History of Women in Sports Timeline - 2009

• 2009 - Candace Parker is chosen the 2008 AP Female Athlete of the Year Award for leading Tennessee to its second consecutive women's basketball championship, being drafted in the first round by the WNBA, being the league's Rookie of the Year and MVP, and contributing to the fourth-straight Olympic gold medal performance for the United States.

• 2009 - Ana Ivanovic defeated Petra Kvitova at the Brisbane International Tennis Championships 6-4, 6-2.

• 2009 - The NCAA honors former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with the Theodore Roosevelt Award, presented to a former college athlete who went on to make a national impact. Albright competed in swimming, rowing and field hockey at Wellesley.

• 2009 - The NCAA honors tennis great Billie Jean King with the Gerald R. Ford Award, named after the former president. It recognizes King's leadership and advocacy for intercollegiate athletics.

• 2009 - Dinara Safina wins the Sydney International Tennis Open.

• 2009 - Coach Sylvia Hatchell gains her 800th win with the University of North Carolina women’s basketball team's win against North Carolina State . She joins Pat Summit, Jody Conradt and C. Vivian Stringer in the club of 800-plus winners. During her 23 years at UNC Chapel Hill, Hatchell has won eight Atlantic Coast Conference championships, reached three Final Fours and won the 1994 NCAA title.

• 2009 - Wendy Macpherson, a 20-time Professional Women’s Bowling Association champion, is now a member of the United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame. Macpherson has won three USBC Queens titles, was the all-time earnings leader in women’s professional bowling as of 2003 and has been selected Woman Bowler of the Year four times. She is also the only woman to take home a USBC Open Championships title.

• 2009 - Penn State women's volleyball senior Nicole Fawcett is the Honda Award winner, given to the nation's top collegiate female volleyball player. The honor was based on results of national balloting among 1,000 NCAA member schools as part of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards program, now in its 33rd year. Fawcett, the 2008 AVCA National and Big Ten Player of the Year, led the Lions to an undefeated record (38-0) and their second straight NCAA title and sixth consecutive Big Ten crown.

• 2009 - Serena Williams wins her 10th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, defeating Dinara Safina 6-0, 6-3 for her return to No. 1 ranking. She becomes the all-time prize money leader in women's sports. She joins the pioneer she credits - Billie Jean King - as well as Chris Evert, Helen Wills Moody, Steffi Graf and Margaret Court in having won 10 or more grand slam titles.

• 2009 - Pat Summitt, the legendary basketball coach of the University of Tennessee's Lady Volunteers, earned her 1,000th win on Feb. 5. Summit has lost only 187 games during her 35-year career. No other coach in NCAA history--woman or man--has achieved the 1,000-win milestone.

• 2009 - Erin Hamlin, 22, becomes the first US woman to win the Luge World Championships on Friday. She is the first n0n-German woman to win a Luge World Championship since 1993.

• 2009 - US skier Lindsey Vonn becomes the first American to pick up two world championship golds in a single year since 1952. She took gold in the super-G and second gold with a downhill time of 1 minute, 30.31 seconds.

• 2009 - Venus Williams earns her 40th career singles title at the Dubai Tennis Championships by deafeating Virginie Razzano 6-4 6-2.

• 2009 - Sweden defeats the US national soccer team in the Algarve Cup final, 4-3 in penalty kicks after battling to a 1-1 draw in regulation.

• 2009 - The San Jose State University judo team wins its 44th National Collegiate Judo Association Championship.

• 2009 - Wisconsin goalie Jessie Vetter wins the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as the nation's most outstanding NCAA Division I women's hockey player. The winningest goalie in women's NCAA hockey history, her 12 regular-season shutouts this season established an NCAA record.

• 2009 - South Korea’s Kim Yu-na wins her first World Figure Skating Championship title with a record-breaking highest score in the championship’s history: 207.71.

• 2009 - The University of Denver wins its second consecutive NCAA Skiing Championship team title.

• 2009 - Wisconsin Badgers goalie Jessie Vetter stopped 37 shots for her team’s third NCAA women’s hockey title in four years in a 5-0 win over Mercyhurst. The Badgers had a NCAA-record 14 shutouts in a single season.

