In the long and storied history of women's sports at Austin Peay, no one fought harder for equality, for the simple and sometimes taken-for-granted ability for women to play the game, than Lin Dunn. 

The reason she fought as hard as she did is so others wouldn't have to. 

Dunn, who will be recognized for her work as a pioneer of women's sports at the June 1 Ohio Valley Conference Title IX luncheon in Nashville, has been a pioneer in women's sports for over half-a-century, from her early career at Austin Peay with no money, resources or—I'm sad to report—support, to coaching the U.S. Women's National Team, winning a WNBA title as a head coach or being coaxed out of retirement by that same franchise, the Indiana Fever, to act as general manager after Tamika Catchings stepped down in February. It is the very nature of a success story for the Dresden, Tennessee native, who ranks alongside legends of both the state and the sport like Pat Summit, Dr. Nancy Lay and Bettye Giles for what she did for the game and the women who play it. 

But before anyone runs away with the idea that Dunn has allowed her successes to dull her continued fight for equality, think again. She's happy to acknowledge it's a better landscape than the one she entered 52 years ago; but that also serves to illustrate how far behind women's sport was at the time and how far it still has to go. 

"[Before Title IX] it was a very difficult time because there were very few resources at most universities, very few [women's] teams," Dunn said. "I wasn't even a full-time coach—I was hired to teach physical education and was the cheerleader sponsor. But I wanted the women to have an opportunity to compete, so I got permission to coach the volleyball, basketball and softball teams. I didn't get paid for that; I was a volunteer, so you can imagine the challenges I had. 

Let's pause right here and attempt to imagine this scenario playing out in 2022. You have a professor, teaching eight one-hour classes each week and driving the cheerleaders to and from football and men's basketball games. On top of that, said professor/coach elects to start up three different sports, serving as coach, manager and trainer, for each, for free, and spent what little extra time she had available scrounging for everything she would need to give those programs the bare minimum in equipment. Big donors? Forget it. State funding? Not in that era. It was Dunn, her ingenuity and her bulldog determination that got those programs going. 

Here's an example: Dunn, a coach fed up with having to tape numbers to pennies and call the hideous result uniforms, bought some beautiful red unis once, which she used for both basketball and volleyball. She also didn't tell anyone what she was doing and instead billed the athletic department, a bill which went unpaid for a few years since no one could figure out exactly what had been purchased or by whom. 

"If it wasn't for Lin, I don't think athletics at Austin Peay would have gotten started when it did," said Cheryl Holt, former Austin Peay Senior Woman Administrator and longtime Dunn confidante. "She took the back seat out of her car and put volleyballs in it. She wanted these girls to have the chance to participate."

Dunn was more straightforward—"I don't know how I did it.

"Before Title IX, it was acceptable behavior to treat women as second, third or fourth class when it came to sports. There was no interest whatsoever in providing any type of equitable opportunity; you almost had to beg to have a team, beg to use the facility. We had no assistants or budget. It was a real challenging time, but there were women who wanted to play and compete in those three sports and I worked really hard to give them the opportunity, and I don't regret what we had to do. I would slip into the men's locker room at night and take some of the equipment I knew they didn't want, because it was old and I could use it."

It's possible Dunn was so dogged in chasing equality because there was precious little of it in her background. In her native Alabama, where she lived until her family moved to Tennessee ahead of her junior year of high school, it was actually illegal—ILLEGAL—for girls to play high school sports when Dunn was growing up. She played the old 6-on-6 version of the game—three players on one side of the court, three on the other, no crossing halfcourt—because that's what was available. Because science, apparently. 

Because the prevailing thought of the time was, "If girls played full court, they'd sweat; if they sweated, they'd faint and they'd die," Dunn said. "They didn't think women had the stamina to do that."

Title IX may have been ratified as the law of the land in 1972, but change did not come overnight—or somewhat longer, in many cases. 

"Even though Title IX had passed, [many schools] didn't think it was valid and totally ignored it," Dunn said. "The only way you could get some relief was to file a lawsuit, and nobody wanted to file a lawsuit and risk losing their job. It's 50 years later and we still don't have universities in compliance with Title IX; that shows you how hard it's been to get people to follow the law." 

Dunn is also keenly aware of how precious Title IX is; as a bit of legislation, it can always be undone. If it were undone, the result for women's sport could well be disastrous. 

"We have to treasure Title IX, make sure it isn't tampered with, amended or removed," Dunn said. "We have to be ever-vigilant. Young people today have to educate themselves on Title IX and how it's impacted the lives of girls and women for over 50 years. We cannot let it be changed in any form or fashion."

At every collegiate stop after her time at Austin Peay—Ole Miss, Miami and Purdue before joining the professional ranks—Dunn was an agitator, an instigator and a warrior for Title IX and equality as a whole. Maybe this didn't win her many friends at the time, but that wasn't what she was being asked to do.

In many cases, she was handed an impossible task and ordered to make the best of it. And did, time after time. 

"Every place I coached, at least in college, it was always a battle for the bare necessities, on into the 1990s," Dunn said. "It was always a fight for something, and I took on that role. It never failed that whenever I left a place, things had gotten better from the time I got there to the time I left. More opportunities, more equity. I'm proud of it. If someone asked if I had it to do over again, what would I do? I'd fight even harder." 

Or as Holt succinctly puts it, "She initiated things. She believes so strongly in equality. She wasn't going to take no for an answer. She's absolutely crazy, but the good kind of crazy." 

There is so much to the Tale of Lin Dunn. The Title IX battles. The FIBA World Championships in 1990 and the Olympics in 1992. Becoming a pioneering figure in women's professional basketball, first in the ABL and then in the WNBA, where she became the first head coach and general manager of the Seattle Storm. Winning a title with the Fever. So many different Halls of Fame, including Austin Peay and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. There's little doubt, in terms of her resume' and the respect she garnered among her peers, that Lin Dunn left an indelible mark on the landscape of women's sports in the United States. 

Dunn, who returned to Indianapolis to become general manager after spending the first few seasons of her return to the court as an assistant at Kentucky and recently celebrated her 75^th birthday, acknowledges she's taking the final laps of generation-spanning career that has touched the lives of people she has never even met. Anyone who picks up and carries on the fight that she's made her life's work 

"The opportunities we have [now] in soccer and golf and tennis and the WNBA are directly related to the passage of Title IX," she said. "Without Title IX, there is no WNBA; there is no fighting (by the US Women's National Soccer Team) for equal pay. I'm seeing the benefits of all those years of hard work and fighting for opportunities and equity. I'm counting on these people to continue the fight, to continue to make sure everyone understands the importance of equality and equity when it comes to opportunities for men and women."