The men’s baseball team of Vanderbilt University is facing off against Mississippi State in the best of three finals of the College World Series.
Notably, three of the institutions represented in the College World Series have African American athletic directors. Just last month, Dr. Candice Storey Lee made college sports history when she was named vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletic director at Vanderbilt. She is the first female AD at Vanderbilt and the first African American woman to lead an athletics department in the Southeastern Conference (SEC).
Another team in the College World Series was the University of Virginia (UVA). Carla Williams was named athletic director in 2017, making her the first African American woman to lead an athletic department in any of the Power Five Conferences. Dr. Tomika L. Ferguson, a graduate of UVA, where she was a student-athlete in track and field, finds this incredibly inspiring.
“Representation with internationality is important as we are now creating a pipeline at our campuses,” said Ferguson, interim assistant dean for student affairs and inclusive excellence and assistant professor and co-coordinator of the Ed.D. program at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education.
She added that when she was at UVA, there were no Black women in leadership position.
“I never saw myself being an athletic administrator because I didn’t think that there were many women doing it,” she said, adding that the hiring of Williams at UVA is a game changer. “I know there are women who now say, ‘I want to be like her. I can become an athletic director.’ It’s no longer a pursuit to be the first. It’s now wanting to do what she does. She is creating a pipeline of leaders in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference).”
Dr. Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management and director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan, says women of color face both racial and gender biases.
