Джуди Дайер из Топеки включена в Зал славы спорта Канзаса за создание женской команды по легкой атлетике

Before Title IX, before opportunity, a woman from Topeka was already breaking barriers TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Judy Dyer arrived at Texas Southern University carrying more than a suitcase. She carried the expectations of a young woman leaving Topeka for the first time. She carried the uncertainty of stepping onto a historically Black university campus after growing up in integrated schools. It was a transition that challenged Dyer in ways beyond athletics. Arriving at Texas Southern gave her a different perspective on race, identity and belonging in America. “It was scary for me for the first year of getting to know how to adapt to that type of environment because you’ve never been in that environment before,” Dyer told 13 SPORTS. “So it was a learning process, a mind-changing, an emotional thing that I had to learn with and I had to deal with.” And she carried the burden of chasing an Olympic dream in an America still wrestling with segregation, civil rights protests and questions about who deserved a place on the starting line. It was 1966. Long before Title IX guaranteed opportunities for women in college athletics, Dyer wasn’t joining a storied program. She was helping invent one. She and five other women founded Texas Southern University’s women’s track and field team, building a program from the ground up at a time when women’s sports received little funding, little attention and few opportunities. “It was actually very difficult because the eyes were all on us because we were the first women to ever start the track and field program,” Dyer said. “We were pioneers, we were trailblazers,” she continued. The responsibility was unlike anything Dyer had experienced before. She and the other founding members were not only competing -- they were helping establish what the program would become and setting a standard for the athletes who followed. The timing made their accomplishments even more remarkable. By the time Dyer reached the pinnacle of her athletic career in 1968, America was changing. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated that spring. The civil rights movement was reshaping the country, challenging long-held systems of inequality and forcing Americans to confront difficult questions about race, opportunity and justice. Later that year, the Summer Olympics in Mexico City would become one of the most politically significant games in history when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal stand in a gesture that became synonymous with the fight for civil rights. Against that backdrop, a young hurdler from Topeka was trying to do something much simpler. Run. Women’s athletics, meanwhile, remained an afterthought across much of the country. Title IX -- and the sweeping changes it would bring to women’s sports -- was still years away. Looking back nearly 60 years later, Dyer said being recognized for helping build the Texas Southern track and field program is something she does not take for granted. “I have been just given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” Dyer said when asked what the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame honor meant to her. “That’s how important and impressive it is to me. And I’m so totally grateful.” Today, Dyer is returning home as one of Kansas’ most accomplished athletes, entering the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame on July 25, not simply because she became an Olympian, but because she helped create pathways that countless women would later walk. Copyright 2026 WIBW. All rights reserved.