Women's History Month figures, Kim Tatro, Amy Proctor, Diana Ling, Mary Poulson, Christyn Abaray

General 3/15/2024 1:30:00 PM

Women's History Month: Celebrating landmark figures in Lawrence athletics

In celebration of Women's History Month, the Lawrence University Department of Athletics is taking a look back at some of the most influential figures in the history of Lawrence athletics. Women's sports at Lawrence really got started with the arrival of Mary Poulson and took off in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the addition of multiple sports. Just as critical as the women's teams being added to the Lawrence lineup was the fact that women have played a key role in the leadership of the Department of Athletics for the past three decades.

Mary Heinecke Poulson
    Mary Poulson came to Lawrence in the fall of 1964 as part of the college's consolidation with Milwaukee-Downer College, where she had been chair of the physical education and health department.
    As she later recalled, Poulson thought, "I'd come up for a year, see how things went, and then look for something else." Instead, she wound up staying 29 years and is a charter member of the Lawrence Intercollegiate Athletic Hall of Fame. A leading advocate for women's athletics in their infancy at Lawrence, Poulson coached women's tennis (Lawrence's first varsity sport for women), men's tennis and women's basketball and was the driving force behind the elevation from club to varsity status of the men's and women's fencing teams in the mid-1980s.
Poulson coached women's tennis from 1974-92 and still holds the record for most coaching victories with an 86-73 mark. Her women's tennis teams won five consecutive Wisconsin Independent Colleges-Women's Athletic Conference (WIC-WAC) from 1975 through 1979 (Lawrence coaching legend and Director of Athletics Ron Roberts was a founder of the WIC-WAC). Poulson went on to win Midwest Conference championships in women's tennis in 1985 and 1986.
On the men's side, Poulson coached the Vikings from 1973-90 and in 1992-93. She continues to hold the Lawrence record with 94 dual meet victories.
Poulson retired in 1993 and continues to live in Appleton.

Amy Proctor
Amy Proctor resurrected the Lawrence women's basketball program and became the first female leader of the Department of Athletics.
    Proctor served as the head women's basketball coach for 19 seasons from 1988 to 2007 and compiled a record of 247-192 for a .563 winning percentage. Proctor won two Midwest Conference championships, one Lake Michigan Conference title and her teams made one NCAA Division III Tournament appearance.
A native of Green Bay, Wis., Proctor took over a program that had seen its season canceled in 1987-88 and immediately led the squad to the 1989 Lake Michigan Conference title. The Vikings followed that by winning the Midwest Conference title in 1990. Lawrence won the Midwest Conference championship again in 1999 and played in the NCAA Division III Tournament with Proctor earning Midwest Conference Coach of the Year honors.
    Proctor's teams won a school-record 19 games in 1992-93 and matched that mark again in 2005-06. The Vikings had 14 winning seasons and 16 seasons of .500 or better in Proctor's 19 years at the helm. Lawrence also qualified for the four-team Midwest Conference Tournament 12 times under Proctor.
    When Proctor first came to Lawrence, she also served as head volleyball coach. She coached the Vikings for five seasons (1988-92) and had a record of 56-82. Proctor had two winning seasons and the team set a school record with 18 victories in 1992, a mark that stood until 2001.
    Proctor also became the first female head of the department and served as director of athletics from 1993-99. She oversaw a transformation of the coaching staff that included hiring John Tharp to guide the men's basketball program and Kim Tatro to coach the softball and volleyball squads. Proctor also expanded the coaching staff to allow men's and women's soccer and hockey to have full-time coaches.
Inducted into Lawrence's Hall of Fame in 2012, Proctor retired from college coaching in 2007 and works at Secura Insurance.

