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Oral History Interview with Frances Hogan, May 23, 1991, and June 3, 1991. Interview L-0044. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    As the first director of women's athletics at the University of North Carolina, Frances Hogan shouldered the task of finding adequate facilities, equipment, and competitions for sports programs that were generally ignored by the administration. Hogan begins the interview by discussing the few athletic options that were available when she started working for UNC in 1946 and the various ways the coaches worked around limitations. She also compares the $1,000 salaries paid to women's coaches in 1973 with the millions of dollars some coaches received in the early 1990s. Hogan devoted many hours to building the athletic program even when she was paid no salary at all. She explains how she juggled coaching with teaching and family responsibilities, and tells stories of how students adjusted to barely adequate facilities. Some became nationally successful, though female athletic competition was discouraged by many people who thought it was a masculine activity. Hogan continues with a description of the rules governing women's club sports and how those rules changed with the switch to NCAA division sports and with the introduction of Title IX in the 1970s. She feels that Title IX brought necessary improvements that helped students realize the value of women's athletics. In general, she feels the program has been successful for several decades, but she worries that the most publicized male athletics programs receive too much funding.
    Excerpts
  • Intramural and club teams for women have been organized for decades
  • No precedents to follow as first women's athletic director
  • Female athletes find unusual ways to reserve practice space
  • Successes of female athletes were not publicized in the early years
  • Female athletes participated in special tournaments that accommodated the strict rules governing their activities
  • Hogan balanced many responsibilities in spite of small salary
  • Pressure from mother and society against women's athletics
  • Women's athletic facilities inadequate until students file grievances
  • Hogan adjusted to UNC and worked hard for the athletics program's success
  • Hogan's tomboy childhood
  • Factors limiting opportunities in women's athletics
  • Changes in hiring and pay of coaches since the 1950s
  • Title IX led to better facilities and more support for women's athletics
  • Female P.E. teachers sometimes discouraged women's competitive sports
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • Women's rights--North Carolina
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Athletics
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.