Women's athletics at the University of Nevada has a long and rich history dating back to the start of the athletics department in the late 1890s.
 
Basketball is widely considered the first sport that collegiate women played nationally, and the University of Nevada was no exception. Nevada's team had started playing games in 1896 but did not have a coach. After the team was obliterated in a 14-1 loss to California in 1898, the university decided Nevada needed a coach and turned to Ada Edwards, a young woman who had graduated from Stanford in 1898 and was an assistant in the gymnasium there. She coached the team for a short time in 1899, dropping a 7-3 decision to Cal before turning in a historic 3-2 victory over Stanford. That win was historic because it marked the University's first victory over a varsity team – men or women.
 
Women at the University of Nevada continued to play sports over the next 20 years, and Nevada's Women's Athletics Association went "national" in 1919 when it was admitted into the National Women's Athletic Association. From 1913 to 1921, the Gothic N Society was the letter organization recognizing women's athletics at Nevada.
 
But intercollegiate competition was short-lived for Wolf Pack women when it was banned in 1921. Across the country, public sentiment began to turn, and an "anti-competitive" movement had developed in women's college athletics. Women participating in competitive athletics against other schools was considered unbecoming and unladylike, and therefore opportunities for women in participate in intercollegiate athletics nearly disappeared.
 
For the next 40 years or so, college women across the country were only allowed to compete in athletics for enjoyment and sportsmanship, resulting in so-called "play days" where several colleges would gather annually to participate in athletics with the goal being to show their camaraderie rather than their competitive ability. During this period, Nevada had numerous women's athletics clubs ranging from volleyball and basketball to saddle and spurs, tobogganing and skiing.
 
During this time, women's athletics received almost no funding, and women competing on teams often had to provide their own equipment and if they traveled, had to pay their own expenses or sleep in vans. Members of the women's ski team even reported that they had to make their own uniforms, so being able to sew was considered a qualification to join the team.
 
Ruth Russell arrived on campus in 1939 and would go on to serve as the director of women's athletics from 1948-69. To this day, Nevada's highest honor awarded to the top female senior student-athlete is named the Ruth Russell Award.
 
Things began to change in the 1960s and 1970s although women's athletics still had no budgets and weren't officially sponsored by the University. Nevada joined the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which was founded in 1971. Women's gymnast Candy Oliver Borda received an athletics scholarship in 1969, becoming the first female student-athlete in the history of Wolf Pack Athletics to receive an athletics scholarship.
 
Those changes continued after the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the federal legislation commonly known as Title IX that requires institutions that receive federal funding to provide equal opportunities for men and women. In 1978, Nevada hired its first athletics trainer to work specifically with its female student-athletes, while in 1979, the Wolf Pack's women's swimming and diving team won the AIAW Division II national championship, the first national title by a Nevada women's team. Women's athletics continued to expand and in 1981-82, the NCAA sponsored its first national championships for women.
 
The early 1990s marked one of the most exciting eras in Nevada history as the entire program moved from NCAA Division I-AA to I-A in 1991. That was also the same year that Nevada first determined to be compliance with Title IX. Nevada's women's teams also got a big boost in 1992 when the Wolf Pack men's and women's programs all joined the Big West Conference. The women had been in the Mountain West Athletic Conference, an all-women's league in 1987 which had then merged with the Big Sky Conference, the conference the Wolf Pack men competed in. In 1994, the Wolf Pack women's basketball team also moved into Lawlor Events Center, the same venue as the men's basketball team. Prior to that, the women had played in the Virginia Street Gym.
 
Pack PAWS was founded in 1995 as a membership organization committed to Promoting and Advancing Women in Sports at the University of Nevada. Founded by Nevada's former senior woman administrator Angie Taylor as well as a host of prominent women in the community, the group helped to expand women's athletics at Nevada by helping provide funding for championship rings, letterman jackets and scholarships to the women's programs as well as helping to put on the Salute to Champions Dinner.
 
Nevada added women's golf to its varsity lineup in 1997, and the Wolf Pack program climbed quickly. Just four years later, the Wolf Pack made the first NCAA Regional appearance in program history in 2001. The Wolf Pack added women's soccer in 2000, and it didn't take the Wolf Pack long to climb to the top of the WAC. In 2006, just six years after its first season, Nevada won the Western Athletic Conference tournament and earned the program's first visit to the NCAA Championship.
 
In 2003, Nevada reinstated its softball program, its 10th women's team, after a 14-year hiatus. Nevada had fielded a softball team from 1973-88 but dropped the sport after the 1989 season. It didn't take long for the Wolf Pack to get going with Nevada winning the Western Athletic Conference Tournament and earning the Wolf Pack's first bid to the NCAA Championship in 2006.
 
Now 120-plus years after the first Nevada women hit the hardwood, Wolf Pack women's athletics continue to thrive with more than 250 female student-athletes competing for the Silver and Blue. Things have changed since the days when female student-athletes had to sew their own uniforms and fund their own programs as the Wolf Pack now sponsors 10 women's sports with 99 scholarships for the next generation of female student-athletes.
 
Though today marks the national celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Wolf Pack Athletics, Girls on the Run-Sierras, the Reno Aces, Reno 1868 and Truckee Meadows Community College Athletics will join forces to celebrate NGWSD on Saturday, Feb. 16 at Lawlor Events Center. The celebration will include a Family & Kids Fair featuring interactive booths and activities centered around the theme of health, fitness and sports as well as Nevada's popular All-Sports Clinic which features stations with Wolf Pack student-athletes teaching and demonstrating their sports to children. Both the fair and all-sports clinic to take place on the upper concourse at Lawlor Events Center prior to Nevada's women's basketball game vs. Wyoming that day.
 
For more information on the Wolf Pack NGWSD celebration, click here.