Karen Womack served as a senior-level administrator at Miami from 1980-2007. During her tenure at Miami, Womack served as interim athletic director, executive associate athletic director, assistant athletic director, senior woman administrator and NCAA compliance coordinator at various stages of her career. She was the sport administrator for volleyball, women’s tennis, women's soccer, women's and men's basketball. Karen served with five different athletic directors, providing the constant and consistent senior leadership in each transition.
Karen dedicated many years of support, service and enthusiasm to women's sports, and ensured that women could enjoy the benefits of competitive sports here at Miami – as athletes and coaches. She was a champion for women in sport, not with a boisterous or demanding voice, but with a calm smile, a witty retort, engaging questions and boundless encouragement for other women to carry on and compete.
Ms. Womack was instrumental in the transition ushering Miami from the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) into the new NCAA structure and the nationally-competitive arena. She understood the benefits of sports participation - and spent her time at Miami ensuring that the women could compete and derive the same learning experiences as the men.
Her most significant impact on Miami athletics history began in 1993 with a gender equity self-evaluation, requesting then President Paul Risser to take a more serious look at the Title IX mandates and the Miami specific data. That self-study resulted in an increase of $100,000 added into the women’s programs’ budgets and the addition of two women’s teams with the promise of a university task force and outside counsel assigned to analyze and make recommendations for complete compliance to equity. In the absence of a sitting athletic director, Karen was charged in the interim by President Garland in 1998 to begin the process of carrying out the independent counsel’s five-year recommendations for Title IX compliance – including the elimination of three men’s sports. A project no one envied.
An emotional and divisive time, that same academic year the university also supported another diversity adjustment, the changing of the mascot from Redskins to RedHawks – so Ms. Womack graciously handled significant numbers of disappointed and frustrated alumni as the interim athletic director.
Ms. Womack continued her support of the coaches of women’s sports through the introduction of full-time, 12-month contracts for all head coaches that eliminated academic teaching loads, as well as new policies for fifth-year and summer school aid for female athletes. Karen was not one to draw attention to herself, but was quietly behind the scenes making the moves to secure equitable opportunities.
Womack served the Mid-American Conference (MAC) on the 1993-1995 Compliance Committee and Gender Equity Committee, as chair for volleyball championships, the MAC Committee on Coordinators of Officials, just to name a few.
Womack previously served as a coach and a physical education teacher at other universities, including four years at Eastern Illinois and a year at Texas Tech. She began the intercollegiate women's basketball program at Tulane University, and served as head coach there from 1975-1980. In addition, she was a volleyball and basketball official and served as the vice president of athletics for the Louisiana Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
She was presented the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Women’s Sports Association.
