Saturday Dinner Speaker: Debbie Yow By Briana Gorman
2006 AWSM Intern with The Detroit News Debbie Yow said she had never seen so many people get excited about balancing a budget. AWSM members and guests gave the University of Maryland athletic director a loud cheer when “balancing the Maryland athletic department budget” was called out on her long list of accomplishments during dinner on the last night of the convention. The keynote speaker smiled at the enthusiastic applause for an otherwise unheralded duty and then drew smiles, laughter and applause from the audience with her humor and insight on being a successful woman in the sports industry. “My comments are designed to do two things: Encourage you in work and remind you how you got where you are,” Yow said. Yow is one of only four female athletic directors at a Division I university. During her 12 years at Maryland, the Terrapin athletic teams have combined to win 12 national titles. She is also a former basketball coach as well as a former president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. Yow’s speech was peppered with humorous stories from her career, including her experience as a candidate for the University of Saint Louis athletic director position – which she was the first woman to get – and her first day as the athletic director at Maryland. Her stories drew laughs but also showed the obstacles she had to overcome to achieve success in an area dominated by men. Heather Dinich, Maryland football and men’s basketball beat writer for The Baltimore Sun, introduced Yow. “Debbie’s broken barriers for women in her profession and has reached a point in her career where she can now in turn help others do the same,” said Dinich. “Hopefully, the women who heard her speak were inspired by her success and by her drive that helped her earn it,” Dinich added. Yow told the audience that mentors, especially her husband, were key in her career and that choosing good mentors is critical. She told audience members to encourage others in pursuit of their goals and to also go back and thank others who had helped them. “I’m a real big believer in what you make happen for others will happen for you,” she said. The recent inductee of the State of Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame also gave advice on how she got through some of the most challenging times in her career. “You need to rehearse your victories so you can get the courage stirred up inside of you,” Yow said. She said repeating her accomplishments to herself whenever she thought she couldn’t do something enabled to her achieve even greater success. Yow closed her speech with an interactive exercise a group of sports writers could easily understand – a football drill. Yow said “Gimme three” and made the audience clap in unison three times for their mentors, organizations that helped them, people that believed in them after seeing them at their worst, and for the future of women in the U.S. Back | 
