Women Athletes Posters, Prints, & Photographs
for social studies and physical education classrooms, home schoolers

Women in Sports

Comes the Revolution, cover story

Track Athlete Fanny Blankers Koen Taking Her Jump, Photographic Print

Fanny Blankers-Koen
b. 4-26-1918; The Netherlands
d. 1-25-2004

Fanny Blankers-Koen is best remembered or winning four gold medals in the 1948 Summer Olympics. She was voted the “Female Athlete of the Century” by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), in 1999.

Lawn Tennis 1907, Miss Lottie Dod and Wimbledon in 1880, Photographs from the Times, Photographic Print

Charlotte “Lottie” Dod
b. 9-24-1871; Chesire, England
d. 6-27-1960; England

Lottie Dod is best remembered as a tennis player - she was Womens' Singles Champion five times, the first time when she was fifteen in 1887. She also played golf, field hockey and won a silver Olympic medal in archery (1908).

Chris Evert
b. 12-21-1954; Boca Raton, FL

Althea Gibson
b. 8-25-1927; Silver, SC
d. 9-28-2003; NJ

• more Black Athletes posters

Steffi Graf
b. 6-14-1969; West Germany

Sonja Henie
b. 4-8-1912; Oslo, Norway
d. 10-12-1969

Sonja Henie was a figure skater who won three Olympic medals, a ten time World Champion and six time Euopean Champion, as well as parlaying those awards into being one the highest paid movie stars in Hollywood. She also suffered from alcoholism and leukemia, and developed friendships with Nazis including Hitler.

Tennis Player Billie Jean King in Action During US Championship Match at Forest Hills, Photographic Print

Billie Jean King
b. 11-22-1943; Long Beach, CA

Tennis player Billie Jean King, who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles is also best remembered for winning the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973, against Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon men's champion.

Suzanne Lenglen, the Ladies' Singles Champion, Giclee Print

Suzanne Lenglen
b. 5-24-1899; France
d. 7-4-1938; France (leukemia)

Suzanne Lenglen, one of the world's greatest tennis players was criticized for turning professional. Her response: “In the twelve years I have been champion I have earned literally millions of francs for tennis and have paid thousands of francs in entrance fees to be allowed to do so.... I have worked as hard at my career as any man or woman has worked at any career. And in my whole lifetime I have not earned $5,000 - not one cent of that by my specialty, my life study - tennis.... I am twenty-seven and not wealthy - should I embark on any other career and leave the one for which I have what people call genius? Or should I smile at the prospect of actual poverty and continue to earn a fortune - for whom?” Quoted by Billie Jean King in We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis.

Nancy Lopez, Hispanic Heritage, Wall Poster

Nancy Lopez
b. 1-6-1957; California

Poster Text: It has been said that Nancy Lopez is women's golf, and in many ways that is true. More than any other person, Nancy Lopez is responsible for increating the visibility and popularity of the sport of women's professional golf. She was the first superstar of the sport, and she is still one of the best-known female athletes in the country.

Nancy Lopez was born in Torrence, California, in 1957, but she grew up in the city of Roswell, New Mexico. Her father, Domingo Lopez, came to America from Mexico when he was just a small boy. He worked on the farm with his four sisters and four brothers, and in the evenings he played baseball. Later he took up golf, and within eighteen months he was already winning amateur tournaments. Ms. Lopez has said that she inherited her love of sports from her father. At the age of eight, Nancy was given her first golf clubs, and she quickly became on the the best players in the state. At nine, she won the state peewee tournament. The next year she won the state girls' championship. Her father, impressed with her talent, became her coach and trainer. He even dug a big hole in their backyard and filled it with sand so Nancy could practice hitting out of sandtraps!

