2008 Grotke Award Recipients
2008 Winners
Left to right: Anita Aldrich, Dean Summers, Margaret Cummins-Schaefer,
Leanne Grotke, Kay Burrus, Marjorie Albohm
Leanne Grotke
The Leanne Grotke Award perpetuates the ideals Leanne Grotke Andreas embodied in her years serving Indiana University
as a trailblazer and pioneer leader for women’s athletics. This honor is bestowed on living persons whose service has
made exceptionally outstanding contributions to Indiana University’s Women’s Athletics Program and is the highest honor
of its kind given by the university.
Leanne L. Grotke Andreas graduated from Bowling Green State University, where she played basketball and field hockey. Soon thereafter, she arrived at IU in 1967 as the coordinator of intramural and extramural women’s sports. At that time, the women’s teams shared one set of uniforms and each intercollegiate team received just $150 for the year. Leanne was a champion for improving women’s athletics. She was an outspoken advocate for the teams, which at that time included field hockey, basketball, tennis, golf, softball, volleyball, swimming/diving and gymnastics.
In 1969, Grotke played a pivotal role in establishing IWISO, the Indiana Women’s Intercollegiate Sports Organization. The foundational premise behind the IWISO was that competitive sports would enhance women’s college experience, and the organization offered competitive opportunities to highly skilled female athletes. The guidelines were simple: the program should be supervised by a faculty member in the Department of Physical Education, qualified women should teach, coach and officiate athletic contests, and that funding for women’s sports at all levels---intramural, extramural and intercollegiate---should come from the university. Under the guidance of Grotke and faculty sponsor Anita Aldrich, the IWISO grew. Regional boards developed and in 1971, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was organized. The Athletics Committee with the encouragement of IU Athletics Director, Bill Orwig brought the women’s program into the Athletics Department from the Women’s Physical Education Department.
In 1972, Title IX legislation was passed, and during the 1973-74 school year, and once again, there was Leanne Grotke, who was named the first full time Associate Athletic Director for Women’s Athletics in the Big Ten. Active in state, regional and national governing bodies for athletics, she was the Midwest representative on the AIAW Board and later became Commissioner for all AIAW’s National Championships. Her experience and presence on the national stage lifted IU women’s athletics to a newly, pre-eminent level. During that time, Leanne took the unprecedented step of hiring a female trainer, Marj Albohm, and IU became the first institution in the Big Ten with a coed training room. Better funding and visionary leadership launched Indiana University Women’s Athletics ahead. While Leanne was at IU, women’s athletics competed for many State, Regional and National championships. She was the leading advocate for women’s athletics on the national stage.
Marjorie Albohm
Marj, having received her BS degree from Valparaiso University and her MS from Indiana State, became one of
the first women ever certified by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. Years later, she was
recognized by that association as the Most Distinguished Athletic Trainer and inducted into its Hall of Fame.
No wonder she was named to a variety of leadership roles with the NATA. Including: president, vice president,
president of research and Education Foundation, and secretary/treasurer of its board of directors.
With the active lifestyles of the Baby Boomer generation here in the United States, her expertise in muscular-skeletal health has found even broader application, as more and more people every day find themselves dealing with osteoarthritis and other issues involving joints and muscles. She has written two books about health care and sports injuries among female athletes, and has been a guest on the Today Show, CNN House Calls, and ESPN’s Real Sports.
Marj also has been a force on the global stage, having been named to the medical staff responsible for the health needs of tens of thousands of elite athletes for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the World Gymnastics Championships in 1991, the Track & Field Olympic Trials in 1988, the 1987 Pan American Games, and the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
It’s incredible that she continues to maintain her demanding professional obligations managing and continuing to teach for Ossur Americas, and Speech Fitness Communications, as well as acting as principal for her own Firm Solutions Consulting Company. Her ties to the Hoosier state continue as she fulfills her role as board member for the Datalys Sports Injury Surveillance Center in Indianapolis.
Dr. Anita Aldrich
Anita, was already a nationally recognized pioneer in the field of physical education when she arrived at
Indiana University. Already, she had been an advisor to the National Education Association’s
policies commission, Chairperson of the 1959 National Conference on the Fitness of Elementary School Age
Children, Women’s Advisor to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, and President of the
American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.
She arrived at Indiana University in 1965 to head the women’s program in the school of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. In 1975, she became acting dean of the School of HPER, and by 1977, when the men’s and women’s Physical Education departments merged; she was chosen to chair the combined department. The accomplishments she led in her department captured the attention of the University, and she was tapped to serve in a far more influential role. For nine years, she served on the University Athletics Committee, and what a force she was, as Title IX legislation was adopted. She chaired two search and screen committees for IU athletic directors, and was appointed chairperson for the athletics committee in the summer of 1978.
