As a young girl growing up in southern Wisconsin in the mid-1980s, Amanda Braun would search the television listings for a collegiate women’s basketball game to tune into.Twenty years later, she has an up-close look at how times have changed.
“They were rare,” Braun, now an associate athletics director at UW-Green Bay, says of those early cable broadcasts. “But if any games would be on at all during the week, I’d figure out a way to see them.”
A 5-foot-8 shooting guard, she excelled on her Brodhead High School basketball squad and accepted an athletic scholarship from Siena University, an NCAA Division I school. Braun got noticed by Siena’s coaches despite not having Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) traveling teams through which to display her skills to college scouts during the off season. Instead, she spent many summer days at playground hoops competing alongside the boys.
“I remember going to a basketball camp in Iowa and meeting all these girls from Iowa who were talking about AAU,” Braun, 31, says. “And I thought, What is that?”
She also vividly recalls questioning why the high school band performed during boys’ homes games but not at the girls’ contests. With the support of their parents, Braun and a male friend approached their principal about the issue.
“At the time, we weren’t demanding about it, but we wondered why is this?” she says. “The band ended up playing at half the girls’ games and half the boys’.”
Obviously, much has changed since Braun was a prep sports star.
Women’s basketball has exploded in popularity and, in turn, has garnered greater media exposure. ESPN and ESPN2 now broadcast all 63 NCAA Division I tournament games, and women who go on to play in the professional WNBA can count on TV coverage, too.
Each year, between 1,200 and 1,500 girls play on Wisconsin AAU teams, according to Keith Noll, the organization’s president. There are more than 60 AAU clubs in the state, with many clubs fielding more than one team.
And, based on observances at local high schools, girls’ varsity teams now get support from pep bands and cheerleaders comparable to that of their male counterparts.
Of course, Braun is thrilled with the gains made in all girls’ and women’s sports, and her career has included providing support for female collegiate athletes and working to ensure they receive fair and equal treatment.
In her sixth year at UW-GB, Braun’s multi-layered position includes serving as the school’s compliance coordinator and senior woman administrator. She supervises 12 of UW-GB’s sports programs, working closely with each team’s coaches on budgeting, scheduling, recruiting and NCAA rules compliance.
Whereas overseeing gender equity (as required by the 1972 federal legislation known as Title IX) is just one part of her job, Braun acknowledges it’s “a hot-button issue. What’s done if [a university] is not in compliance with the law? Quite honestly, until someone brings it up, nothing.
“It comes down to doing the right things and making [college sports] a positive experience for both genders.”
Most recently, Braun proposed and helped organize an event designed to raise money for UW-Green Bay women’s athletic scholarships and elevate awareness of sports’ important influence on the lives of Northeastern Wisconsin women. The inaugural “No Limits! A Celebration of 30 Years of Women and Girls in Sports” on Jan. 28 brought together 265 people for a dinner and reception that featured keynote speaker and Wisconsin native and U.S. Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton.
Three local women – UW-GB volleyball player Krystal Lange, corporate CEO and former Stanford basketball player Stephanie Street of Menasha and avid UW-GB supporter Carol Bush -- received awards for their achievements and contributions in sports. The event generated about $7,000 for the athletics department.
“Similar [programs] have been done in a lot of places, but it was unique for this area and, for me, something we should be doing,” Braun says. “In the other places I have lived, it seemed like the recognition for women’s athletics was greater. So I thought this would be an opportunity to bring it out more into the public eye because so much is focused on male sports.”
UW-GB athletics director Ken Bothof says, “One of Amanda’s strongest attributes is she’s always looking for more opportunities to be involved.
“The banquet brought back alumni, it tied into the community, and it spoke strongly about the involvement of women in our sports programs. It was a great start to an event that will continue to be important to us.”
Braun’s own experience as a competitive athlete ended in disappointment. During her sophomore season at Siena, she suffered what was diagnosed as a pulled hamstring muscle. Despite therapy, the injury lingered. Tests the following summer revealed she actually had an avulsion, in which the hamstring had pulled away from the bone.
She continued rehabilitation through her junior year. Finally near full strength, Braun pulled the other hamstring just before her senior season began. She never started a game for Siena.
“I played here and there when I was fairly healthy, but I never got the full experience,” she says. “That was a hard time for me because I was a gym rat. That’s why I can relate to student athletes here who suffer from injuries or not playing. It really put athletics in perspective for me.”
As important as sports were to Braun, she initially didn’t consider a career in athletics. After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology, she took one year off from school and then enrolled in the law program at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
But while she enjoyed law school, Braun realized that profession didn’t feel right, either.
“I had a contracts professor who wrote a book about the laws of sports,” she says. “We talked a lot. He says, ‘Have you ever thought about getting your master’s in athletics administration?’ I think the words out of my mouth were, ‘I had no idea you could get a degree in that.’
“Obviously I was surrounded at Siena by administrators in athletics and never gave any thought to how they got there.”
Braun completed the master’s program at the University of North Carolina in one year. In addition to her courses, she worked in Duke’s athletics department as an assistant to the senior woman administrator and was the public address announcer for the college’s women’s basketball home games. Through her graduate program, she also assisted with games operations for several sports at UNC and was a regional director for the North Carolina State Games for eight months.
“I packed a bag every morning and came home late at night,” Braun says, recalling the hectic pace. “If I wasn’t at a Duke game, I was at a Carolina game. I probably bit off more than I could chew, but I’d do it all over again because I gained a lot of experience.”
The ability to multi-task suits her well at UW-GB, where she’s the senior ranking female athletics administrator. Braun oversees the CHAMPS/Life Skills program, community outreach events and the student-athlete advisory committee. At least once a year, she travels to competitions involving each team she supervises.
Braun meets with the teams’ head coaches every two to three weeks. She holds regular compliance meetings, during which she updates coaches on any proposed or changed NCAA legislation and gets their feedback.
“She’s done such a wonderful job as a communicator for our department with the coaches about their programs, compliance and academic information,” Bothof says.
Braun says the questions coaches most often ask relate to recruiting regulations, such as when they can contact potential high school recruits by phone or in person, how many of the recruits’ competitions they can attend, and when are the no-contact, or “quiet,” periods.
“More and more [recruiting rules are] getting to be specific to each sport,” Braun says, “which makes it more difficult to track and educate.”
Talking with coaches “is my favorite part of the job, because you get to learn what they’re doing on a daily basis and how things are going inside their programs,” she adds.
Having had a similar collegiate experience, Braun believes she can better identify with student athletes.
“I know what it feels like to go through a full day of classes and a long workout and have homework and social opportunities,” she says. “You understand that, because there often is so much going on, sometimes they make an unwise choice.”
Reflecting on her own career options, Braun is confident she chose the right route.
“I like the variety, the challenges, the excitement that I think sports can bring with its highs and lows,” she says. “There’s a lot of energy on a college campus. That’s why I’m in it.”
