Louise Pound, Title IX Trailblazer
Louise Pound is the only female in the history of Nebraska Athletics to earn a men's varsity letter. She earned a men's tennis letter in 1894, when athletic opportunities for females were at best limited and often non-existent. Pound paved the way for countless female athletes at Nebraska, making it appropriate she is inducted as a member of the 2022 Nebraska Athletic Hall of Fame Class on the 50th anniversary of Title IX becoming federal law. Pound was a pioneering female athlete for more than three decades from the 1890s through the 1920s, winning campus, city and state titles in golf and tennis. The 1890 Lincoln city tennis champion, Pound was also the 1891 and 1892 University of Nebraska-Lincoln tennis champion, defeating all competition for the title, including men. Pound finished runner-up at the 1894 men's intercollegiate tennis tournament, which led to her men's varsity letter. In 1897, Pound won the Women's Western Championship and was rated as the top amateur player in the country. After she was refused admittance for graduate study in America, Pound traveled to Germany to earn her Ph.D. and while abroad, she played the Olympic men's singles tennis champion to a draw. Outside of tennis, Pound organized and captained Nebraska's first women's basketball team as a graduate student before later managing the team. As a golfer, Pound won the first women's state golf championship in the only year she entered the event and was the Lincoln Country Club golf champion every year from 1906 to 1927, except 1924 when she didn't enter. Pound was also a cyclist and figure skater and played a lead role in establishing the Nebraska Spirit Squad. Outside of athletics, Pound was a UNL English professor for 50 years and was the first woman president of the Modern Language Association. A lifelong Lincoln native, Pound passed away in Lincoln on June 28, 1958, at the age of 85.
