Savannah native Karen Rudolph discusses how she helped shape women’s sports in Missouri

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Women’s sports throughout the world continue to grow with notable figures like the WNBA’s Caitlyn Clark and Olympic champion figure skater Alyssa Liu becoming role models to younger generations. Just as important to recognize are the women who played crucial roles in helping create the opportunities available today. One of them just happens to hail from Northwest Missouri, in Savannah native Karen Rudolph.

Rudolph has helped shape women’s sports in multiple roles through the years as an athlete, coach and journalist. Her passion for sports was present early in her childhood even with the lack interscholastic sports for girls.

Once she got to high school in the 1970s, Rudolph was able to be a part of a travel softball team with her twin sister, where they won four state state championships. The team was fully sponsored by a married couple, Nanetta and Warren Carter, who wanted to give young girls the ability to play sports at a high level.

Rudolph credited the team to giving herself and her twin sister, Sharon, opportunities in sports along with instilling life lessons.

“Playing for this team gave me a lot of confidence, not just in my physical abilities,” Rudolph said. “Honestly, I feel like sports gives you so much for your life in terms of discipline, competing and setting and reaching goals.”

When she reached her junior year of high school Rudolph wanted to play another sport, basketball. This came right before Title IX of the education amendments of 1972, a federal civil rights law which prohibited sex-based discrimination within any education based program or activity that received financial assistance.

“I just always loved basketball, I always embodied the mindset of UCLA coach John Wooden,” Rudolph said. “Coach Wooden always said so eloquently ‘I will prepare and then perhaps my chance will come.’ Even though as a kid growing up I didn’t have opportunities to play interscholastic sports I always hoped someday there would be an opportunity. During the winter before their was a high school team, I would take a basketball outside and go to my neighbor’s school. I would take one glove, shoot with my right hand until that hand got cold and then I’d shoot with my left hand. I always told myself ‘I will prepare.’”

After Title IX passed on June 3, 1972, and was applied athletics, Rudolph was determined to bring girls basketball to Savannah her senior year. With many of the smaller surrounding school getting girls high school programs established, Rudolph always wondered why couldn’t her school have a program.

She and her sister put together a petition and asked the roughly 600 students at Savannah High school at the time to help begin a girls basketball program.

“Probably the majority, half or more of those students signed our petition,” Rudolph said. “We presented that along with some statistics that we had worked on like coaching salary, uniform cost and transportation to our local school board. We asked the question ‘Why can’t we have or start girls high school basketball?’ The school board listened and we had a basketball team.”

Following her graduation from Savannah High School, Rudolph attended the University of Missouri where she played women’s basketball. Even with Title IX in place, larger universities were slow to embrace women’s intercollegiate athletics.

Just as she did at Savannah, Rudolph set out to help build and grow women’s sports, this time at the collegiate level.

“During the years I was in school at Mizzou, we really were able to build our program during the Title IX years when everything has to be sorted out,” Rudolph told the News-Press. “I had one of the first women’s athletic scholarships, at Missouri which I had to earn in basketball. My twin sister earned a softball scholarship.”

Though she said the scholarships certainly weren’t anything near what they are today. She said they could get one semester of tuition paid for and then they were offered a work study option for the second semester.

“Men had to come to accept that women wanted to be involved in intercollegiate athletics and sports in general,” she said. “And women had to really pursue those opportunities if they were going to go anywhere.”

Rudolph graduated from Mizzou with a degree in secondary education and physical education, along with a minor in journalism.

During the early stages of her career, she was an assistant editor for Sports Spectrum and the Columbia Daily Tribune. She then transitioned into teaching teaching and coaching high school sports when she moved to California.

Her passion for sports and writing intertwined again many years later.

In 2022, Rudolph and all the members of the first women’s athletics teams at the University of Missouri were invited by the university for a banquet in celebration of Title IX and women’s sports.

It was at that banquet, where Rudolph had a special conversation with Gene Cerra, a key figure in the University of Missouri’s athletics history as the assistant director of athletics/director of women’s athletics.

“For many of us, it was the first time in decades that we had seen each other after graduating,” Rudolph said. “One of the speakers that night was Gene Sarah. She told many different stories that were both funny, engaging and inspiring. Afterward, Gene and I were talking and she kept saying ‘I really need someone to collect all these stories, I’m not getting any younger.’ I looked at her and I said ‘Yes, you do.’”

Thinking she must have had a writer in mind, she didn’t think about it for several months. Three of four months later, her children had said, “Mom, you’ve retired why don’t you think about doing some more writing?’“

Thinking maybe should could help her friend, she reached out to collaborate on the project, now known as “Sidelined No Longer: The Untold Story of Women’s College Sports.” The culmination of the stories of Rudolph’s life and many others in the history of women’s sports has connected to the continued growth of women’s sports.

“Especially with books and long-form journalism, they stay with you much longer than a TikTok or a short video,” Rudolph said. “Books make you think, they take you on a journey from the past to present. This book tells the stories of women’s sports and the connection people want to feel today. They ask the question ‘How did we get here?’”

Rudolph said women’s sports are having a moment in right now with 80 different women’s sports podcasts and 92,000 fans filing into the Nebraska football stadium to watch women’s volleyball, and 55,000 women’s basketball fans when Caitlin Clark was at the University of Iowa in their football stadium. The Kansas City Current is selling out each one of its home matches in a stadium that is privately financed and built specifically for women.

“I think the book really answers the question about what was the foundation and what were the critical decisions that needed to be made during that decade following Title IX,” she said.

Rudolph will be speaking about her book and the significance of the history it explains during a book talk at the Rolling Hills Library — Savannah Branch later this week. She expressed her excitement to share the many stories and messages woven within the history of women’s sports, specifically within Missouri.

“I think the message in the book is really the resiliency of those early pioneers and trailblazers,” Rudolph said. “How important it was to be able to take a stand for what you believed in. I’m grateful for the opportunities that I had to play intercollegiate sports.”

She said that at some point, the administrators at these colleges and universities had to be courageous and take a stand, even if they were in the minority.

“Those of us during that era after Title IX passed wanted to open a door so others behind us didn’t have to knock,” Rudolph said.

She said girls today face a far different future than what she had back in the day.

“It’s changed so much in that regard, but I think the best chapters are yet to be written,” she said.

Rudolph’s book talk event will be from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15, at the Rolling Hills Library -Savannah Branch, located at 514 W. Main St.