At the close of World War II, a St. Petersburg, Fla., girl named Charlotte fell in love with sports during junior high school. Acting on that love led her to play, coach, become a leader and impact millions of female athletes and coaches who have come along since.
She became Dr. Charlotte West, a pioneer for women in sports. While her education focused on math and evaluation, her 42-year Southern Illinois University athletics career advanced women in college sports from virtually unseen and unheard to a powerful voice, presence and influence unimaginable when she started.
West’s impact can be measured by the math of how her work advocated for women at every step.
Do the Math … Trying to Create an Equitable Equation
“I was fortunate to grow up in St. Petersburg and enter sports in junior high,” said West. “I loved sports and couldn’t get enough.”
West’s high school gym teacher, Anna Geise, took her prized student to the next level by inviting her to play in statewide Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) competition as a high schooler.
In college at Florida State in the early 1950s, female athletes had “play days” The structure didn’t make sense to West in her team-oriented competitive mind.
“They were atrocious because you could get together with other schools, but they had restrictions on playing with teammates because they didn’t want it to get too competitive,” said West.
Upon completing her bachelor's degree at Florida State in 1954 certified to teach math, she taught high school physical education in her hometown for two years before getting a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She later earned a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with concentrations in physical education and statistics.
However, the “call to the gym” persisted, and she accepted a position at SIU in 1957, where she began by coaching pretty much every women’s sport the Salukis offered.
Do the Math … From Many Long Bus Rides to One Groundbreaking Flight
In West’s first decade at SIU, “play days” had advanced to “sports days.” Teams of women in an individual sport—sometimes two or three teams from each school—departed on early-morning buses for host schools around the state, played two games, and bused right back home that night.
In the days before interstate highways were complete, SIU traversed Illinois’ two-lane roads in a quest for competition. Carbondale to Normal (Illinois State) or Macomb (Western Illinois) was well over four hours each way. It was beyond six hours to DeKalb (Northern Illinois).
“They wouldn’t permit that sort of thing today,” West said with a chuckle. “Three or four hours on a bus each way to play twice in one day? Not a chance.”
West credits the “sports days” structure with giving the student-athletes an appreciation of sports beyond playing and coaching. Limited resources meant no funding for officials or game staff.
“When your team wasn’t playing, you were refereeing or keeping score or keeping time,” said West. “It taught them to respect the support staff and officials—you can start to understand how hard it is to referee when YOU have to make the calls.”
But women’s sports were growing beyond state lines and, in 1969, SIU was invited to a national post-season basketball tournament at West Chester University in Pennsylvania—in those days, a 15-hour drive from Carbondale. West’s persuasive powers went to work on getting resources.
“We got the university to spring for room and board, and two cars,” according to West. “So we could only reasonably have 12 in the travel party—10 players. I had to cut the squad. The group begged me to keep an 11th player, so one car had four squeezed into the back seat … but not one complaint.”
Preparing for a Saluki invite to the next year’s national tournament, West took advantage of SIU’s Aviation Flight program and arranged for a university plane to fly the team 1,200 miles to Boston.
Camaraderie and pride remain in West’s recollections of that trip.
“After we took off from SIU, we took a slight detour up north and picked up most of the Illinois State team and they rode with us,” said West. “Today, they wouldn’t let competing teams in tournaments stay in the same hotel, but friendships for life happened on that plane.”
And, of course, at a time when even most top pro sports teams flew commercially, the other teams were amazed: “Southern Illinois brought their OWN plane!”
“I think we enjoyed that quite a bit,” said West, whose work raising the bar for women across college sports was just getting started.
Do the Math … AIAW Arrival = Participation Growth + Standards Raised
“In 1971, the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) was formed, and it was to become everything I could have hoped for,” said West. “An organization focused on sports opportunities for women.”
And West became one of its early national leaders, with two years coordinating its championships and serving as its national president in 1978. As championships coordinator in the mid-1970s, she saw immense growth in quantity and quality of participants.
“For national meets like swimming, some committee members wanted strict qualifying standards to make the meets more manageable,” said West. “My first year, it was pretty open and we had 500 participants in the national meet.”
After that, the “stricter” committee members held sway and tough standards enacted.
“SIU had a strong program, but our swimmers said ‘Dr. West, we can’t make those times,’” said West. “I told them that, with work, they would. And the next year, there were 500 qualifiers at the meet.”
So the standards got much tighter …
“…and, the next year, there were 500 qualifiers again,” said West. “The quality improvement was amazing in just that short a time.”
With inclusion of NAIA schools and two-year colleges, the AIAW peaked at more than 1,000 member schools, with more than 100,000 student-athletes competing for 41 championships in 19 different sports.
In the last 1960s, though West’s roommate at the time, JoAnne Thorpe, attended a meeting in Kansas City which could have preempted the AIAW’s existence. Advocates for women’s sports met with Walter Byers, by then the executive director of the NCAA for nearly two decades, to see if the NCAA had plans to sponsor women’s sports. Thorpe conveyed the context of the meeting to West.
