Sandy Ringer EISENHOWER HIGH SCHOOL

Sandy Ringer spent her career elevating the impact of women and girls in youth sports, paving the way for generations of female sportswriters in Washington state and across the country. A native of Yakima, Sandy graduated from Eisenhower High School in 1971, where she took part in pre-Title IX volleyball and basketball programs.

After high school, she attended Washington State University, where she stepped off the court and onto the sidelines, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Communications (1975) along the way. Meanwhile, Sandy’s knack for reporting and writing began to catch public attention. By the time she graduated, she’d become the first female sports editor of the Daily Evergreen – WSU’s student-led newspaper.

Sandy continued her journalism career after college, covering general news and high school sports at a weekly paper in Madras, Ore.  After nearly two years, she decided to move closer to home and took a similar position with the Toppenish Review, another weekly paper, covering general news and prep sports.

It was just six months later that Sandy got what she considered her first big break – a chance to cover prep sports full-time as sports editor of the Suburban Times, a twice-weekly newspaper in Lakewood. She focused on the high schools within the coverage area (Lakes, Clover Park and Charles Wright) and also featured some Pacific Lutheran University sports.

In 1981, Sandy joined the Valley Newspapers sports staff and primarily covered football, basketball, and baseball. After six years with Valley Newspapers, Sandy landed her “dream job” with The Seattle Times. She was hired as the South Bureau sports reporter in July of 1987, focusing on high schools throughout South King County.

Sandy was presented the Washington State Football Coaches Association Silver Helmet Award (1991) for outstanding coverage of high school football and related youth activities. She also received The Washington State Wrestling Coaches Association Media Award (2003) for outstanding coverage of high school wrestling, including a memorable feature on the WIAA 50 Years of Wrestling celebration. The Washington State Baseball Coaches Association named Sandy the “Jim Reding Media Commitment Award” (2010) for outstanding coverage of prep baseball.

Sandy was honored with the proclamation made by Seattle City Council to have February 7 known as Sandy Ringer Day (2014) in appreciation of her “dedication and commitment,” in particular to coverage of girls sports. Since her pre-Title IX playing days, Sandy’s contributions have played a critical role in exposing the brilliance and importance of women and girls in Washington state high school sports.

Sarah Martinez MOUNT RAINIER HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER

Long before she took over as the head coach of Yale’s women’s soccer program – even before she became both the athletic and emotional student leader of her college team – Sarah Martinez had a deep impact on the lives of young women. As the multi-season captain of the Mount Rainier High School girls soccer team, from a young age she began shaping the lives of female student-athletes. And she hasn’t looked back since.

Of course, Martinez backed up her leadership role with exceptional on-field performances. She dominated the Seamount League midfield throughout her junior and senior seasons of high school, snagging First-Team All-State Honors en route to league Co-MVP status. Her talents earned her recognition on the Seattle Times’ All-Area Team, feeding her recruitment and eventual commitment to the University of Washington.

In many ways, her college experience mirrored that of her high school days, just at a higher level. Martinez spent her collegiate junior and senior seasons also as team captain, earning All-Pac-12 Second-Team honors in the process. After both of those seasons, she was named the UW’s Most Inspirational Female Athlete, a reflection and foreshadowing of her influence on women and girls across the sport of soccer.

For five years following her undergraduate experience, Martinez stayed in Seattle, coaching soccer while working towards a Master’s Degree in the Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership program at the UW. In 2016, she moved to New York, where she was a member of her conference’s Coaching Staff of the Year as an assistant at Stony Brook University.

Since taking over as head coach at Yale in December of 2019, the momentum of Martinez's influence on female athletes has continued to build. In an employee spotlight interview at Yale, Martinez described her commitment to the holistic development of student-athletes, a job she believes she was born to do.

“Developing and empowering the young women of my program is my biggest role,” she said. “What gives me all my purpose is watching young women leave as confident women who are ready to change the world.”

Since she roamed the pitch at Mount Rainier High, Martinez’s contributions to female student-athletes have been wide-ranging, both in geographical reach and emotional impact. And, at just 30 years of age, she’s just getting started.

Laurie Creighton OLYMPIA HIGH SCHOOL VOLLEYBALL

And for her strength and inspiration as a role model for female athletes and coaches, Creighton has helped cement the foundation of Title IX trailblazers in Washington state athletics.

Rebekah Monette NEAH BAY HIGH SCHOOL VOLLEYBALL

For this week’s International Women’s Day edition of our TitleIXat50 celebration, we’re recognizing legendary volleyball coach Rebekah Monette for her persevering, lifelong devotion to student-athletes across the Neah Bay community.

