Reno Reporter

A former director of the University of Nevada, Reno, women's athletics department is being remembered for her significant contributions and achievements to the program and women's athletics.

According to a March 30 Nevada Today article by the university, Luella Lilly, aged 31 at the time, joined the university's department of physical education in 1969 as women’s volleyball and basketball coach. At that time, the university reportedly had little by way of women’s athletics. The women's department had no scholarships or uniforms and the volleyball program had zero in the win column. Lilly was undaunted and set out to turn the program around. 

“I always wanted the women to be respected, and I didn’t want them to be pushed around,” Lilly said, according to a 2013 oral history on the school's women’s athletics program. “I didn’t want them to have less than what would be expected of women who were trying to achieve their goals.”

For the next seven years and in the face of meager operating budgets, Lilly was able to overhaul the program and get it moving in the right direction.

Under her leadership, the 1975-76 women’s basketball team posted its first ever winning season and the 1975 women’s volleyball team won the program’s first and only conference championship in the Northern California Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

The road to victory was not without adversity however. In 1975, the male department chairman of the university's physical education department attempted to remove her from the department saying her leadership was making the "young women either assertive or aggressive," according to Lilly. 

Instead the university’s Faculty Senate voted unanimously to override the decision, and Lilly was promoted to associate professor of physical education.

Lilly, currently 84 years old, is now one of the most decorated administrators in women’s intercollegiate athletics history.