• 2009 - Rutgers women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer is inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2009. Stringer is the first basketball coach, man or woman, to take three different teams to the final four - Cheyney State (1982), Iowa (1993) and Rutgers (2000 and 2007).

• 2009 - Annie O'Shea wins her second overall America's Cup bobsled title.

• 2009 - Olympic freestyle medalist Liz McIntyre is inducted as a member of the Hall of Fame of 2008 She was a decorated 20-year skiing career with the U.S. ski team, first as an athlete on the freestyle moguls squad from 1986-98, then as a coach.

• 2009 - Brittany Linicome wins the Kraft Nabisco Championship

• 2009 - e Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto will open its doors to women's hockey as the Hall of Fame's voting procedures will allow that four male and two female inductees may be accepted each year in time for the class of 2009's June vote.

• 2009 - Team USA wins the 2009 Mount Titlis World Women's Curling Championship in Korea.

• 2009 - The UConn women's basketball teams finishes another perfect season with an NCAA title win over Louisville, winning all 39 games by at least 10 points. UConn junior Tina Charles is named the Final Four's most outstanding player.

• 2009 - The United States wins its second consecutive women's World Hockey Championship, beating Canada 4-1. Goaltender Jessie Vetter made 39 saves, and the U.S. team played a penalty-free game to secure its third title in the last four world championships.

• 2009 - Jelena Jankovic wins the first Sony Ericsson WTA Tour title at the inaugural Andalucía Tennis Experience.

• 2009 - Pat Summitt is named the recipient of the 2009 WNBA Inspiring Coach Award, introduced in 2007 by the WNBA to honor coaches who have positively influenced athletes and whose achievements have left a deep-seated impact on world of sports.

• 2009 - Led by three individual champions, the United States wins the team title at the Pan American Women's Freestyle Wrestling Championships with three individual champions: Clarissa Chun, the 2008 world champion, Elena Pirozkhova, a 2008 university world champion, and Alyssa Lampe, a past junior world medalist

• 2009 - Lorena Ochoa wins the Corona Championship for the second straight year.

• 2009 - Mackenzie Brown becomes the first girl in Bayonne Little League history to throw a perfect game against 18 boy batters she faced.

• 2009 - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signs the School Athletics Equity Act into law requiring public schools to report a variety of statistics about their athletic programs for grades 7-12 in order to monitor and encourage compliance with the federal athletics equality regulations in Title IX. New Mexico joins Georgia and Kentucky in the growing list of states with laws that are successfully monitoring equality in athletics programs and improving compliance with Title IX regulations.

• 2009 - Salina Kosgei of Kenya wins the women's race in the Boston Marathon, beating defending champion Dire Tune of Ethiopia by one second. American runner Kara Goucher comes in third, making her the first American woman to place in the top three since Kim Jones was second in 1993.

• 2009 - Former Olympic medalist Courtney Kupets wins her second Honda Sports Award for as the nation's top female college gymnast after leading Georgia to its fifth straight NCAA title. The senior became the first gymnast to win a national title in the all-around, bars, beam and floor competition in the same year. She won the silver medal in the team all-around and captured individual bronze in the uneven bars at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Kupets is an academic standout at Georgia, winning the UGA's Marilyn Vincent Award as the senior female student-athlete with the highest grade point average with her 3.8 GPA.

• 2009 - Cristie Kerr, a 12-time LPGA Tour winner, became the first two-time champion of the Michelob ULTRA Open to claim the $330,000 winner's check.

• 2009 - Filly Rachel Alexandra beats the field of 12 male horses in the Preakness Stakes to do what no filly had done in 85 years, becoming the fifth filly to win the Preakness and the first since Nellie Morse in 1924, covering the mile and three-sixteenths in 1 minute 55.08 seconds.

• 2009 - Heather MacRae qualifies for the Scottish Professional Golf Association championship, making her the first woman in 76 years to qualify and compete in the tournament. A woman has not participated in the event since Meg Farqhuar in 1933.

• 2009 - The Duke Blue Devils wins the Division I women's tennis team title, defeating the California Golden Bears, 4-0, to claim their first national championship in the sport.

• 2009 - Northwestern caps a 23-0 season with the team's fifth consecutive NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Championship in a 21-7 defeat of North Carolina.

• 2009 - For the first time, an Indian women’s rugby squad takes part in an international event at the Asian Women’s 7s tournament.

