Dorothy “Dot” Hicks, commonly referred to as the pioneer of women’s sports at Marshall University due to the decades of work she dedicated to women’s athletics, was named the 2024 Homecoming grand marshal.

Hicks said she was surprised by the announcement but was honored that she is being recognized as a key part of Marshall history like many past grand marshals.

“I was shocked, but I’m very happy. It was a good shock. I thought, ‘Now, do I equal to Red Dawson?’ (refering to the ‘Young Thundering Herd’ head coach) I just finally settled in and said, ‘Yes, I do,’” Hicks said.

During her time at Marshall, Hicks held many roles such as professor and chair of the physical education department. 

In the athletics department, she wore even more hats being a three-sport coach for volleyball, tennis and golf. She was also the director of athletics for women’s sports and the liaison to the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).

Making history became commonplace for Hicks during her time serving Marshall Athletics. The first two scholarships awarded to female athletes at Marshall were given by Hicks to basketball player Kathy Haas and golfer Nancy Bunton.

Hicks said scholarships were a step in the right direction for ad

vancing women’s athletics at Marshall. Prior to that time, most expenses were paid for out of pocket.

“We didn’t have any money. It was mainly the faculty and I that took them on trips and paid most of their expenses at that time,” Hicks said. “We needed to let the men in the athletic department know that when we come under them, we expected them to have more scholarships for women.”

By the early 1980s women’s athletics at Marshall had started the transition from the AIAW to the NCAA.

“We did everything under AIAW as we did with NCAA. We kept growing. We kept adding,” Hicks said. “When we finally got endorsed in the early 1980s, we went under the NCAA. Once we got into NCAA, we kept improving, kept giving more scholarships.”

Hicks said that once the Herd began winning championships is when she believed that they were making progress in the work she  and others had done in supporting women’s athletics at Marshall.

Prior to her time at Marshall, Hicks had done work at East Tennessee State University that improved its athletic program. Hicks taught 14 years at ETSU before coming to Huntington in 1969.

“They had some sports, and they were going well, but some of those people had been there a long time and were tired of the sports,” Hicks said. “So, as a group, we sat down and kept expanding until we got the program that we wanted and were able to play with the University of Tennessee and some of the other schools in our state. But also, we played Western Carolina and James Madison.”

Before and after her retirement in 1999, Hick’s impact has been seen throughout Marshall. In 1990, she was inducted into the Marshall Athletics Hall of Fame, and, in 2008, the Herd Softball field bearing her name was opened.

Joseph DiCristofaro can be contacted at [email protected].