Event History
"LET ME PLAY" Event Focuses on Women’s Athletics:
Five years ago, Charlotte 49ers Director of Athletics Judy Rose had a brainstorm. A product of the opportunities that became available to women in athletics in the 1970's, Rose wanted to extend that support with the 49ers. With a wide array of influential female community and business leaders from which to pull, Rose sought a means to mobilize that talent in support of women’s athletics and at the same time begin sharing the 49ers' many success stories.
Intent on bringing people together for personal, first-hand interaction, Rose created the "Let Me Play" Luncheon, an annual fundraiser held in downtown Charlotte that today attracts over 400 of the most powerful women in the Charlotte area. The attendees have included the late Mariam Cannon Hayes, Dale Halton, Pat Rodgers, Lisa Lewis Dubois and Martha Woodward. Event chairs have included Halton, Rodgers, Mary Lou Babb and Betty Chafin Rash. The luncheon has regularly featured former 49ers' student-athletes as featured speakers.
In 2006, former women's basketball player Karen Shugart (Class of '83), an Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protection Division of the U.S. Secret Service, spoke via video. Last year, it was former volleyball star Krista Long (Class of '90), Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Ryland Homes. In 2005, women's basketball's Karen Popp (Class of '80), partner in the Washington D.C. firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP addressed the audience.
Surprisingly, the basis of Shugart's speech was not on her experiences in leading the detail that protects the First Lady. Long did not speak ad nauseam about her rapid rise up the corporate ladder and Popp did not go on and on about working alongside Attorney General Janet Reno. Instead, the keynotes spoke of their school and their collegiate experience. They spoke of the fun they had and the long-standing relationships born as 49ers' student-athletes. And they spoke of the tools that participation in athletics provides: time management, teamwork, dedication, perseverance, self-confidence, determination. Tools that played a key role in both charting and powering their futures.
The luncheon also includes comments from current 49er student-athletes, like track and field athletic and academic all-America Sharonda Johnson, who recently received a National Science Foundation Fellowship for her work with nanoparticles, academic all-America distance runner Cassie Ficken and two-time Athletic Director's Association Scholar-Athlete women's basketball team selection Sabrina Gregory. The current athletes tend to speak with gratitude of the opportunities athletics has afforded them and how they, out of respect, work to take full advantage of those opportunities.
The 49ers have raised nearly $350,000 in the first four years of the event, with a record single-day total of over $101,000 in 2007. Just as important, however, is that current student-athletes are exposed to high-level professional women and, in turn, that high-level professional women are exposed to the type of bright, skilled, young women that are produced, in part, by participation in the Charlotte 49ers athletic program.
This year, the 5th Annual "Let Me Play" Luncheon will be held Nov. 12 at The Westin. For more information, please contact the Charlotte 49ers Athletic Foundation at (704) 687-6024. Registrations can be made online at www.letmeplaycharlotte.com. There is no cost to attend this fundraising event but a donation is greatly appreciated.
