Event focuses on issues faced by women student-athletes

^{A panel of three Knoxville area guest speakers greets Carson-Newman female student-athletes prior to the University’s Elite Women’s Workshop on Friday. The featured speakers included (seated left to right) Misty Mayes, Janet Hayes and Joan Cronan. The event focused on issues that women student-athletes often face after graduation.}

(Sept. 21, 2015) – Some 190 Carson-Newman women athletes filed into the University’s Student Success Center Friday, September 18, for the first annual event devoted to female student-athletes.

The Elite Women’s Workshop, sponsored by Carson-Newman’s Student Success Center, welcomed a trio of all-star Knoxville area speakers. Featured guests included Joan Cronan, Women’s Athletic Director Emeritus for the University of Tennessee and Carson-Newman Board of Trustees member; Janet Hayes an attorney with Lewis Thomason and chair of Carson-Newman’s Board of Trustees; and Misty Mayes, president and owner of Management Solutions, LLC.

Suzanne Strudwick, Carson-Newman women’s golf coach, says that women athletes often face unique life challenges.

“Female athletes have this purpose, and their driven,” said Strudwick, who coordinated the event. “They’re typically Type-A personalities. And sometimes once they leave college and go on to the next steps in life, especially in the workplace, those same character traits [can be] a little too strong, and females can kind of get a stigma.”

Strudwick says there is an important balance that has to take place. “What I wanted to do was to draw in three very successful women that have all had to overcome those challenges and share how they do that, how they retain their feminisim, and how they juggle being a mother and a wife and of course their faith.

“Knowing how to balance all those things is what we want to equip our female student-athletes with,” said Strudwick. “We want to get them ready for life.”