With Missouri S&T celebrating its 150^th anniversary over the next year, we will produce a series of articles highlighting various aspects and events within athletics that have taken place over the span of the university's history.  The second article in the series looks at the start of women's athletics at the university.

Two years after the advent of Title IX, the University of Missouri-Rolla – now known as Missouri S&T – sent a women's athletic team into play for the first time.  A total of 15 student-athletes made up the first volleyball team to play for the institution in the fall of 1974.

A few months later, the first women's basketball team took to the floor and with those two sports underway, women's athletics was part of the environment at the university.

Today, the athletic program at Missouri S&T consists of seven women's teams after golf was added to the mix in the fall of 2017.  The women's program saw its largest growth in the 1980s with the establishment of teams in soccer, softball, cross country, tennis (later discontinued) and track & field.  The volleyball program, which had been discontinued following the 1977 season, was resumed in 2007 and the golf program followed a decade later.

Prior to the start of the volleyball and basketball programs, the only possibilities for women to compete athletically came with intramural programs.  The belief at that time was that there was a great opportunity for women to compete on an intercollegiate level and that starting programs in order to do so was logically the next step.

Annette Caruso, who had taught at Centre College in Kentucky, was hired to coach the first women's teams at the university and viewed it as a chance to build something special.

"The main factor will be the student interest," Caruso was quoted as saying in the August 28, 1974 edition of the Missouri Miner.  "There are unlimited possibilities.  I'm open to any suggestion – the only qualification is that we must have sustained interest as it takes two or three years to build up a new sport.

"However, I believe that there is much athletic potential among the female population here and I want to see that everyone who wants to has a chance to develop to their full potential," she added.

On June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments, which was a comprehensive federal law that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education or activity.

Thus, the first volleyball team began in the fall of 1974 and the first women's basketball contest with a roster of 12 players in that inaugural season took place in January 1975.  Five individuals – Joy Ewens, Debbie Gower, Carol Russell, Sally Schwager and Terry Vaughan – played on both the volleyball and basketball squads that debuted in the 1974-75 academic year.

The first teams also had success on the playing field.  By year three, the volleyball team had won 14 matches and the women's basketball team won 12 games in its fourth year of play and 15 a year later.

At first, women's teams across the country did not have a strong national organization to back them and provide those student-athletes championship opportunities.  In 1967, the Division for Girls and Women in Sports appointed a Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics (CISW, later renamed CIAW) to assist in conducting intercollegiate competitions and as women's athletics grew, the movement was working to building a status that men's programs held with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA.

The CIAW was replaced in 1971 by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, or AIAW, which set the stage for the battle between that organization and the NCAA for control of women's athletics for the next decade.  By 1982, the NCAA won the tug-of-war with the AIAW – which did provide championship opportunities for numerous women sports – leading to the AIAW to cease operations and putting all women's sports under the NCAA's umbrella as it was unable to provide the same amount of funding for championship events that the NCAA could.

At that point in time, the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the conference that the men's programs at the university has been competing in, began sponsoring women's championships in several sports.

During its history, the women's programs at Missouri S&T have captured division championships in basketball and volleyball, made NCAA Tournament appearances in basketball (three times), volleyball (twice), softball and had national qualifiers in cross country and track & field.  During its history, Missouri S&T also seen many of its women earn individual honors, including 20 that reached All-America status, 23 who landed Academic All-America honors that included Jennifer Costello earning the Academic All-America of the Year award in 2012 and the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award from the Great Lakes Valley Conference in 2013, as well as five Scholar-Athlete of the Year selections from the GLVC.