• 2009 - Brockton Rox coach Justine Siegal officially becomes the first woman to coach a men's professional baseball team on May 28; her baseball background includes coaching and playing on five continents, the founder of BaseBall for All, an organization that provides meaningful baseball instruction and opportunity for men and women around the world.

• 2009 - The Washington Huskies win their first softball championship in a two-game sweep over the Florida Gators.

• 2009 - A Women's History Road Trip - One hundred years ago, Alice Ramsey became the first woman to drive across America. Driving a Maxwell DA, she left New York City on June 9, 1909, with her two sisters-in-law along as chaperones (Alice's husband's condition) and a friend. Now Emily Anderson is recreating Alice's historic drive in a Maxwell DA that she and her father rebuilt. Emily has dubbed the trip, "Alice's Drive," and you can learn more, follow her progress, read her blog, or access her Twitter. You can also go directly to a map with the stops marked To follow Alice's 1909 route that includes archival photographs and excerpts from Alice's journal.

• 2009 - Svetlana Kuznetsova wins the French Open, deafeating beating Dinara Safina 6-4, 6-2 at Roland Garros, for her second Grand Slam title.

• 2009 - Sonja Hogg, Jennifer Azzi, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, Jennifer Gillom, Jill Hutchison and Ora Washington are inducted to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame

• 2009 - Rookie player Anna Nordqvist wins the LPGA Championship for her first major as a professional and only her fifth event since earning her tour playing privileges.

• 2009 - Bonnie Richardson, valedictorian of her 14-student senior class in tiny Rochelle, TX, wins the Class A girls' team state title by herself for the second consecutive year, single-handedly beating 56 other schools. There are no other girls on the Rochelle High School track team; she is the first girl in state history last year to win a team title solo.

• 2009 - A team of yachtswomen sail across a finish line off the Isle of Wight on Monday in record-breaking time after its six-day journey around Britain and Ireland, beating the overall May 2004 record of seven days and four hours by 17 hours and 16 minutes on a counter-clockwise, 2,500-nautical-mile journey .

• 2009 - Georgia gymnast Courtney Kupets wins the 33rd annual Honda-Broderick Cup as the 2009 Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. Kupets is the first athlete from Georgia to be honored and the second gymnast to receive the Honda-Broderick Cup in the 33-year history of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Program.

• 2009 - Jiyai Shin wins her fifth LPGA tournament in 11 months with the Wegmans LPGA title.

• 2009 - The United States defeated Australia, 8-7, in the gold-medal game of the 2009 Federation of International Lacrosse Women's World Cup in Praguefor a sixth World Cup title and its fourth over Australia.

• 2009 - Serena Williams, 27, defeats sister Venus, 29, 7-6 (3), 6-2 for her third Wimbledon championship, six years after she last won the singles title. The sisters went on to win the doubles championship later in the day for the second straight year and their fourth Wimbledon doubles title.

• 2009 - A Los Angeles teenager, 15-year-old Kimberly Anyadike, flies a single-engine plane across the country from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and back with an adult safety pilot and Levi Thornhill, an 87-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. She is believed to be the youngest African-American pilot to complete this cross-country feat, learned to fly a plane when she was 12 with the Compton-based Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum, a program that offers flight lessons to disadvantaged students.

• 2009 - Abby Wambach scores her 100th international goal on Sunday in a 1-0 win over Canada in her hometown of Rochester, NY. Wambach joins Americans Mia Hamm (158), Kristine Lilly (129), Michelle Akers (105) and Tiffeny Milbrett (100) in breaking the 100 mark.

• 2009 - The WNBA, the women's basketball league, is the only professional league to receive a perfect grade on the annual diversity report card on race and gender. The report card is administered by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, based in Orlando, FL and rates leagues and college sports teams on the number of participating women and minorities. This is the second year in a row that the WNBA received the highest possible rating, with the study concluding that "the WNBA remained as the best employer overall for women and people of color in sport," reported USA Today. The percentage of women as head coaches and team presidents increased 10 percent in the past year, the study found. Out of the 13 WNBA teams, 6 had female head coaches this season.

