United States Sports Academy Trustee and long-time University of Tennessee Director of Women’s Athletics Joan Cronan is the featured speaker for the Brentwood-Franklin, Tenn., Woman’s Service Club’s annual fundraising event on Tuesday, 2 May 2017.
United States Sports Academy Trustee and long-time University of Tennessee Director of Women’s Athletics Joan Cronan is the featured speaker for the Brentwood-Franklin, Tenn., Woman’s Service Club’s annual “Step Up, It’s a Charity Affair” fundraising event on Tuesday, 2 May 2017.
Cronan will share stories about her long career in sports and sign copies of her book, “Sports is Life with the Volume Turned Up!”
The event will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Brentwood Country Club, located at 5123 Country Club Drive. The fundraiser will also feature the announcement of the Woman’s Club’s Woman of the Year. Tickets can be purchased here.
The Brentwood-Franklin Woman’s Club has been active in Williamson County for 44 years. It is affiliated with The General Federation of Women’s Clubs International. For more information about the group visit its Facebook page.
Cronan, the former women’s athletics director at the University of Tennessee, earlier this year was named the first recipient of the NCAA President’s Pat Summit Award.
Named after the long-time Tennessee women’s basketball coach, the Pat Summit Award honors an association member who has “positively influenced college athletes and their experiences through the individual’s career long commitment to advocating for college sports.”
Cronan, who was named to the Academy’s Board of Trustees in 2014, was the Tennessee women’s athletic director from 1983 until 2012. She is credited with leading the school’s women’s athletic teams through their most successful stretch in which Tennessee won 10 national championships and 29 Southeastern Conference (SEC) championships. Under her leadership, Tennessee expanded women’s varsity sports from seven to 11 and annual giving to support women’s athletics increased to $2 million per year.
During Cronan’s tenure, female student-athletes earned an average 93 percent Graduation Success Rate. She also stressed community service as part of an athletics experience at the university. She now serves as the women’s athletics director emeritus at Tennessee.
Among other roles, Cronan was named the interim vice chancellor and athletic director in 2011, making her the first in the state’s history to hold this title, which helped her earn the Academy’s Carl Maddox Sports Management Award that year. Cronan’s major role in this position was to administer the consolidation of the men’s and women’s athletic departments. She was the first female in the SEC to manage a full athletics department.
Cronan is the former president of both the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and also the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators, an organization which named her the 2005 Athletic Director of the Year. She has also served many roles within the National Collegiate Athletic Association Organization, such as a member of the Division I Leadership Council, Management Council, Executive Committee and the Championship Cabinet.
Cronan was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame in 1998. She was honored in the Louisiana State University’s Alumni Hall of Distinction in 1995 and the College of Charleston Hall of Fame in 1990.
Cronan, a graduate of Louisiana State University, earned her bachelor’s in 1966 and her master’s in 1968, both in physical education. After graduation, Cronan became the women’s head basketball coach and a professor of physical education at the University of Tennessee in 1968.
She held these titles until she left to become the director of women’s athletics at the College of Charleston, where she remained for 10 years before returning to the University of Tennessee in 1983.
