As Sportswomen of Colorado turns 50, the organization’s determined to keep achievements of local female athletes at the forefront

At the beginning of Wendy Koenig’s storied running career, her achievements were met with a flower.

This was shortly before Title IX changed female athletics forever in 1972, and a few years prior to the inception of Sportswomen of Colorado, for which Koenig was an original honoree in 1975.

“After we ran, we were given a flower, sometimes a rose,” Koenig recalled. “And the men got medals, and even competed for prizes like TV sets. After Title IX, a lot of that changed. That was nice, to get recognized similarly to the men. The way that moved women’s sports forward, within this state, Sportswomen of Colorado has done the same thing.

“The Sportswomen awards helped maintain the new attitude of the day by officially recognizing women for their feats.”

Sportswomen of Colorado — which celebrates its 50th anniversary on Sunday — has been relentless in its mission to promote, honor and empower female athletes such as Koenig, who competed in the Olympics in the 800 meters in 1972 and ’76 before going on to become an audiologist and the mayor of Estes Park.

The Sportswomen of Colorado ensured there would be no more flowers. There would be medals, plaques, a big trophy and media recognition. There would be an organization to bring the state’s female athletic achievements to the forefront — a first-of-its-kind effort in the nation.

“The organization has always been an avenue to help promote girls’ participation in sports, to get visibility, and from the beginning they supported organizations that were trying to build on girls sports,” Sportswomen of Colorado board president Laura Fischer said. “It’s long been involved with universities, involved with CHSAA, involved with the Colorado Women’s Coaches Association (now known as the Colorado Coaches of Girls Sports).”

At the inaugural awards celebration in 1975, 28 athletes were honored, including the first Colorado Sportswoman of the Year, golfer Cindy Hill, who earned the title after winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur the year prior.

Since that first banquet, Sportswomen of Colorado has honored more than 2,200 female athletes. The honorees come across all sports, from mainstream to niche, and all ages, from middle school to masters level.

The organization was the product of its four “godmothers”: renowned athlete Joan Birkland, sportswriter Dorothy Mauk, philanthropist Joy Burns and YWCA board member Jerry Cunningham. It was Cunningham’s brainchild. The YWCA was looking for a fundraiser at the time, and the idea of an organization honoring female athletes statewide seemed like a perfect fit. For the organization’s first 11 years, it was affiliated with the YWCA before becoming its own non-profit in 1985.

“(Those four women) had an amazing vision to do something that had never been done,” explained Linda Lappe, the executive director for Sportswomen of Colorado. “They were those sorts of women who were going to make it work, and they were going to find a way to make it last. They looked around and realized they needed to recognize and honor female athletes at a time when women weren’t getting that.”

While Cunningham came up with the idea, Birkland had the stature to propel it forward. Birkland, who held the state’s amateur golf and tennis titles at the same time on two different occasions, served as the organization’s executive director for 40 years before stepping down in 2014.

“Joanie was as competitive as they came, and she was single-minded in her approach that she was going to make this organization go,” said Tanya Haave, the 1980 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year and now its vice president. “For so many years, she was the heart and soul of this organization. And so for many of us on the board, we’re still doing this in her honor.”

Mauk — who became the first full-time woman sportswriter at a major U.S. metropolitan daily newspaper when she joined The Denver Post in 1966 — was the organization’s publicist and writer. Burns, the organization’s longtime president, provided a venue for the board and selection committee to meet at her Burnsley Hotel and was also a key fundraising figure.

All four used their connections to build Sportswomen of Colorado’s brand throughout its first four decades. The influence of a handful of local men — such as John Gart of Gart Brothers Sporting Goods, Coors Brewing executive Marvin D. “Swede” Johnson, journalist Scott Stocker and broadcaster Larry Zimmer, the latter two of whom were longtime selection committee members — was also instrumental.

“These guys had name recognition, and they were able to help get good sponsors for us,” Fischer said.

To survive and grow throughout the decades, Sportswomen of Colorado has kept costs low — the organization doesn’t have an office, and its only paid employee is Lappe — while relying on volunteers.

Its annual banquet is essentially a break-even endeavor, and its main fundraising comes from individual donations and corporate sponsors such as the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, El Pomar Foundation and Denver Broncos. An endowment, along with seed money from Pepsi Bottling Group, allowed the organization to start its Colorado Girls’ Sports Camp Scholarship Program in 2001.

That program has sent roughly 1,000 girls ages 8 to 13 to camps. And over the last couple of years, Sportswomen of Colorado started a sports clinics program that partners local women’s college teams with Title I elementary schools. The organization also began a pilot program with CHSAA to honor a player of the game for the girls state championships in all classifications of softball, basketball and soccer.

“(It’s the idea of), how am I going to dream about something if I can’t see it, or don’t have the opportunity to get involved in sports in the first place?” Lappe said. “That’s where we want to keep impacting young girls in the next 50 years: Keeping these achievements at the forefront, and also giving more young girls chances to get into sports.”

That vision for the future wouldn’t have been possible had Sportswomen of Colorado folded about a decade ago, after Birkland stepped down and its board shrunk to just seven members in the few years after that. At that time, Fischer admits there was serious doubt about the long-term viability of the organization.

But, as Lappe explained, “the next generation picked it up and ran with it” to bring Sportswomen of Colorado into the digital age and the board grew back up to 13 members.

Fischer hopes that in the future the organization will be populated with former honorees and Colorado Sportswomen of the Year, like Haave and 1985 winner Rhonda Blanford-Green did when they stepped into their current roles on the board.

“We were kind of down (around 2016-17) and were thinking how we were going to get back up,” Fischer said. “Now, we’re being much more strategic about who we’re recruiting to be on the board. And another key is promotion — to empower these young girls and women (who win), to stay in touch with them, to want them to get involved with us when they grow up and retire from their sport.”

Abby Waner, the 2005 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year, argues the organization’s importance will only continue to grow in an era where “women’s sports are changing in real-time every day.”

“It’s a really important period for female athletes, so I’m really excited to see how Sportswomen of Colorado can capitalize on this era,” Waner says. “There needs to be a constant conduit for promotion (of female athletic achievement), and within Colorado, Sportswomen is it. They house the history and they house the people and they house the emotions that are tied to women athletes in this state. There’s a lot of gravity in that.”

Sunday’s sold-out 50th anniversary awards banquet is set for 5:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center, and will be live-streamed via the organization’s Facebook page.

The organization will honor 41 individuals and induct two of them, Colorado Mesa wrestler Marissa Gallegos and heptathlete Anna Hall, into their Hall of Fame. A team of the year will also be honored. The 2023 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year will be announced at the conclusion of the ceremony.

A History of Colorado Sportswoman of the Year