Graham Hays

Carolyn Peck, BA'88, was a standout student-athlete who helped the Commodores beat Pat Summitt’s mighty Lady Vols. She also was the first Black women's basketball coach to win an NCAA Division I women’s basketball national championship—and, at 33, she was the youngest women’s basketball head coach to win a Division I title. These days she can be found behind a microphone for ESPN and the SEC Network. Read More

As student managers for Vanderbilt Athletics, Katelyn Parham and Rhylee Tucker bring out the best in their teams. As young Native Americans, their voices make Vanderbilt better. Read More

This past May, despite skeptics, politics and a global pandemic, Ingram’s Nashville SC opened the doors of the largest soccer-specific stadium in North America: Geodis Park, a 30,000-seat facility. Already a success in the league, having made the playoffs in their first two MLS seasons while playing elsewhere, the “Boys in Gold” finally have a home of their own, where they hope not only to become a community institution but also someday lift trophies. Read More

John R. Ingram, a longtime university benefactor whose generosity continues to shape the historic Vandy United campaign, will be honored as the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame’s Tennessean of the Year on July 23. The event also serves as the induction ceremony for a Hall of Fame class that includes the late David Williams II, former vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletic director, and former Vanderbilt golf and football standout Toby Wilt. Read More

Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and Athletic Director Candice Lee was inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County (Alabama) Athletic Hall of Fame during a ceremony held in April. Read More

Sports icon and champion for equality Billie Jean King joined Candice Lee, vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletic director, for “Game, Set, Match: A New Era of Equality in Sports” on March 1. The conversation, part of the Chancellor’s Lecture Series, was presented in partnership with the Nashville Public Library Foundation’s Votes for Women. Read More

Sports icon and champion of equality Billie Jean King will discuss the past, present and future of sports as part of the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Lecture Series and the university’s yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX. The virtual event on Tuesday, March 1, will feature Vice Chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and Athletic Director Candice Lee in conversation with King. Read More

Years before Vanderbilt basketball head coach Shea Ralph’s generation helped set a standard for women who aspire and act to change the world through sports, her mother, Marsha Lake, traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a team that represented the United States on the world stage for the first time in the Title IX era.   Read More

Moments after Vanderbilt defeated Alabama to reach the final of the 2021 SEC Men’s Golf Championship at Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, Scott Limbaugh served up a seemingly innocuous answer to a question posed in a television interview. “We liked our matchups a lot,” Vanderbilt’s head coach told the… Read More

The first Black woman to receive an athletic scholarship from Vanderbilt, Bender was a member of the nascent women’s basketball program. Today she is the co-chairperson of the Black and Gold Club, Vanderbilt’s alumni association for former student-athletes. Read More

Dixon McDonald, BA'11, and teammates Jimmy Carroll, Todd Hooper and Jono Mawson rowed approximately 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa, to the Caribbean nation of Antigua in a boat only 28 feet long and a little more than 3 feet wide last December for the 2020 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Read More

Before he was the first African American from Vanderbilt to play in the National Football League, spending seven seasons with the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants, Doug Nettles was a very bored college cornerback. The frenetic offenses and complex passing games that are commonplace in modern football were no… Read More

Among Vanderbilt’s all-time fastest swimmers in the 200-meter butterfly, Brooke Ellis is also the first CSET student to achieve highest honors. As she prepared to defend her senior honors thesis in April, Brooke Ellis could call on plenty of Vanderbilt experiences that prepared her for the moment. There was the… Read More

Student-athlete Myra Konte was drafted in January by the North Carolina Courage—her dream team—but will delay her professional soccer career temporarily to continue her education at Vanderbilt. Read More

By Graham Hays As an otherwise unremarkable women’s soccer practice at the University of Pennsylvania came to a close more than a decade ago, Darren Ambrose was frustrated. Maybe even ticked off.The Ivy League program’s coach at the time, Ambrose wasn’t mad about a defensive miscue, an errant… Read More

It started as a Yorkshireman’s attempt to bring something of home to Nashville. More than 50 years later, the Vanderbilt University Rugby Football Club has roots of its own. Read More