Tony Bittle, a senior library specialist at SIU Carbondale’s Morris Library, and Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, associate dean of library affairs, show SIU Women’s Rugby Club memorabilia included in the “With You” exhibition, which highlights the accomplishments of women in sports over the last 50 years. (Photo by Russell Bailey; rugby team photo provided)
April 25, 2025
SIU exhibition celebrates the rise of women’s sports over five decades
CARBONDALE, Ill. — An exhibition in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Morris Library through June is celebrating the rise of women’s sports over the last 50 years and honoring trailblazing women boxers and the SIU Women’s Rugby Club.
“With You,” in the library’s Hall of Presidents and Chancellors, highlights the accomplishments of women in sports and traces the impact of Title IX legislation dating back to its passage in 1972.
A reception, with a Q&A, from 1 to 4 p.m. Friday, May 2, in the library’s rotunda will include SIU Carbondale alumnae Britt VanBuskirk and Renee Flottman, who were part of the first generation of women’s rugby players at SIU, said Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, associate dean of library affairs.
Bobbi Knapp, an associate professor of sport studies at SIU Carbondale, will be among the speakers. Knapp will discuss the history of women’s physical education and women’s athletics at SIU Carbondale as it relates to a research project she is working on as part of the Dorothy Davies Hall Centennial in 2025. She will also discuss the impact of laws such as Title IX and organizations, including the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which governed women’s college sports from 1971 to 1983 before it absorbed into the NCAA.
In sharing the impact sports had on her life and the opportunities it can lead to, VanBuskirk said she will also explain “that the opportunity to compete in sports has not always been there, and it is something that women had to fight for back in the 1970s.”
Title IX made a “huge impact on girls’ and women’s opportunities in sports and in academics,” Knapp said.
“In my research over the last couple of decades, I have noticed that there have always been women who have fought for and taken the opportunities to be physically active, and when society has cracked a door open to such opportunities, there have been girls and women there to push the door further for more women to have such opportunities,” Knapp said.
Highlighting SIU women’s rugby, boxing
The exhibition includes informational posters, stories and artifacts, including rugby uniforms, T-shirts (including one from Mainstreet East) and trophies (including one from Mainstreet East, courtesy of Paulette Curkin) that span three generations of SIU Women’s Rugby Club players from the 1980s to the 2000s. Books about Title IX, women’s sports and women boxers have been donated and are on display, along with a slideshow of first-generation rugby players on the field. The donated books will be cataloged and available in the library’s Special Collections Research Center later this year.
Flottman and VanBuskirk were close friends and teammates on early SIU female rugby teams in the early to mid-1980s. Flottman, who earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration, worked with VanBuskirk in interviewing and creating the profiles and graphic designs for the posters in the project that took more than a year.
“I had the pleasure of reconnecting with many amazing comrades — for which I am forever grateful — as well as SIU for offering a club sport that went well beyond my collegiate days into other city clubs,” said Flottman, who also played with the St. Louis Rugby Club.
Telling stories of struggle, success
Hamilton-Brehm reached out to VanBuskirk, who connected with SIU when she moved to Carbondale to live with her family, who were SIU faculty. In addition to rugby club activities, VanBuskirk’s 25-year boxing career included being the first female welterweight champion in California in 1979. A 2016 inductee into the Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, VanBuskirk and five other female boxers are featured as part of the exhibit “sharing their struggles over many years of being in a sport that was dominated by men,” Flottman said.
“We recruited 15 of our rugby team buddies from multiple generations and the ‘With You’ project came to life,” she said.
“We are honored to be asked to tell our stories in the current environment — it is important people understand the incredible strides we have made in women’s sports and what Title IX, with all of its ins and outs, has given us,” Flottman said. “We are hoping that some of the current students come to see the many trailblazers in front of them paving the way for them to enjoy their passions as female athletes.”
The SIU Women’s Rugby Club remains active in 2025.
Working to honor trailblazers
Knapp, along with Julie Partridge, a professor and interim director in the School of Human Sciences, are working on applying for Dorothy Davies Hall to be recognized as a culturally significant landmark. Knapp is compiling a historical record of SIU women’s sports pioneers Dorothy Davies and Charlotte West, the Physical Education for Women Department (where women’s athletics originated at SIU) and the Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics Department (which was also housed at Davies Hall). The focus is on West’s role in that history and the importance of gender equity in sport.
Students in Knapp’s graduate courses last fall and this semester have done work to help uncover and highlight the history of women’s physical education and women’s athletics at SIU, Knapp said.
“All of this, as well as my own research efforts, will contribute to creating the first history of women’s physical education and sport at SIU, through which I hope to show why such programs were important to SIU and how many of the people involved in each program were of national significance,” Knapp said.
(Editor’s note: Bobbi Knapp’s last name is pronounced nap.)