Kim Tatro
    Kim Tatro put together a record that is unmatched in Lawrence history. In 35 seasons (27 in softball, eight in volleyball), Tatro compiled 515 victories, easily the most wins by any coach in Lawrence history.
    In 27 seasons as the softball coach, the native of Naperville, Ill., put together a record of 424-404-3, and her Vikings won Midwest Conference championships in 1997, 1998 and 1999. An eight-time Midwest Conference Coach of the Year (2015, 2013, 2011, 2006, 2002, 1999, 1998, 1997), Tatro's Vikings qualified for the NCAA Division III Tournament in 1998 and 1999, and Lawrence had a 4-4 mark in those two tournament appearances.
    Under Tatro's guidance, the Vikings won six Midwest Conference North Division championships (1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005) and qualified for the MWC Tournament 11 times.
    The 1999 squad set the school season record with 31 victories, and Tatro's teams have the top 12 season win totals in school history. Tatro's first softball season was 1994, and she took over a program that was rebuilding. Just four seasons later, Lawrence had claimed its first MWC championship and piled up 28 victories.
With Tatro as the head coach, Lawrence had 73 All-MWC selections and 14 players win North Division Pitcher of the Year or Player of the Year. Lawrence had 44 All-Great Lakes Region selections since 1997.
    Tatro guided the Lawrence volleyball team from 1993-2000, and she holds the school record with 91 victories. Her best season as the volleyball coach was 1998 when the Vikings finished 17-12. The 17 victories is the third-highest season win total in Lawrence history. Tatro had 11 All-MWC selections in eight seasons and nearly 20 academic all-conference picks.
Inducted into Lawrence's Hall of Fame in 2014, Tatro also was a big part of the administration of the Department of Athletics. She served as Lawrence's director of athletics from 2002-05 and again for the 2008-09 academic year. Tatro was part of Lawrence's athletic administration from 2001-20.

Jiayi Ling Young, Class of 1994
Jiaya "Diana" Ling went where no Lawrence woman had gone before. She became the school's first national champion when she won the long jump at the NCAA Division III Indoor Championships in 1994, the pinnacle of a stellar track and field career. The native of Albuquerque, N.M., was a three-time All-American and a 14-time Midwest Conference champion. Lings, who holds nine school records, was inducted into the Lawrence Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility in 2004.
    The crowning moment of her career came at the national indoor meet at the UW-Oshkosh. She won the long jump with a jump of 18 feet, 9.5 inches, setting a school record in the process. There are two amazing things about that victory — she won by a whopping 8.5 inches over second-place Dionne Laffond of Westfield State College and five of Ling's six jumps that day would have won her the title. Ling earned All-America honors two more times in the long jump, taking third at the 1992 NCAA outdoor championships and fourth at the 1993 national indoor championships. She also qualified for the NCAA championships two more times.
    Ling holds nine Lawrence records, including indoors and outdoors in the long jump (18-9.5 indoors, 19-0.5 outdoors) and triple jump (36-9 indoors, 37-5 outdoors). A superlative sprinter, she has the school records indoors in the 55 meters (7.48 seconds) and 200 (27.05 seconds) and is part of the record-holding 4x200 relay team. Outdoors, she continues to hold the 100-meter record (12.36 seconds) and is part of the record-holding 4x100 relay team.
    Ling simply dominated the competition in the Midwest Conference. She won a conference title at all but one of the eight conference championships in which she competed and capped her career in style in 1994 by winning five conference championships. At the conference's indoor meet, Ling won the long jump, triple jump, and 55 meters. She then captured the long jump and triple jump at the outdoor meet.
    Ling lives in California and is an assistant professor of design at the University of California-Davis.

Christyn Abaray
Christyn Abaray marked the start of a new era of Lawrence athletics and was a trailblazer for the Department of Athletics. The third female director of athletics in Lawrence history, she was first woman to hold that post in a full-time role, and the first African-American to oversee the department.
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Abaray came to Lawrence as the director of athletics in 2016 and had a significant impact on the department in a short period of time. In addition to broadening the reach of the Department of Athletics to the rest of the campus, she became a key partner in multiple fundraising and alumni engagement projects and laid the groundwork for multiple renovations to Lawrence's athletic facilities.
Abaray hired multiple key members of the coaching staff, including women's soccer coach Joe Sager and women's basketball coach Riley Woldt. Both coaches resurrected programs that had struggled mightily over the previous decade. Women's soccer has been to the Midwest Conference Tournament twice in the last three seasons, and women's basketball reached the league tournament in 2024 for the first time since 2007. Abaray also increased overall staffing in the Department of Athletics with the introduction of multiple full-time assistant coaches to the staff. She oversaw the introduction of women's hockey in 2020 to increase Lawrence's number of varsity sports to 22, and two more teams, men's and women's lacrosse, are to begin play in 2025.
Abaray took an even larger role at Lawrence when she made the move to be Chief of Staff and Secretary to the Board of Trustees in summer 2020.
A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Abaray earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology and was a National Soccer Coaches Association of America All-America in soccer. A member of the WashU Athletics Hall of Fame, Abaray went on to receive a master's degree in exercise and sport science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently working toward the completion of a Doctor of Education degree at Vanderbilt University.
Before her arrival at Lawrence, Abaray was the director of athletics at Buena Vista University and served as associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator at Swarthmore College.

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