Sportswomen of Colorado Will Recognize Female Athletes at Annual Awards Ceremony

Title IX was only two years old when the Sportswomen of Colorado was founded, under the theory that “lifelong participation in sports provides girls and women the confidence, leadership skills, and commitment needed to impact their communities.”

Working with the YWCA of Metropolitan Denver and Gart Bros. Sporting Goods Co., Joan Birkland and the Denver Post's Dorothy Mauk, thought to be the first full-time woman sportswriter at a major U.S. metropolitan daily, started the group in 1974. “It was just basically a couple of people who came together and said, 'We're not really that visible within the community for girls and women in sports,” says Jennifer Anderson-Ehrlic, the current executive director of Sportswomen of Colorado. "And then they started these banquets.”

Sportswomen of Colorado's annual awards celebration was established to "honor outstanding women athletes and contributors to women’s athletics in the state of Colorado.” Close to forty athletes are recognized each year, from a variety of sporting endeavors. “And I haven't heard of any other organization or state that does that to this day,” says Linda Lappe, president of Sportswomen of Colorado. “I mean, you have your skiing hall of fames, and you have your golf hall of fames, and you have kind of all the different sports that each have their recognition event. But in terms of being able to do that at a statewide level in the way that we do it, where we bring in Missy Franklin as the most promising athlete when she was eleven or twelve, all the way to honoring a great-grandmother who was 84 and a world champion, 400-meter runner, right? It's pretty amazing the amount of women that we have in Colorado, and also that we get to honor them and just bring attention to what they're doing.”

The selection committee includes some pretty amazing people, too, including the Post’s Kyle Newman, Bronco sideline reporter Susie Wargin, and CBS Colorado’s Romi Bean, who go through close to 200 nominations.

“And so then our selection committee comes together and we hammer it out,” Anderson-Ehrlich says. “We go through everything. And you know there's going to be a couple that you're like, okay, that's a no-brainer. And then there are others where you're like, well, we can't really honor two of the same carbon-copy athletes. And then how do you choose? It can get really tricky."

But Lappe's excited about this year's honorees, including athletes from last year's Olympic and Paralympic Games: team pursuit track cyclist Chloe Dygert, who won a gold medal in the Paris Olympics, and Hailey Danz, who captured a first-place finish at the 2024 World Triathlon Para Series and won gold at the Paris Paralympic Games.

“So it's a very exciting year in terms of that,” Lappe explains. “We had so many amazing Olympic athletes from Colorado that we'll be able to honor, as well as Paralympians."

In addition to handing out awards, Sportswomen of Colorado provides summer sports-camp scholarships for girls between the ages of eight and thirteen; it has given over 850 scholarships since the program was launched in 2001. And since 2022, its offered sports clinics for elementary-school students in partnership with institutions of higher education such as the University of Denver, Colorado College and the University of Northern Colorado.

Anderson-Ehrlich believes the lessons learned through participating in sports help later in overcoming life’s challenges. “And I think I know the benefits of sports,” she adds. “It's friendship, it's learning how to just show up. Sometimes the hardest part in life is just showing up, right? It's learning to deal with nervous feelings that might be considered, you know, anxious feelings. Reframing that, it's a way to prepare. It's learning how to lose, it's grit, it's resilience.”

Sportswomen of Colorado 51st annual awards celebration, 5:30 p.m. Sunday, March 9, Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center; find more information here.