In-between full-time duties as Athletic Director and tribal historic program manager, Monette has coached the Neah Bay Red Devil volleyball team since the 1990s.  She describes her coaching style as “a combination of consistency, mentorship, and high expectations.” Rebekah and her assistant have been a team for over 10 years, each with a deep understanding of the unique experiences – as well as challenges – that their student-athletes face as young girls growing up in a shared tribal community.

Monette and her athletes share the connection of a tightly knit, remote community with multigenerational homes and certain limitations in access to resources. While raising her sons and opening her home to others in need, Rebekah has experienced first-hand the balance between honoring Makah culture and exploring opportunities beyond the borders of the reservation.

One of her sons, Josh, studied linguistics at Dartmouth, where he’d committed to the deep traditions of the Neah Bay community in order to bring the Makah language to full fruition back home. A respected, loving tribal member, Josh was just 19 years old when he lost his life gathering food off the shores of Neah Bay. Facing one of the greatest challenges of her life, Rebekah worked through her grief with her community of student-athletes. She continued coaching, remembering what Josh had told her years earlier when she’d considered hanging up her whistle to spend more time with family: “They need you.”

“Have a mentor, be a mentor.” Rebekah carries this philosophy close to her heart. As an experienced and trusted advisor, Rebekah learned from her own coach how to support those in need, meeting them where they’re at with a stable foundation of guidance. The simplest – yet most difficult – life lesson she seeks to instill in her players reflects sport in its purest form: “Control what you can control.”

This philosophy has helped Rebekah develop players into future coaches, some of whom she has hired and worked with for the past decade or more. It has also gifted Rebekah with the ability to provide once-in-a-lifetime experiences for the young athletes at Neah Bay High School and beyond. Last month, Rebekah led the Red Devils to an 11-0 record in the North Olympic 1B League and a #5 Seed in the WIAA State Volleyball Tournament.

Beyond just athletic success, though, the volleyball players in Neah Bay need Rebekah Monette. Having coached as long as she has, it can be difficult for a mentor to step back and take in the view from the top. As their state tournament run came to a close in November, one of her athletes was forced to miss the final game due to injury. When the athlete suggested that maybe she should have played the game even while injured, Rebekah put her arm around the player and simply reminded her, “You are more important than any game.”

Through loss, love, and selfless giving, Rebekah will always be there to provide a safe place of learning and opportunity for her girls, both as volleyball players and people.

Yonni Mills BOTHELL HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC DIRECTOR

In the early years of Title IX legislation, young female athletes across Washington state seized any opportunity to finally compete in high school sports. For many, however, the initial excitement evaporated with the realization that participation hadn’t quite translated into recognition.

For Yonni Mills, Title IX meant the opportunity to officially compete in the sports she’d already been playing for years. Basketball, volleyball, track and field – if they were offering it, she was doing it. After she graduated from Shorecrest High School in 1975, Mills accepted an academic scholarship and moved to Pullman, where she earned a spot on the Washington State Varsity Volleyball Team.

Unfortunately, treatment of female athletes, varsity or otherwise, remained so unfair that it bordered on unsafe. From frigid treks across campus to an overpriced food court, to sparse storage spaces in grimy locker rooms, Mills and her teammates battled gender inequity in all aspects of their lives.

When her school continuously neglected to grant her a varsity letter, even withholding her letterman’s jacket, Mills’ frustration began to boil over. One day, a long-time WSU professor and track coach belittled the accomplishments of Mills’ teammate during class, griping about the school’s baseline inclusion of female athletes at the expense of funding for men’s sports. Mills shot up out of her seat, slamming her textbook shut. ”You know what? She placed second in Nationals. How ‘bout ‘Congratulations?’” she asked, storming out of the room.

“Why I did it, I have no idea, but I guess I was just done,” she recalled later. “I mean, we just put up with it for literally months. I think it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

For four years, Mills and the WSU Women’s Volleyball Team swam upstream through a torrent of injustice – and achieved great success, eventually placing at the national tournament. After college, Mills returned to the Seattle area, where she coached and eventually became the Athletic Director at Bothell High School. But among the expansive assortment of accolades lining her office, the one document still glaringly absent from Mills’ desk and bookshelf was a collegiate varsity letter. Then, one day in 2007, she received a phone call from WSU. They were inviting her to a ceremony to award her and her teammates the varsity letters they’d earned thirty years earlier.