Two years later, she returned to teaching full-time through a joint professorship for HPER and the School of Education.
It was at Northwest Missouri College, where she received her bachelor’s degree, then the University of Missouri for her Master’s Degree; and then Penn State for her doctorate. Prior to becoming a Hoosier, she was director of Physical Education and Intramurals for five years in Kansas City, Missouri and she also taught in St. Joseph and King City schools in Missouri.
Kay Burrus
Kay, having spent her formative years in Edwardsville Illinois, just outside St. Louis, with her three
brothers and twin sister, she entered Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and received her
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from there.
Following two years of teaching at the high-school level in Sterling, Illinois, she came to Indiana University in 1962. Here, she taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, served on many doctoral dissertation committees, and coached field hockey in the Department of Physical Education, which was later renamed the Department of Kinesiology. As women’s sports at the university were assimilated into the men’s programs, she had an integral role in the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. After all, she was among the most successful coaches in the Big Ten, and indeed the region. From 1962 to 1976, the 14 years she coached field hockey, winning records were posted for 13, even though during three of those years, she was also head women’s basketball coach.
She was busy with academic pursuits, too. Over 13 years, during the summers of 1966 through 1979, she was a consulting scientist in the Laboratory of Environmental and Patho-Physiology at the Nevada Desert Research Institute. Ultimately, in 1974, she received her PhD in exercise physiology from the University of Michigan.
She was president of the Midwest Association for College and University Physical Education from 1987 through 1990, and an officer in the Indiana Association of Health, PE, Recreation, and Dance, too. When the Indiana Women’s Intercollegiate Sports Organization (IWISO) was founded, she became one of its directors. And why not? She was well-known as she was across the country as an intercollegiate and state high-school basketball and volleyball official.
During this same time, in 1987, she accepted her university’s appointment as associate dean for academic program administration in the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, a position she held until her retirement in December of 2001.
Margaret Cummins-Schaefer
Maggie is a native Hoosier, born in Indianapolis, but spending most of her formative years in Columbus.
A remarkable athlete from the outset, she played every sport offered at Columbus High School and was
runner-up in the first Indiana Girl’s Golf Association State Championship in 1958. She won the City
Golf Championship in Columbus that same year, and was the Lake women’s Champion for three years in a
row, 1957 through 1959.
Maggie received her BS in education from Arizona in 1963. There she earned a varsity letter in four sports: basketball, volleyball, badminton, and golf. She was president of the PE Major-Minor Club. A high school teacher in Indianapolis at Wood High School for two years, she left to pursue and receive a MS degree in 1967 from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Upon graduation from Smith, she joined the faculty at Indiana University in the Department of Kinesiology in 1967, where she started the IU women’s golf program, and was head coach for 11 years. As an author of several articles, and area consultant for the National Golf Association, she was a logical choice to deliver clinics and speeches throughout the Midwest on the watershed moment in women’s athletics, Title IX.
Maggie, was chairman of the Midwest Committee on Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women’s Golf, represented Indiana on the Professional Preparation Committee for PE for Women, acted as chairwomen of IU Women’s Intercollegiate Governing Board, and was chairwomen of the Department Curriculum committee when the men’s and women’s departments merged, and then served several terms on the Department’s Chair Advisory Committee and on the School Undergraduate Council.
Dean Summers
Dean is an Indiana girl through and through. Having grown up in North Liberty, she graduated from Indiana
University with your bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Physical Education. Then, it was off
to Madison, where, while finishing her master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, she landed a
full-time position, replacing a faculty member who left.
She joined the faculty at Indiana, where she taught courses in individual sports as well as tests & measurements and sports theory. She reached the rank of associate professor, where she coached and taught in the School of HPER for thirty four years, until retiring in 1980.
Dean was the only woman called to serve on the building committee when HPER moved from the student building to its present location in 1961, she was especially vital to decisions regarding the gymnasium and dance studio facilities. Once again, her role was critical when Title Nine was enacted in 1972. Suddenly, she and her colleagues were called upon to select nine teams and find coaches for them. Personally, Dean is best remembered for launching the women’s tennis and synchronized swimming programs. A speaker at the national synchronized swimming convention during this time, she brought the world champion synchronized solo swimmer to Bloomington.
Title IX legislation were certainly a career highlight. Truly, her efforts to launch and build Indiana University’s women’s athletics programs were ground-breaking then, and, even more impressive as we look back on them.
In just the two sports she helped establish, tennis and synchronized swimming, Indiana University has appeared in a number of regional, state and national championships. These accomplishments would not have been possible without her.