt VanBuskirk. The gathering and exhibit “With You” highlight the incredible accomplishments of women in sports, tracing the enormous impact of Title IX legislation.

Before Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in educational programs and other activities receiving federal funding, only one in 27 girls played sports. Since Congress enacted the amendment in 1972, that number has grown to two in five. Title IX was co-authored by Representative Patsy T. Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, after her daughter was denied admission to Stanford University in 1970 because she was a woman.

Britt VanBuskirk is profiled in the WITH YOU project and was a core contributor to content and networking to bring us these incredible womens’ stories. Her lifelong dream and “never say die” attitude in the boxing profession gave her entry into the Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2016. She is also well known as the first female welterweight champion of California in 1979.

Her boxing career extended from 1978 to 2003 and she is an icon for women on the walls of this exhibit providing foundation along with her peers, which ultimately helped get women’s boxing into the Olympics in 2012.

In addition to VanBuskirk, boxers featured in the exhibit include Sue TL Fox, Bonnie Canino, Chevelle Hallback, Brooke Dierdorff-Millbrook, and Blanca Gutierrez.

Britt became intrinsically connected when she moved to Carbondale Illinois with her family, which were faculty of SIU. There she found the opportunity of continuing sport with the very startup of women in the SIU Women's Sports club. She quickly became a valued player, organizer and coach for many of the woman you see profiled in this project.

The exhibit also features inspiring stories spanning three generations of SIU Women’s Rugby Club players from the 1980s to the 2000s. Displays feature rugby artifacts donated by Apryl Beardsley Gordon, Renee Flottman, and Paulette Curkin, and books about Title IX and women boxers donated by Renee Flottman and Britt VanBuskirk. The books will be cataloged and made available at Morris Library’s Special Collections Research Center later this year.

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