John Shearer: A Look At The Origin Of The Lady Vols’ Name

On Wednesday, the University of Tennessee is scheduled to drop the Lady Vols nickname from all women’s sports teams except the basketball squad.
 
The change has been a source of much debate, particularly in Knoxville. As evidence, several people wanting to keep the Lady Vols name protested last Thursday along Joe Johnson Drive, near where the UT board of trustees was meeting at the UT Institute of Agriculture.
 
While the administration at UT seems to be supportive of the change, the vast majority of Lady Vols sports team fans seem to be about as happy as Atlantans or Chattanoogans were when New Coke was introduced briefly in 1985. There is also a contingent of fans – primarily those who care only about the UT football and men’s basketball teams – who seem to have no strong feelings one way or the other about the change.
 
With that issue coming to a head, I thought it might be interesting to look at how the Lady Volunteers name was adopted. It occurred in 1976 shortly before the school year began, but I had trouble finding a lot of the minute details on how it developed.
 
In Pat Summitt’s 2013 autobiography, “Sum It Up,” which was written with Sally Jenkins, coach Summitt writes as if she came up with the name after Tennessee had begun making improvements to women’s athletics as part of Title IX compliance.
 
The women’s teams in all sports were called Vollettes until that time, but coach Summitt wrote that she called a team meeting to change the name. This was in part because she thought Vollettes sounded like a chorus line of dancing girls.
 
During the meeting, someone thought Lady in front of Volunteers sounded classy, so it was adopted – or so coach Summitt wrote.
 
But it was actually a university-wide decision for all the women’s sports teams, so other people must have signed off on the decision. Other meetings may have also been held. As evidence, the UT volleyball team of 1976 was in action and was using the Lady Vols’ name before the women’s basketball team even started the season.
 
A glance through the UT Daily Beacon student newspapers and the Knoxville newspapers on microfilm for the summer and early fall of 1976 gives little indication of the exact way the name was developed.
 
But it seems to be very closely tied in with the arrival of Gloria Ray as the first women’s athletic director that summer. Not long after she began work in early August 1976, a small item appeared in a UT sports roundup on Sept. 23 that said, “Lady Volunteers is the nickname that will be applied to those who perform under the banner of the UT women’s athletics program.”
 
The brief article without a byline went on to say that Gloria Ray, who coached the women’s tennis team in 1974, was eager to introduce her coaches and staff to the public, and would do so at a press luncheon on Sept. 29.
 
In a profile in the Daily Beacon on Oct. 1, 1976, Ms. Ray said she was excited about her new position and was anxious to see the fruits of the department’s work.
 
“Knowing UT has the potential to be a powerhouse in women’s sports doesn’t make the waiting easy,” she said.
 
Coach Summitt, who was then known as Pat Head, quickly began improving the Lady Vols basketball team in what was her third year with the recruitment of her 1976 Olympic teammate, Trish Roberts. Ms. Roberts was transferring from Emporia State College in Kansas.
 
Besides being helped by having coach Summitt as one of the Lady Vol coaches, a key first step Ms. Ray had made after taking over as women’s AD was to move all the women’s coaching and administrative offices into Stokely Athletics Center. At the time, the various team offices had been at different locations around campus.
 
I unfortunately could not track down Ms. Ray to get her memories of how the Lady Vols nickname developed, despite contacting several people who might have had her phone number. In recent years, she served as president and CEO of the Knoxville Sports and Tourism Corporation.
 
Most of the attention in the UT Daily Beacon during that time frame when the Lady Volunteers’ name was adopted focused on the football team. Head coach Bill Battle’s future in his seventh season directing the Vols seemed on shaky ground after a rough start to the season.
 
He did leave after that season for a successful career in business, so his twilight at UT was the Lady Vols nickname’s dawn.
 
The fall of 1976 was also the beginning of lengthy journalism-related careers for two of the Daily Beacon student sports writers – future sports writer and radio and TV personality Paul Finebaum and Debby Jennings, who served as the longtime UT women’s sports information director.
 
While this spirit of ’76 that permeated UT and created a new nickname was a new experience for UT’s women, Tennessee actually had women’s sports teams well before that.
 
I happened to come across a 1920 UT yearbook, the Volunteer, online, and it said the first intercollegiate women’s basketball team in school history had debuted that January.
 
The seven girls on the team were coached by Mary D. Ayres, who was the physical director at the Young Women’s Christian Association in Knoxville. She was also the daughter of former UT President Dr. Brown Ayres, who had just died the year before at his campus home of a heart ailment. At the time of his death, coach Ayres was doing some post-World War I work with the American troops in Washington, D.C.
 
The 1920 UT women finished 2-3, and it was considered a challenging year, according to the yearbook.
 
“As in all pioneer efforts, it has been met with many difficulties,” the 1920 write-up stated. “But we consider it a good beginning.”
 
They started off with three losses against Maryville twice and Jefferson City. Whether they played Maryville College and Carson-Newman, or the local high schools, is not clear, although it was probably the colleges. The location of the games is not known, although it was probably either the YWCA or the Victorian-style YMCA, where the UT men apparently played. Both Knoxville Y facilities were replaced a short time after 1920 with still-standing facilities.
 
After the three losses to begin the season, the 1920 Tennessee women came roaring back to win their final two games. In a spirit that Pat Summitt and Lady Vol fans everywhere would have admired, they beat the YWCA of Knoxville, 30-1, and concluded the season with an 18-10 win over Martha Washington College in a game also held in Knoxville. The latter college, located in Abingdon, Va., later closed and became the site of Martha Washington Inn.
 
Other UT women’s teams, particularly the Lady Vols’ softball team of the last decade or two under former UTC coaches Ralph and Karen Weekly, have shown similar savvy in coming back and having competitive seasons, or in doing well all year.
 
The women’s athletic director for the majority of the success after Ms. Ray started them along was Joan Cronan, an LSU graduate who was known for her capable leadership and pleasant manner.
 
I have regularly covered a yearly women’s golf tournament for the Knoxville News Sentinel every fall, and she would always take time to thank me for an article or for the paper’s coverage while she was still the women’s AD.
 
But Dave Hart now heads the combined athletic departments, and it definitely appears to be late in the game for the supporters still hoping the UT women keep the Lady Vols name in all sports. Regardless, it has been quite a run for the teams in orange and light blue.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net