MOSCOW, Idaho — You probably know this: There are four Division I schools in the Inland Northwest.
Washington State, Gonzaga, Eastern Washington, and Idaho.
But what you may not know is that the leadership within those school’s athletic departments is some of the most diverse in the country.
WSU’s Pat Chun is the first Asian-American AD at a Power Five school and Eastern Washington’s Lynn Hickey and Idaho’s Terry Gawlik are the first female athletic directors at their respective universities.
"I came from a state that I was the only division I female AD in the whole state of Texas for 18 years. You would think there because of the number of schools and everything… so this is really unique," said Hickey alluding to the fact that the Inland Northwest has two female athletic directors.
When Hickey and Gawlik started their careers, there were not a lot of other females around.
"Well, I’ll even go back to where I was coaching at institutions. NAIA was where I coached mostly," said Gawlik, who became Idaho's athletic director just over a month ago. "I’d be the only female in the room on our whole athletic staff sometimes. That was very interesting."
"This is going to show how old I am," Hickey said with a laugh. "But in high school I played three-on-three. My first year in college was the first time women played five-on-five. This is a long time before the NCAA got involved. The first track meet I went to the longest race they would let a girl run was a quarter mile. This was in Oklahoma. That was the furthest because they didn’t think girls could do all of this."
Girls have run a bit farther since then, and now the pair are running their own athletic departments.
"If there’s a gender advantage, it’s that we’re brought up to be multitaskers. I’m sorry, as I tell my husband all the time, he is not a multitasker," said Hickey chuckling again. "Culturally, in this country, women are expected to do a lot of different roles and I think in this position that’s a major help. I think typically we’re caretakers and when you talk about student-athlete welfare and building a team and getting everybody to work together, I think there’s some help there."
"We’re very competitive," added Hickey. "You can’t be in this business unless you are hungry to be the best. The competitive level is very, very important. Watching how young women grow in learning how to be competitive, being apart of a team, but being able to work toward a goal and to be competitive-- I’ve seen kids change and personalities grow because of this experience."
"I always tell everybody, women don’t like to sit on the bench, on teams we don’t," added Gawlik. "You want to be out there. You want to be the one taking the free throw when the games on the line, or at least I did. I would hope that that’s what people want to do."
Obviously it took some time for Hickey and Gawlik to get to their respective positions.
The people that helped them along the way makes sense, but it’s not necessarily who you may think.
"My mentors have been men because there were no females in the business," said Hickey, who is a year and a half in to being Eastern's athletic director. "Never have had leadership around me that was hateful or didn’t want to help. I think sometimes what was missing was that it was the second thought to include us. I would be on a committee in the NCAA and you’d see all the guys going out and I’d be in the lobby and, 'Oh, hey Lynn.' You weren’t kind of a part of that social piece, but as far as working relationships and being given opportunities, I’ve always had really, really good mentors."
"I did as well, and then what you do when they’re in the lobby heading out, you just kind of get your way in there," said Gawlik. "They’ll let you in. You might just have to knock on the door a little harder."
The next door the pair say needs to be knocked on?
Women at the coaching level.
"There are fewer and fewer women coaches," said Hickey. "I think it’s a multitude of issues. I think maybe sometimes just not being given an opportunity. I think the other thing is that when you watch little girls grow up in sports, from the time they're little tiny it’s dads coaching the teams. A lot of times they’re not even receptive that there should be a female leading it. We need to get women at all levels coaching, and then I think that opens up doors. It goes back to athletic directors making decisions about coaching staffs and presidents making decisions about athletic directors."
And those athletic directors hope that some day being a female athletic director won’t be so much of a big deal.
"I know there needs to be conversation that we’re women and we’re in these roles, but we really need to get to the point, we’re in these roles-- she’s in this role-- because she’s really, really good. It has nothing to do with her gender. It still is something that we’re trying to improve and something to celebrate," said Hickey.
"You don’t just earn it because you’re a female, you earn it because of the time you put in," said Gawlik.
Gawlik and Hickey have certainly seen what putting time in can do over the years, and that’s something to celebrate, as women continue to push for more.
"When you look at the things that have happened, really in the last thirty or forty years, it’s pretty amazing when you compare that to the history of men playing sport," said Hickey. "Now, we’ve still got a long ways to go, but it’s recognition that we can do all this. You can be a mom, a wife, a career person. It can be done. It’s hard, but it can be done. We’ve got to be successful to just keep opening the doors."
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