Burke fills senior women’s administrator role

After the UI men’s and women’s athletic departments merged into one in 2000, then-Iowa men’s athletic director Bob Bowlsby oversaw both the men’s and women’s sports. Now, Gary Barta has been at the helm of Hawkeye Athletics since 2006.

But Iowa Athletics still has a specific person to help and advocate for women’s sports. Burke has filled the position of Iowa’s Deputy Athletics Director and Senior Women’s Administrator since 2017.

Burke came to the UI in 2016, starting as the Senior Associate Athletics Director of Sport Administration and Event Management. She also served as the director of athletics at Eastern Illinois University for six years.

According to the NCAA, a senior women’s administrator is the highest-ranking woman in each college or university athletics department. The title was developed to provide support for female student-athletes.

“Senior women’s administrator, I take that as an individual that is not focusing just on women,” Burke said. “Because I’m responsible across the board, men or women. But I can provide leadership to our females.”

Burke said she has multiple initiatives at the UI to help support her student-athletes. She started HERky’s Voice, a podcast hosted by Iowa women’s tennis coach Sasha Schmid. The podcast highlights women throughout the Iowa Athletics department.

Three to four times a year, she said, she hosts ‘Coffee with Barbara’ for all women in the department. Burke brings in women in leadership positions around the country to present.

“I want the staff to see, ‘Hey, there’s other people here that look like you that are aspiring to what you’re doing, or to even higher levels,’” Burke said.

Burke also helps with day-to-day operations of the Iowa women’s basketball program. When the Hawkeyes had multiple Big Ten games postponed because of COVID-19 issues, Burke was the one to work with the conference to make sure Iowa completed its 18-game conference season in its entirety.

Iowa completing its full season helped the Hawkeyes win the Big Ten regular season championship. Michigan finished one game behind Iowa in the Big Ten standings, and the Wolverines let a regular-season conference game against Illinois — the worst team in the league — go unplayed after it was postponed because of COVID-19.

“She worked so hard with the Big Ten schools to get the games rescheduled for us,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said following Iowa’s regular season championship. “And we went through a lot of different scenarios.”

Burke also helped the Iowa women’s basketball team sell out Carver-Hawkeye Arena three consecutive times — the regular season game against the Wolverines on Feb. 27 and the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on March 18 and 20. Iowa’s 14,382 ticketed fans in the first rounds of the NCAA Tournament broke a single-site attendance record.

Before this season, Iowa women’s basketball had not seen a sold-out crowd since Jan. 31, 1988. Grant was behind that sold-out crowd, as she enlisted the help of Hayden Fry, Dan Gable, and Bump Elliot to promote the game on TV. Grant packed 22,167 people — 7,000 above Carver’s capacity — into the crowd. At the time, it broke the record for NCAA attendance at an intercollegiate women’s basketball game.

“Dr. Grant was so special to me, and she was just such a great mentor,” Bluder said. “Every time I step on the floor I’m wearing my tennis shoes in honor of her. She told me I needed to wear sensible shoes. She’s just really special. It’s just all those little girls getting the opportunity to play sports.”

When Burke was growing up, she didn’t have an opportunity to play organized sports. Now, Burke hopes her powerful position as deputy athletic director shows her female student-athletes what they’re capable of.

“I hope it helps them see that they do have leadership,” Burke said. “They do have advocates, and you don’t have to be a female to be an advocate for women’s sports, right? And you don’t have to be a male to be an advocate for male sport. For me, Title IX is not men versus women. Title IX is creating opportunities.”