In honor of Women's History Month, Penn State Brandywine will host "Women in Athletics," a panel discussion led by Olympic hurdler Candy Young, athletic director at Delaware State University, and Emmy Award-winning Sports Broadcaster Jaime Fettrow-Alderfer, on Thursday, March 28, at 6:30 p.m. in the Tomezsko Classroom Building Lounge.
Young and Fettrow-Alderfer will be joined by Brandywine alumna Stephanie Tracy, who ran cross country and played soccer on the campus' men's team, and current Brandywine athletes Emily Lawry Thompson (basketball) and Brandy Flowers (volleyball and basketball).
Young was the first female to hold the post of director of athletics at Delaware State University and has been involved in intercollegiate athletics for more than 30 years. In her current role, she leads more than 230 student athletes, 20 coaching personnel and an operating budget of more than $4 million. Young also serves as the "All Sports Camp" supervisor, which is the athletic department's six-week summer youth camp program. Among a long list of both personal and professional successes, Young, a 100-meter hurdler, made the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team when she was in high school. She also broke the world indoor record for 55 meter hurdles and was named Sports Illustrated National High School Athlete-of-the Year. She served on the Executive Committee for USA Track and Field for eight years and was assigned to the USA Track and Field Women's Olympic team selection staff for two consecutive Olympic Games.
Fettrow-Alderfer earned a degree in journalism from Penn State and was the University's first William Randolph Hearst Foundation award winner. She spent 10 years as a broadcast journalist; she began her career as a morning show anchor in Elmira, N.Y. and worked at the ABC station for two years before moving to Binghamton, N.Y., where she was the weekend anchor and weekday general assignment reporter. She relocated to Charlotte, N.C., where she was a general assignment reporter and finally made her way back to Pennsylvania where she served as the sports anchor/reporter at the CBS station in Harrisburg covering Penn State football, high school sports and minor league baseball and hockey. Fettrow-Alderfer won an Emmy Award for sports reporting in 2006. She currently resides in Philadelphia with her husband and has left broadcasting. She has taught communications classes at Penn State Brandywine and is involved with Uplifting Athletes, a national nonprofit that raises money and awareness for rare diseases. Fettrow-Alderfer is a diehard college football fan and hopes to pass her sports knowledge on to her two-year-old daughter Lexi.
This event is sponsored by the Brandywine Office of Student Affairs and the Commission for Women.