Thins were not always easy for Nancy, however. As a Hispanic woman, she was often a victim of discrimination. Her parents were not allowed to join the Roswell Country Club, so Nancy had to play on the municipal course in Roswell. And many people did not like the idea of a Mexican American winning so many golf tournaments. In 1977, Ms. Lopez turned pro, and she quickly made a name for herself by finishing second in her first three tournaments. In 1978, she set a record by winning five straight tournaments. In her long pro career, Nancy Lopez has been one of the most successful and popular athletes in America. She has come a long way from the dusty streets of Roswell. But she always remembers that “you can't win all the time. As long as you're doing the best you can that's [what's] important.”

• Hispanic Heritage posters

Martina Navratilova, Photographic Print

Martina Navratilova
b. 10-18-1956; Czechoslovakia

Martina Navratilova, who fled Czechoslovakia at age 18, has been called “the greatest tennis player of all time.”

Wilma Rudolph
b. 6-23-1940; Clarksville, TN
d. 11-12-1994; Brentwood, TN

Poster Text: Wilma Rudolph was born in Tennessee in 1940, the 20th of 22 children. Her parents had to struggle mightily to make ends meet for their large family. Then, at the age of four, Wilma became seriously ill with scarlet fever and pneumonia. The illness left her with a crippled leg, and doctors told here she would never be able to walk normally again. But Wilma refused to give up. She soon recovered completely and grew to be an exceptionally tall and graceful young woman – and in time, she became a star athlete.

Wilma once scored 49 points in a high school basketball game – a school record that still stands! But her greatest triumph came during the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome where she won gold medals in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, and the 400- meter relay. She set a new Olympic record in the 100 meter-dash with a time of 11 seconds. Wilma Rudolph overcame tremendous odds to become one of the greatest athletes in Olympic history. In 1993, just one year before she died of cancer, she was the first person ever to receive President Clinton's National Sports Awards.

• more Great American Women posters
• more Black History posters
• American Women composite poster

Kristi Yamaguchi, Wall Poster

Kristi Yamaguchi
b. 7-12-1971; Hayward, CA

It has often been said that the key to success in sports, as in life, is dedication. Kristi Yamaguchi knows all about dedication. she began practing to be a figure skating champion at the age of 6. As a teenager she used to get up every morning at 3:45 so she could be out on the ice by 5 am. All of her hard work and dedication paid off in 1992, when she became the first American woman in 16 years to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating.

Like many Asian-Americans, Kristi Yamaguchi has always lived in two worlds. Her father and mother are both Japanese, but both sides of her family have lived in American for almost 100 years. And both her mother's and her father's families faced discrimination during the 1940s, when many Japanese-Americans were cruelly and unfairly punished for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Kristi's mother, Carole, was born in one of the so-called "internment camps" in which thousands of Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War Two. Her father's family was also sent tot he camps, and lost everything they owned.

Kristi Yamaguchi was born on July 12, 1971, and grew up in the California town of Fremont, mear San Francisco. Her father is a dentist, and Kristi is one of three children in her family. Although she was born with clubfeet, which means that her feet were bent in a way that made normal walking difficult, special shoes corrected the problem. In many ways, Kristi was a normal California kid – she loved sports and spent a lot of time outdoors. But Kristi also possessed an inner drive and strength that led her to take up the demanding sport of figure skating at a very young age. To be good at figure skating requires hours and hours of practice, and it can sometimes be boring and frustrating. But Kristi stuck with it, and in 1988 she won her first major amateur title at the World Junior Championships.

Early in her career, Kristi skated both singles and pairs. But after 1988, she concentrated on singles. The result was spectacular success, as Kristi finished second at the 1990 U.S. National Championships and first in the 1990 Goodwill Games. Kristi captured first place at the World Chamionships in 1991, and then went on to win the U.S. Nationals the following year. After that came her triumph at the Olympics, where she beat out her biggest rival, Japan's Midori Ito. Today, Kristi is a professional skater, and she continues to thrill audiences around the world with the beauty, grace and elegance of her skating.

• Great Asian Americans posters