Hall of Fame Class of 2011: Judith M. Sweet
August 28, 2011 | General News
Aug. 28, 2011
Every day this week leading up to the induction ceremony, one of the seven members of the University of Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2011 will be celebrated.
The Hall of Fame induction is Friday, Sept. 2 outside the Camp Randall Memorial Sports Center. The 6 p.m. ceremony is open to the public. Today's celebrant is Wisconsin graduate Judith M. Sweet.
Judith M. Sweet, former NCAA president and long-time director of athletics at the University of California, San Diego, will be a special services inductee into the UW Athletics Hall of Fame.
Sweet, who also served as the senior vice president of championships at the NCAA, is a 1969 graduate of the University of Wisconsin. She was honored as a three-year letterwinner in badminton during the 30th anniversary of UW women's sports in 2005.
One of the first women in America to administer joint men's and women's athletics programs, Sweet was named athletics director at UC San Diego in 1975, and over the next 24 years supervised 23 sports programs. The program received the Sears Directors Cup for Division III in 1998 in recognition of the school's athletics success in NCAA championships for both men and women.
Sweet served on over 20 NCAA committees, including the NCAA Council and Executive Committee. In 1986, she was elected to a two-year term as Division III vice-president, and then to a two-year term as NCAA Secretary-Treasurer. In 1991, she became the first (and because of governance restructuring in 1997), and only female to serve as NCAA President - the Association's highest membership post. Sweet's other committee appointments include chairing the NCAA Council and Executive Committee in 1991-92, the Budget Subcommittee in 1989-90, the Special Advisory Committee to Review Recommendations Regarding Distribution of Revenues in 1990-97, and the Review and Planning Committee 1996-97 and the NCAA Foundation Board of Directors.
She has also served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of College Directors of Athletics (NACDA), the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators (NACWAA) and the Board of Trustees for the United States Sports Academy. Sweet served as national president of the Athletic and Recreation Federation of College Women from 1968-69, was a member of the United States Olympic Committee's Task Force on Minorities from 1994-96, and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees for National University. Most recently she is the co-director of the Alliance of Women Coaches which she helped initiate in 2011.
In her 35-plus year career in athletics Sweet has received over 40 awards including being named Division III Athletics Director of the Year for 1998-99 by NACDA. She won the Honda Award for Outstanding Achievement in Women's Athletics in 1998, was named Administrator of the Year in 1992 by NACWAA, among numerous other awards. In 2006, she was included among the NCAA's 100 most influential student-athletes and awarded the NCAA James J. Corbett Memorial Award for service. In 2007, she was named by the Institute for International Sports as one of the 100 most influential sports educators. In 2009, she was inducted into the Wisconsin State Sports Hall of Fame.
A native of Milwaukee, Sweet was an honors graduate of the University of Wisconsin majoring in physical education and mathematics. While an undergraduate she served as the national president of the Athletic and Recreation Federation of College Women. She also has a masters of science in education with honors from the University of Arizona in 1972, and a masters in business administration with distinction in 1981 from National University.