So, nearly three decades after her final game in the Crimson-and-Silver, Mills returned to Pullman to finally retrieve her recognition of greatness. To this day, the letter remains on display in Mills’ office at Bothell High School.

“There are still moments where people have to do what Yonni did, and stand up to something,” said WIAA Assistant Executive Director BJ Kuntz. “People just get fed up. They say something, and they do something. And I think people are more and more courageous to do that."

Joyce Walker GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL

As a Black woman in the 1970s and ‘80s, Joyce Walker confidently crushed any and all ignorant misconceptions about her potential as an athlete or community member. Now, over 40 years after her first game at Garfield High School, Walker remains perhaps the most decorated basketball player – of any level or gender – to ever compete in the state of Washington. 

A three-time All-American, Walker capped off her high school years by leading Garfield to an undefeated season and 3A State Championship victory, in which she set State Tournament records with 40 points, 17 field goals, and 33 field goal attempts. After that season, the Seattle legend took her talents down south to play for LSU – a decision that was largely unpopular among her supporters.

“Don’t go down south – don’t do it,” she said in a previous interview from LSU, quoting her advisors’ misguided, racially charged warnings. “And I wanted to go. I just wanted to get away.”

So, without flinching, Walker left the Pacific Northwest and promptly began her dominance of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). In her four years with the Tigers, she earned honors as an All-SEC athlete three times and All-American twice, leading the conference in scoring for three consecutive years. After college, Walker represented the United States on numerous national teams, including the 1984 Olympic Games, and later became the second woman to make the roster of the legendary Harlem Globetrotters’ basketball team.

After her playing career, Walker returned to the Seattle community, where she became a coach and mentor for young women on numerous high school and youth basketball teams, both on and off the court. Most recently, she has spent several years as Garfield High School’s head basketball coach, winning the 4A State Title in 2005. From the free throw line to the coach's chair, Walker has spent her life inspiring young people of all demographics to stride above dangerous stereotypes, just like she did. 

Carson Potter REDMOND HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS XC

When Head Coach Carson Potter led the Redmond High School Girls Cross Country team to its first-ever 4A State Title in 2019, she fully understood what that Championship trophy meant for the Mustang history books. But she was shocked to discover what it represented in the legacy of women cross country coaches. Her victory in Pasco – a full 47 years after the passing of Title IX legislation – represented just the sixth WIAA 4A State Girls Cross Country Title won by a female coach. For Potter, this statistic has further exposed the glaring lack of opportunities for women coaches in athletics at all levels.

“The 50th Anniversary of Title IX is a great opportunity to highlight the positive impact and empowerment sports has for young women,” she wrote. “But more importantly, it is a time to reflect and recognize the inequities that still exist in sport participation, media coverage and coaching.”

Potter reminds us that – fifty years since its inception – the issues that Title IX sought to solve remain unavoidably relevant in the world of sports.

“While Title IX has advanced opportunities for women and girls in sport,” Potter says, “this progress should be thought of as the beginning and not the end.”

Saint George's Girls Track & Field 1973-1975

Before they’d ever even set a spike on the starting line, the girls who constructed and competed for the Saint George’s Track & Field Team bumped up against unrelenting barriers. In the spring of 1971, coach Ray Peterson sent out a message to recruit students interested in establishing the school’s first-ever track team, expecting a cohort consisting of a bunch of boys. Instead, he was met with the resounding determination and excitement of a group of girls.

After their initial meeting with Coach Peterson, the girls set about assembling their own uniforms and equipment – for which meet officials unsuccessfully attempted to prevent them from running relays on account of unmatching jerseys. Still, the young women pressed forward.

Two years later, they’d replaced the pillows cushioning the SGS high jump pit with real, adequate equipment. The .38 revolver and blanks they’d used as a makeshift starter gun were returned to their rightful owner. And from 1973 to 1975, the Saint George’s Track & Field Team had begun hurtling full-throttle towards statewide dominance. Against programs three times as large, “the ‘Dragonettes’ beat each opponent except one, placed first in 62% of the duel events, set six City track records, and set the State mile relay record for all classifications,” along the way to eight State trophy winners. In district competition, they cemented their dominance with 11 event records over just three years.

Overcoming unflinching “attitudes and obstacles standing in the way of their participation and success in sports, the Saint George’s Girls Track & Field Team of the early ‘70s reflects the very best of athletic pioneers – of any gender, era, or level. As former SGS discus-thrower Julie Hansen recently wrote, “for us participating, there was no shortage of enthusiasm and the feeling that we could be as good as anyone out there.”