1. Kristian Graham
Mrs. Corbett
4th period
8 April 2012
Speech: Women in Sports Day Event
By the time that I turned four years old, my dad had already exposed me to sports. Sports
taught me many life skills. My competitive spirit and determination to never give up empowers
me as a female athlete. However, I did not realize the hardships and adversity that women
overcame to afford me opportunities in athletics until my freshman year when I attended a
National Girls and Women in Sports Day event and learned about Title IX. This event was
something I went to every year in high school in order to skip school, socialize, and get free
food. Not once did I ever really take in all of the hard work that was present around me: the
women athlete timeline, the nicely made brochures, all of the welcoming posters, or the all-
around organization of the event. All of that changed once senior year came around because I
decided to become an event planner and take on the challenge to organize this important event
that every high school girl looks forward to attending.
Before actually organizing the event, I took a step further and researched the history of
Title IX and learned that it was a law passed in 1975, proposed by Edith Green, that gave women
equal opportunities in education and athletics. I had no idea that fighting for women’s equal
rights was such a battle in something such as athletics. Knowing that after all the long brawls in
history where women took a great stand makes me appreciate being a female athlete.
Once January 1st came around, it was time to buckle down and get to work in order to
make the event successful. I am sadly a huge procrastinator in every aspect of my life, so I was

2. very appreciative while working with my project facilitator, Tracie Cicchinelli, because she did
not mess around. Usually adults within the Cherokee County School System organized this event
and thankfully Mrs. Cicchinelli had all the experience under her belt to keep me in line and on
task; the word ‘procrastinate’ was most certainly not in her vocabulary. Mrs. Cicchinelli is the
secretary for Mr. Sebring, the principal at Woodstock High School, where she takes on any
obstacles that come her way. Many times while I was working with her, she and Mr. Sebring
would joke about how she keeps him in line with what to do and enlightens him with what
exactly is going on. Witnessing Mrs. Cicchinelli’s work ethic pushed me and allowed me to not
procrastinate; I had made my mind up that the 7th Annual NGWSD event would be the finest one
yet at Woodstock High School.
With my project facilitator’s guidance every step of the way, I organized the event with
pure satisfaction. The first thing Mrs. Cicchinelli and I discussed was how much time and work I
was going to have to put into the event, along with buying the necessary goods for decorations
and getting sponsors around the county to support us with prizes for the female athletes who
would attend the event. Once I left our first meeting, I was loaded down with purple paper and
was told to make a female athlete timeline, along with going ahead and trying to find people or
businesses to sponsor the event. I was so excited about my dreams for the event being successful
that I drove around to find sponsors for a few hours, then went home that night and made the
whole timeline with no problems. During the process of finding sponsors, I knew someone who
owns a graphic shop, and he graciously donated about fifteen t-shirts to give away to the guests.
The next meeting, I went to Woodstock High School and proudly presented the finished timeline
to Mrs. Cicchinelli, then made the final touches by laminating each piece of the timeline. Once
that was completed, I made invitations that invited the female students to the event, along with

3. working on the brochure. The brochure presented biographies of the female speakers that
represented each Cherokee County High School, a biography of the keynote speaker, the
biography and recognition of the coach of honor, and the list of sponsors. The brochure was one
thing that was continuously edited during all of my steps of completing my final product. During
the whole process, many things had to be laminated; therefore the laminating machine became
my best friend by the end of it all. After I laminated the invitations, I cut them all out, which took
a very long time because there were so many. Then, when I thought I was done with the timeline,
Mrs. Cicchinelli told me it would look better if each event on the timeline had a picture with it.
The picture finding process was absolutely horrible because some of the events were not as well-
known as others; therefore, it was very difficult to find pictures for all of the events. One of the
most important parts consisted of actually completing over 500 brochures, so I spent much time
and effort folding them, hole-punching them to add decorative ribbon, and tying the small strand
of ribbon to each brochure. Then, I had to make sure that I printed out every student’s name who
was attending the event in order to allow them to have a chance to be drawn out of a box to win a
prize. Along with the invitations, timeline, and brochures, I also had to make welcoming banners
to welcome our guests and speakers and put together a slideshow to entertain the guests at the
event. The slideshow consisted of pictures of the female athletes from each school and silly
videos that they made. Then January 30th came around to nervously but excitedly make all of the
final touches for the event to take place the next day on Tuesday, January 31st. However, the
work did not stop there; I had to be at Woodstock High School at 7:30 in the morning to make
sure everything was in order, greet the guests and speakers and explain to them how the event
was going to present itself, and then impatiently wait for the event to begin at 9 AM, where I
greeted over 500 people in Woodstock’s auditorium.

4. As much as I would like to say that the process of creating the Women in Sports Day
event was smooth and easy, there were many problems that I struggled with along the way that
slowed me down and got me very frustrated. The first thing that comes to mind is the ribbon;
Mrs. Cicchinelli told me that the ribbon needed to be skinny with black and white polka dots,
and let’s just say I had a hard time getting what was needed. First, I went to Michael’s thinking
that the ribbon there would have more variety and would be cheaper; however, it was quite the
opposite. I spent $50 and did not even get the right thing. Later, I had to go to Wal-Mart and buy
all of the black and white polka dot ribbon that Wal-Mart had. Then from 12 AM to 3 AM, I
stayed up tying ribbon onto the brochures and did not get even a fourth of them completed.
Throughout the whole ribbon process, it took three rounds to three different Wal-Marts, along
with much of my time and money, in order to complete my task. Another frustrating factor was
getting all of the high schools to cooperate and to be punctual with their tasks that they were
asked to complete, such as getting each speaker’s biography, sending all of the students’ names
who were attending the event, and sometimes the teachers just would not email back. Along with
that, finding a key note speaker was very tough because no one was available. We successfully
booked a speaker after about four or five tries. The last obstacle that sticks out to me is finding
sponsors. It was very hard to get sponsors because some businesses would say they needed a
letter to send to Corporate, and then they would never get back to us because the process took
too long.
Through all of the obstacles and struggles I faced to organize this event, I would say that
I learned a lot about myself. I definitely grew to have much more patience than I used to have,
along with being more punctual, and I learned to not procrastinate. I also learned to always
acknowledge all of the hard work that is presented around me and to appreciate it. All of the

5. behind the scenes work to create the event is what causes you to actually enjoy the event;
therefore, do not take those efforts for granted. I learned that when working with other people,
always be assertive and do not let them take advantage of you. In the end, I was very happy with
the work that I had done. Even though it took a lot of time and hard work, I would definitely do
it again because it was a great opportunity to promote my people skills and further my
knowledge about Title IX, and the true meaning of being a female athlete.
Even though I enjoyed organizing the event, I do not think I would want to pursue it as a
career because I get stressed easily, and I would not want to put all of that pressure on myself all
of the time. I plan on attending Reinhardt University or Truett McConnell on a basketball
scholarship, and I want to pursue a career in nursing to become a neonatal nurse. I am a very
caring person, and I absolutely adore children; therefore, I think that working with newborn
babies would be something that I could be very good at. Thank you all very much for taking this
time to listen to my presentation, and do any of you have any questions?