6 January 2024

USRowing announced on 4 January that Anita DeFrantz will be honored with the 2024 NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award on Wednesday, 10 January, at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Convention Welcome and Awards Presentation in Phoenix, Arizona.

“The award is presented to an individual who has provided significant leadership as an advocate for intercollegiate athletics on a continuous basis over the course of the individual’s career. She previously received the NCAA Silver Anniversary Award in 1999,” USRowing writes in a statement. 

DeFrantz began rowing as an undergraduate at Connecticut College before entering graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, where she joined Vesper Boat Club. She was captain of the U.S. women’s rowing team at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, winning a bronze medal in the eight. At the same time, she began serving on the United States Olympic Committee’s Board of Directors, after her election to the Athletes’ Advisory Committee in 1976. 

DeFrantz made her second Olympic team in 1980, but due to the U.S. boycott no American athletes went to Moscow. DeFrantz served as vice president of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and was elected to IOC membership in 1986, becoming both the first African American and first woman to serve on the committee.

She was president of the LA84 Foundation, stewarding the legacy of the Los Angeles Olympic Games for 28 years. USRowing writes that he foundation has invested more than $225 million to support more than 2,000 youth sports organizations and continues to provide Los Angeles youth with recreation and sports opportunities.

In 1992, DeFrantz was elected to the IOC Executive Board and was appointed to the IOC’s Olympic Program Commission. Three years later, she was appointed chair of the Women and Sport Consortium, which succeeded in opening up sport more to women, and then in 1997, she was the first woman elected to a four-year term as an IOC vice president, a position she held until 2001. She was elected to a second term as an IOC vice president in 2018.

She serves on LA 2028, the Los Angeles organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic Games.

Besides winning a bronze medal in the eights at the 1976 Olympics, DeFrantz took a silver medal in the coxed fours at the 1978 World Championships.

Read NCAA’s release here.