Owens Nauslar Earns Trailblazer Award

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Athletic Department selected JoAnne Owens Nauslar, Ed.D., as the recipient of the 2006-07 Trailblazer Award.  The award began in 2000 to honor outstanding support and generous contributions to women's athletics at the University, and will be presented during the first quarter of the Red-White Spring Football Game on April 15.  Owens Nauslar will also be honored during a pregame ceremony at Friday's 5 p.m. softball game versus Baylor.
 
Owens Nauslar has a long resume of work at the University of Nebraska.  After graduating from Chadron State University with a degree in health and physical education, she moved to Lincoln in 1975 to pursue her master's degree at the University of Nebraska.  In June she was ¬¬¬¬hired as the athletic grounds crew's first female employee working for Bill Shepard, and became a graduate assistant the following August in the university's Health and Physical Education department.  As part of her assistantship, she taught classes, interned for football coach Bob Devaney, and served as an assistant for the women's basketball team.  In addition, she was one of the first women to work in the University's athletic training room. 
 
In 1993, Owens Nauslar was asked to be part of the hiring committee to find a softball coach, and helped select Rhonda Revelle, the current Nebraska head softball coach and Senior Woman Administrator.  Less than a year later, Revelle asked her to help resurrect the then-defunct softball booster program, the On Deck Circle Club, which Owens Nauslar still helps run. 
 
"We would not be where we are in our program without her," Revelle said.
 
Outside of Nebraska athletics, Owens Nauslar has remained heavily involved with sports and fitness, particularly in women's athletics.  At the age of 12, she was a national champion bull rider.  In 1970, she started the women's athletics program at Newcastle High School in Newcastle, Wyo., and served as the coach for the newly formed volleyball, basketball, and track and field teams for three years with no assistants and no pay.  She was a leading advocate for Title IX legislation, which requires schools to provide equal funding for men's and women's sports.  In 1978, she was the first winner of the Lincoln Marathon for Women. 
 
Owens Nauslar remains active in advocating fitness and healthy lifestyles.  She serves on the board of the Husker Athletics Fund, for which she is a past president, and she has been on the Women in Sports Fitness Committee and assisted with the athletic department's life skills program for student-athletes.  "She has done anything and everything to help the Huskers succeed," Revelle said.  In addition, Owens Nauslar is a lifetime member of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport, and currently serves as the Director of Corporate/Community Relations at Walk4Life, Inc., a woman-owned organization to raise awareness of personal activity levels as part of a healthy lifestyle.
 
"JoAnne is a prime example of outstanding dedication to advancing women's athletics," Athletic Director Steve Pederson said.  "She has given so much to helping develop and promote women's athletics, both at the University and throughout the Midwest.  Through her leadership of the HAF and enthusiastic support of all our teams, she has become a special part of Nebraska athletics."
 
Owens Nauslar is the sixth winner of the Trailblazer Award.  Past winners include Barbara Hibner; the Raimondi family in 2001; Ione Bowlin in 2002; Betty Geis, in memory of her daughter Julie, in 2003; Carol Frost in 2004; and Pinnacle Sports Productions in 2005.
 
"To receive the Trailblazer Award from the University of Nebraska, with the strong tradition of excellence and integrity that the university has, is an incredible honor," Owens Nauslar said.  "I will always work hard as a Husker to make sure I'm deserving of such recognition."   She will be accompanied at the Red-White game by her husband, Raymond "Red" Nauslar.