• 2009 - Japan's Ai Miyazato of won the Evian Masters for her first victory on the LPGA Tour. The 24-year-old Miyazato, who has won numerous titles on Japan's JLPGA circuit, takes home $487,500, tied for the highest first prize in women's golf with the Women's U.S. Open.

• 2009 - Lesley Visser, veteran CBS sportscaster, has been chosen as the No. 1 female sportscaster by the members of the American Sportscasters Association (ASA). Her career has spanned more than 30 years, including stints at the Boston Globe, ESPN and ABC Sports. Visser was the first woman assigned to the legendary series "Monday Night Football" and was named one of the 10 Pioneers of Women's Sports by USA Today.

• 2009 - The U.S. softball team wins its third straight World Cup title, beating Australia, the bronze medalist at the 2008 Olympic Games. Going undefeated and outscoring opponents 51-4, the United States reasserted its dominance after losing last year's Olympic gold-medal game to Japan.

• 2009 - Abby Nunn establishes a women's course record of 40:39.67 at the Chris Greene Lake Swim; becoming the third female to win the overall title in the 33-year history of the renowned two-mile Chris Greene Lake Swim. Nunn also established a new national record for the 18-24 age bracket and won the one-mile event in 20:02.38, another national record for women 18-24.

• 2009 - Catriona Matthew, 39, wins the RICOH Women's British Open, becoming the first Scot to win one of the majors of women's golf, just 11 weeks after giving birth. She is only the fourth Briton to win a major.

• 2009 - The United States wins its second straight gold medal in women's water polo title, beating Canada 7-6. They have won three of the last four championships at the worlds and won the silver medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing. Russia won the bronze medal with a 10-9 victory over Greece.

• 2009 - Team USA wins overall gold medal today over Team France at the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games in Costa Rica for their first overall gold medal since the 1996 World Surfing.

• 2009 - Canada's Whitney McClintock wins the overall title at the women's world water ski championships as a triple world champion, winning the tricks competition as well as the slalom and overall titles.

• 2009 - The International Olympic Committee Executive Board announces the sport of women's boxing will be added to the schedule for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England. Boxing was previously the only summer sport on the Olympic docket without a female counterpart. Female boxers will compete at three weights in London, flyweight (106 lbs-112 lbs), lightweight (123 lbs-132 lbs) and middleweight (152 lbs-165 pounds), with 12 boxers boxing in each of three divisions. The addition of the 36 female boxers will necessitate the removal of one weight category in men's competition, meaning there will be only 10 men's weight classes.

• 2009 - President Barack Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to 16 "agents of change," including tennis great Billie Jean King. Obama said of King, "We honor what she calls 'all the off-the-court stuff' -- what she did to broaden the reach of the game, to change how women athletes and women everywhere view themselves, and to give everyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation -- including my two daughters -- a chance to compete both on the court and in life. As Billie Jean once said, 'We should never, ever underestimate the human spirit.'"

• 2009 - Katie Reyes, 13, hits a two-run single in the top of the sixth inning to help Vancouver, British Columbia, rally for a 14-13 victory over Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, in the 2009 Little League World Series, becoming the first girl with the winning hit in a World Series game. Fifteen girls have played in the Series since 1984, when Victoria Roche of Belgium became the first in the event.

• 2009 - The Rockford Thunder capture their first Cowles Cup as the 2009 National Pro Fastpitch champions, defeating the USSSA Pride 2-0 in the final game of the season.

• 2009 - Sky Blue wins Women's Professional Soccer championship with a 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Sol.

• 2009 - The United States wins its third consecutive Solheim Cup over Europe, the biennial match-play between 12 of the best American golfers and 12 of the best from Europe.

• 2009 - Effective for the 2010-11 school year, the pitching distance for high school varsity softball pitchers will increase from 40 to 43 feet.

• 2009 - South Korean rookie M.J. Hur beats Suzann Pettersen to win the Safeway Classic for her first LPGA Tour

• 2009 - Queens College stand-out and Olympic Champion, Gail Marquis, is inducted into the 2009 Class of the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame, founded in 1990. Marquis joined Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers-Drysdale and Pat Head Summit as a power forward on the 1976 U.S. Olympic Team, the first time women's basketball was included as an Olympic sport and the United States earned the silver medal. A two-time All-American, Olympian and champion on professional and international courts, Marquis will be inducted into the legendary Hall of Fame as a player at the New York Athletic Club.

