Nancy Hogshead-Makar was a champion in the swimming pool, earning three gold medals in the 1984 Olympics.
Since then, she’s been a distinguished leader out of the water, as a staunch advocate and promoter for girls’ and women’s equality in sports.
In the past seven months, the former champion swimmer at Episcopal School of Jacksonville hasn’t earned gold medals — but she has received international awards she calls just as important to her career.
The International Olympic Committee in December bestowed her with a Women and Sport Trophy, given for the promoting of women across a broad spectrum in sports.
Several months later, the Society of Health and Physical Educators, better known as SHAPE America, honored her with the 2015 Guiding Woman in Sport Award for her extraordinary service and leadership in the area.
And last week, the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Women named her its member of distinction, awarded biennially.
Her post-sports career has been that of an attorney, graduating from Georgetown University Law Center, before returning to Jacksonville where she practiced at Holland & Knight.
The law firm is where she met her husband, Scott, now a judge on the 1st District Court of Appeal. They have a son and twin daughters.
A large part of Hogshead-Makar’s passion has been championing gender equality issues in sports, with an emphasis on Title IX. Her outspoken stance and role trying to change long-held societal norms in the sporting world haven’t earned her many friends, she said.
“In my daily life, people don’t like me. I get a lot of pushback,” she said.
That’s because for more than 100 years, the sports arena has been relatively the same. Trying to create change for girls and women in that realm has been difficult with so many vested interests.
Under Title IX, females are entitled to the same opportunities males receive in schools. Yet, close to 43 years later, she said there are still many institutions not abiding by the rules.
She said she could personally take them up in the courtroom, case by case — but she wanted to help create wholesale change. Enter Champion Women, the nonprofit she began less than a year ago.
Through it, she takes on issues of Title IX; sexual assault and harassment in sports; equal opportunity for female coaches; and the rights of Olympic athletes, among other wide-ranging concerns.
After 12 years, she stepped away from teaching at Florida Coastal School of Law. And she retired as the senior advocacy director of the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Her focus, she said, is now on Champion Women.
“I see it as an opportunity for change,” she said. “No one else is going to do this work.”
In the past several months, she was a key member of the legal team trying to get women’s World Cup soccer matches played on natural grass instead of artificial turf. That didn’t happen, but not because it wasn’t a poor argument.
“We lost because we ran out of time,” said Hogshead-Makar.
She said there was a donor willing to step up so FIFA, the international organizing body for the sport, and Canada, the host country, wouldn’t have had to spend a dime.
Instead, legal posturing delayed the issue until it was too late — and a delay on the field might have meant overall cancellation.
It’s an issue Hogshead-Makar still talks about with antipathy, but there are other issues moving forward.
Like upcoming results from an Olympic special task force regarding sexual-abusing coaches or the plethora of women’s softball facilities that are drastically subpar compared to men’s baseball in schools across the U.S.
There are plenty of issues to tackle, she now realizes.
She didn’t always think that, though. She recalls talking to one of her mentors, Donna Lopiano, back in 1993 about the state of Title IX. Every court, every legislature, every decision seemed to favor the cause. Hogshead-Makar said she might need to think of something else for her legal career.
Yet, Lopiano told her it was a marathon, not a sprint — continue developing that skill set.
More than 20 years later, Hogshead-Makar said she’s glad for that advice.
She did — and still does — continue developing.
Awards, such as last week’s Pi Beta Phi honor, prove it.
@writerchapman
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