Jane Wahl, the woman who helped build women’s athletics at Colorado from the ground up, has died. Wahl passed away on August 26 in Gothenburg, Neb., at 81.
Her name sits deep in CU history. Wahl was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019, but long before that honor, she was the person tasked with helping guide the university through the Title IX era.
She became Coordinator of Women’s Sports in 1974 under the CU Rec Center, then was officially named the first women’s athletic director in school history a year later. She held that job from 1975 to 1979.
The assignment was anything but simple. At first, her role lived entirely inside the rec center.
Then it became a split job between the Rec Center and the Athletic Department before all varsity sports were eventually brought together under one umbrella. Along the way, Wahl was responsible for hiring coaches for the club sports that would become varsity programs, then working with those teams on budgets, schedules and travel.
Title IX had been passed in 1972, and schools faced a summer 1978 deadline to comply or risk losing federal funding. Wahl became the point person for bringing Colorado into compliance and managing the move toward a merged athletic structure with the men’s program. She also helped secure CU’s membership in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the women’s version of the NCAA, as well as the Intermountain Conference, whose members included schools in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Idaho and New Mexico.
The early CU women’s programs found success quickly. Basketball, cross country, gymnastics, skiing, tennis and track were among the sports that thrived during those formative years.
Wahl also helped expand the budget. Working with men’s athletic director Eddie Crowder, she grew the women’s budget from less than $100,000 when she arrived to more than four times that amount in 1978-79, when the women’s varsity sports were officially merged with the men’s program.
Her work drew recognition later in life. In 2013, Sportswomen of Colorado gave her the Dorothy Mauk Pioneer Award for her role in launching and advancing women’s varsity athletics at Colorado. A year later, CU created an award in her name, the Jane Wahl Legacy Award, which is presented to a member of the CU women’s basketball community whose achievements bring honor and recognition to the university and CU Athletics.
Ceal Barry, CU’s longtime women’s basketball coach and administrator, praised Wahl’s impact in direct terms: "Jane Wahl worked tirelessly alongside Eddie Crowder from 1974 to 1979 to assist in meeting mandates from the U.S. Department of Education to fulfill the requirements of Title IX," said Ceal Barry, CU's long-time women's basketball coach and administrator. "She was a real force for the university regarding gender equity in the 70s."
Barry also explained why the award was created in Wahl’s honor. "We felt it was appropriate as Jane was the person responsible for ushering in all the various requirements of Title IX and advocating for equity for women competing at the collegiate level."
When Wahl was inducted into the CU Hall of Fame, she spoke about the path that brought her there. "This is a virtual dream come true," Wahl said at her CU Hall of Fame induction.
"I was a youngster on the flat plains of Nebraska who loved running, swinging the bat and playing shortstop. I wanted other women to experience that same joy.
Opportunities beyond my imagination soon unfolded. I am honored that I played a part in developing the athletic institution here at the University of Colorado that has benefited many in so many ways."
After stepping down in the spring of 1979, Wahl stayed at CU long enough to finish her Doctorate of Education in August 1981. Her dissertation focused on Title IX and looked at the status of women’s intercollegiate athletic programs around the country after the law was passed.
From there, her career kept moving. She was hired at Linfield (Ore.)
College as Associate Professor of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Women’s Athletic Director and Softball Coach. Two years later, she returned to Nebraska and to her roots in Eustis.
Colorado kept pulling her back. In 1986, she returned to the state and worked in administration at C Lazy U Guest Ranch in Granby, spending five years meeting the requirements that helped keep the ranch a 5-Star/5-Diamond-ranked resort facility. In 1991, she went back to Eustis to help care for her mother while living near her father during the final months of his life.
She later returned to Colorado again, this time to Grand County, where she worked as a pastor’s secretary at Winter Park Christian Church. She stayed in the state through 2001, working and caring for an aging aunt and then her mother.
When it became clear in 2001 that her mother was more comfortable at home in Eustis, they moved back there until both died in 2004. Wahl then moved to Gothenburg, where she cared for clients under the Agency on Aging.
Along the way, she also traveled widely, visiting Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Israel and Hawaii.
Wahl was born Jane Kathleen Wahl in Lexington, Neb., in 1945, the nearest hospital to Eustis, where she grew up on a farm. She graduated from Eustis High School in 1963, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Health, Physical Education and Recreation from Kearney State College, now the University of Nebraska - Kearney, in 1967, and completed a Master of Arts in the same field from Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado, in 1968. Before joining CU, she spent six years teaching and coaching at Thornridge High School in Dolton, Ill.
She is survived by her older sister DeeAnn (Oliver) Holbein of Cozad, Nebraska, her younger brother Jon Wahl of Eustis, two nieces, two nephews, six great-nieces, two great-nephews and multiple great-great nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, Daniel and Louise (nee Uebele) Wahl, and her grandparents, Jacob and Pauline (nee Zeeh) Wahl and Ernest and Louise (nee Gutekunst) Uebele.
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