• 2009 - Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer, the first coach to lead three different teams to the Final Four, is inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. She has won 825 games in 39 seasons.

• 2009 - Belgian Kim Clijsters, 26, wins the 2009 U.S. Open, becoming the first unseeded player to win the U.S. Open with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over 19-year-old Dane Caroline Wozniacki. Clijsters is the first mother to win a Grand Slam tournament since 1980, when Evonne Goolagong Cawley won Wimbledon.

• 2009 - The World Taekwondo Federation overturns its 2007 decision to ban female competitors wearing a traditional hijab (scarf) under their headgear earlier this year, hoping to promote gender equality at the upcoming world championships.

• 2009 - South Korean Na Yeon Choi wins her first LPGA title on Sunday at the Samsung World Championships.

• 2009 - The WNBA names Phoenix Mercury guard/forward DeWanna Bonner as their Sixth Woman of the Year. She led the Mercury in rebounds with 5.8 per game and was third in points per game with 11.2, averaging more than 20 minutes a game off the bench and led all rookies in double-doubles at five.

• 2009 - The WNBA names Washington Mystics’ Crystal Langhorne as the Most Improved of the Year. In her second year in the league, she averaged 12 points a game, an improvement of seven points from last season, and averaged almost four more rebounds.

• 2009 - Maria Sharapova wins the Pan Pacific Open, defeating Jelena Jankovic, for her 20th career title.

• 2009 - Australia's Samantha Stosur beats Italy's Francesca Schiavone in straight sets, 7-5 and 6-1, to win the Women's Japan Open.

• 2009 - Suzyn Waldman became the first woman to broadcast a World Series game on the radio in the middle of Game 1 when the Yankees honored the veteran broadcaster for reaching this milestone. Waldman is the second woman in history to serve as the regular color commentator for a Major League Baseball team, and the second woman to serve as a play-by-play announcer.

• 2009 - Arizona swimmer Lacey Nymeyer is named the NCAA's Woman of the Year, a prestigious honor is awarded every year to a female student-athlete who has excelled in academics and athletics, and has showed leadership in her community. Nymeyer, a physical education major, was a first-team all-Pac-10 pick and a four-time University of Arizona Academic Champion. In her free time, she volunteered at the Haven House for Women and Casa De Los Ninos House for Children. She also taught swimming lessons to five to nine-year-olds, and spoke at youth sports banquets.

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  2009 - Veteran basketball player an coach Nancy Lieberman is first woman head coach in NBA Development League (D-League) franchise in suburban Dallas, an affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks. In the mid-1980s she became the first woman to play in a men's professional basketball league, with the United States Basketball League. She also played in summer leagues for Pat Riley with the Los Angeles Lakers and Frank Layden with the Utah Jazz. She made WNBA history in 1997 as the oldest woman to play in the league at 39 years old, and again in 2008 at 50. Lieberman was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1996 and to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.

• 2009 - 16-year-old Jessica Watson begins her journey to become the youngest person to sail around the world, departing from Sydney Harbor in her pink, 34-foot yacht. She will sail from Australia's east coast and across the equator, south to Cape Horn at the tip of South America, across the Atlantic Ocean to South Africa, through the Indian Ocean and south of Australia and back home. The trip will, in total, take seven to eight months.

• 2009 - Lyn-z Adam Hawkins makes skateboarding history as the first woman to land a 540 McTwist.

• 2009 - The U.S. Soccer Foundation names Angela Hucles, two-time Olympic gold medalist and star of the Boston Breakers, as the 2009 Humanitarian of the Year. This award is given out annually by the U.S. Soccer Foundation, the major charity organization for soccer in the United States, to U.S. soccer players who are dedicated to giving back to their communities

• 2009 - American swimmer Jessica Hardy wins gold and breaks her own world record for the 50-meter breaststroke with a time of 28.80 seconds at the International Swimming Federation (FINA) World Cup

• 2009 - Michelle Wie wins her first LPGA title at Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Guadalajara, Mexico after competing in 65 LPGA events over the past decade, with her first LPGA event at 12 years old.

• 2009 - Serena Williams is named the Female Athlete of the Year by the AP, taking 66 of 158 votes in the annual survey. She also won in 2002.

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