“I was told he was cordial and said he would do what he could to help us,” said West. “But when he described the NCAA as ‘by men, for men,’ they knew he wasn’t interested.”
Thus, the AIAW was born. Just a bit more than a decade later, the AIAW’s success in growing, managing and expanding opportunities for women turned the NCAA into a serious suitor, sponsoring championships starting in 1981, and eventually overtaking the AIAW.
By 1983, the organization was gone … but the AIAW’s success, and the women who built it, helped reframe college sports during a period of extraordinary growth.
Do the Math … Conference + Commissioner = Visibility and Vision
“When we saw that the NCAA was coming in, we knew conference affiliation would be important,” said West, referring to several female sports leaders from Midwestern schools. The AIAW organized schools by state.
“At that time, the men’s programs in the Valley included Tulsa, New Mexico State and West Texas State (now West Texas A&M),” said West, who remembers Big Ten members Indiana and Michigan State participating in early talks to form the Gateway. “We felt the Valley footprint in those days wouldn’t work because of travel and unequal commitments.”
So, the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference began with current Valley members Southern Illinois, Indiana State, Bradley, Illinois State, Wichita State and Drake. Missouri State and Northern Iowa both were Gateway members prior to joining the Valley. Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois fit in geographically, but, a decade later, all schools went with their men’s conference affiliations. All of the originals but EIU and WIU merged of the Missouri Valley in 1992.
A decade earlier, West and her commissioner search committee partner, Dr. Mary Jo Wynn of Missouri State, believed the youth, energy, creativity and determination of Chicago native Patty Viverito—who had worked in minor league baseball and college sports—was the right choice for the post in 1982.
“She swooped into our meetings and was a first-rate leader for men and women,” said West, referring to Viverito’s additional work in creating Valley Football—now the nation’s top FCS football conference.
“Mary Jo and I had run events, but Patty brought much more to the table with her background in marketing and sports information,” said West. “She made the Gateway an instant national influence in the NCAA while advancing our women’s programs.”
Do the Math … National Committees = Influence and Opportunity
West knew that the NCAA of the 1980s was a “committee driven” organization. So, she made herself available for work with colleagues across the nation on a vast array of committees, including six years on the NCAA Council, the initial NCAA Certification Committee, the NCAA Gender Equity Committee, as well as the financial aid and two-year college relations committees.
Judy Sweet, the first female president of the NCAA in 1991-92, valued West’s committee creativity, leadership and influence.
“When Charlotte spoke, people listened,” said Sweet, athletics director for all sports at the University of California at San Diego from 1975-2000. “She always had thoughtful positions that got to the heart of issues. She always influenced the outcome with creative solutions.”
West appreciated SIU’s support for her national work and, with academic tenure as faculty, always believed she could be an independent voice for women.
“My situation at SIU allowed me to work very hard on those committees, and I enjoyed that work because it led to progress for women,” said West. “Having tenure took away the fear some of my (women’s sports) cohorts had, that, if they pressed too hard and made someone unhappy, they would be out of a job.”
During West’s time, the NCAA Council had a huge impact.
“In those days, the NCAA Council was comprised of faculty representatives, presidents, athletics directors (ADs), senior woman administrators (SWAs),” said West. “Legislation that reached the council had a 95 percent chance of passing by membership vote because such diverse interests were represented on the council.”
By 1987, Byers had retired and was succeeded by former Virginia AD Dick Schultz. Over lunch during a meeting break, West and Schultz started NCAA member schools on a new path to stronger support for student-athletes on campuses.
“Dick and I were lamenting at how student-athletes’ grades were bad across the board,” said West. “We began talking about an accreditation program where schools had to meet standards or they couldn’t participate in NCAA Tournaments.”
It eventually was called “certification,” expanding beyond academics to governance and student welfare—which included gender equity.
“The certification process involved the total campus in a self-study that the president had to sign off on,” said West. “Trained peer reviewers came from other campuses to analyze that study and make sure that the school had the funding resources in place to support improvement.”
West valued that certification strengthened equity and opportunities for women.
“When the certification process was operable, I saw more progress for women than at any time in my lifetime,” said West. But it didn’t last.
“It was so effective that some ADs decided to water it down,” said West. “So now, in my opinion, it’s next to useless.”
Sweet agrees with West about certification, then and now.
“Charlotte is right about certification,” said Sweet. “When it started, it made an impact. Now, it’s not the same, and that’s too bad.”
West’s tireless work with the NCAA was rewarded, though. The NCAA recognized West’s impact by naming a meeting room at its Indianapolis headquarters after her.
“I’ve had many wonderful honors, but the room at the NCAA is special because it recognizes national work supporting generations of women,” said West.