To commemorate 50 years of Title IX, Nebraska will celebrate a trailblazer in women's athletics at every home football game. This week, Carol Frost will be recognized and honored during the game against Georgia Southern.
A native of Cedar Rapids, Neb., Carol Frost served as a trailblazer for women's athletes in the state of Nebraska. She attended the University of Nebraska, along with her husband Larry, who played football under coaches Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne, but she never competed because women's athletics didn't exist in the 1960s.
"It was just accepted," Carol said. "I was lucky that I had a person from Cedar Rapids, Neb., who started a girls track program, and for the four years I was here at Nebraska, I was on three national track teams, won two national championships, won the Pan-American Gold and qualified for the Olympics."
That, she said, is why she didn't harbor ill feelings for the lack of women's sports at her school.
"I guess I just counted my blessings," she said, "because there wasn't another girl in the city of Lincoln that was competing in anything. I consider myself lucky as opposed to being angry about anything."
Carol won a gold medal in the discus at the 1967 Pan American Games – the same year she graduated from Nebraska – and she was a four-time U.S. champion in the event from 1966 to 1970.
"Mom's the best athlete in the family," Scott said. "You can tell I'm a little proud of her and Dad. She deserves every accolade she gets. When she was doing the things she did, there weren't opportunities for women in sports. There were even some people that frowned upon it.
"So she really had to do everything on her own and independently, and for what she accomplished under those circumstances is amazing. So I'm proud of her."
While track became the sport that presented Carol her first competitive opportunity, the sports she would have played first, if she could, were basketball and softball. She remembers throwing thousands of softballs at the base of the family's house, and the amount of manure she wiped off basketballs as she took shots in the corncrib.
"There was nothing that was going to stop me from doing what I loved," she said of playing sports growing up.
She later returned to Nebraska to serve as coach for the women's cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field teams – for an annual salary of $2,000. Unable to afford a babysitter, Carol routinely brought her sons Steve and Scott to practices, where they ran around the track.
It's how they earned their nicknames, Zap and Zip, respectively.
Carol also had an older brother, Jerry Moseke, who earned a basketball scholarship to Norfolk Community College. She credits him for getting her started in athletics. Jerry, a junior American Legion pitcher, threw 80-mile-an-hour fastballs that Carol would catch as a 10-year-old.
"We had a few bruises out of that one," she said.
Carol, too, could throw about anything, which came in handy when, as an assistant high school football coach for her husband Larry in O'Neill, she had to prove herself to the boys before earning acceptance.
"I'd been throwing patterns to Larry, while he was at the University," she said of her longtime husband, "and when they saw me throw 40-yard passes and 10-yard outs, doubts probably receded then."
Carol named one of the moments that has stuck to her the most throughout her lifetime of athletics was participating in the opening ceremonies of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
"You can't top that as an athlete," she said. "It was an awesome experience."
Carol, who was the first female Olympian from the state of Nebraska, expressed how Title IX has changed the landscape of women's athletics.
"I just wish I had the opportunities that girls have now," she said. "Had sports been what they were even in 1990 compared to what they were when I graduated in 1965… I would have loved to have a scholarship to the University of Nebraska for basketball or softball. Those were my first two loves, but there was no opportunity, so I ended up going to the Olympics in track and field because the opportunity was there."
She continues to compete at the international level and currently holds the U.S. record in both the shot and discus for her age division.
Carol also expressed her gratitude to the University of Nebraska.
"It's given me the opportunity to do all the things in life that I wanted to do," Carol said. "I have my bachelor's degree, I have my master's degree, my husband graduated and played under Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne and now my son is coaching at the University of Nebraska.
"This is home. This is what we know."