INSPIRING WOMEN OF INDIANA SPORTS
THEY CHANGED THE GAMES WE LOVE
BY DAVID WOODS
The lineup
AUTHOR
David Woods
BOOK EDITOR
Gene Myers
SPORTS EDITOR
Nat Newell
DESIGNER
Joey Schaffer
PROOFREADER
Heather Hewitt
COPY EDITOR
Sherrill Amo
PROJECT COORDINATOR
Gene Myers
SPECIAL THANKS
Alicia Del Gallo, Chris Thomas, Chris Fenison, Max Gersh, Jared Sábado Hernández
About the book
“Inspiring Women of Indiana Sports” by David Woods and The Indianapolis Star highlights his three-plus decades of chronicling the accomplishments and backstories of female athletes of all ages and in a multitude of sports. The women in this book grew up in Indiana or attended college in the Hoosier State or played professionally in the Crossroads of America. And then there’s Katie Douglas, a basketball star who was born in Indianapolis, played at Indy’s Perry Meridian High School, won an NCAA championship at Purdue University and captured a WNBA title with the Indiana Fever. The IndyStar provides the best coverage of women’s sports in Indiana — from preps to colleges to pros. Read all about it at indystar.com/sports. Order a print subscription at 888-357-7827. This book includes photographs from the USA TODAY Network, which includes the IndyStar.
On the cover
FRONT COVER: Clockwise from the top left: Breaststroke specialist Lilly King, from Evansville and Indiana University who won six Olympic medals; point guard Caitlin Clark, the biggest draw in women’s sports who stars for the Indiana Fever; soccer player Lauren (Cheney) Holiday, from Indianapolis who won two gold medals and a World Cup with Team USA; forward Tamika Catchings, who won a WNBA title and MVP award with the Fever; sprinter Lynna Irby-Jackson, from Indianapolis who has two Olympic medals; cyclist Chloe Dygert, from Brownsburg who has four Olympic medals; and gymnast Bridget Sloan, from Pittsboro who won the all-around at the world championships. INDYSTAR AND IMAGN IMAGES
PREVIOUS PAGE AND FOLLOWING PAGE: Indiana Fever point guard Caitlin Clark, the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft and rookie of the year in 2024, shared a smile and her autograph with her legion of adoring fans. RAFAEL SUANES / IMAGN IMAGES (PAGE 1); GRACE SMITH / INDYSTAR (PAGE 3)
BACK COVER: Olympic thrills for two Hoosier women: Fencer Lee Kiefer, a Notre Dame graduate, celebrated a victory at the 2024 Paris Olympics en route to two gold medals. Sprinter Ashley Spencer of Indianapolis draped herself in Old Glory after winning a bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2016 Rio Olympics. KATIE GOODALE / AUGUSTA (GA.) CHRONICLE (MAIN PHOTO); CHRISTOPHER HANEWINCKEL / IMAGN IMAGES (INSERT PHOTO).
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher.
This book is dedicated to the inspiring women in my life: my mother, Helen; my wife, Jan; our daughters, Karen and Kathy; and granddaughter Naomi.
Also, a special thanks to a longtime advocate, Matt Glenesk, USA TODAY colleges editor and former IndyStar deputy sports editor, and IndyStar sports editor Nat Newell, who set things in motion for this book.
Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. • www.pediment.com
Printed in Canada.
This book is an unofficial account of female athletes in Indiana by the IndyStar and is not endorsed by individual athletes or any sports governing entity.
DAVID WOODS’ DEDICATION
WOMEN OF INDIANA SPORTS
BY DAVID WOODS
TYRA BUSS
INDIANA UNIVERISTY
A MULTISPORT SCORING MACHINE
KATIE DOUGLAS
FEVER / PURDUE / INDIANAPOLIS
A LEGACY OF CHAMPIONSHIPS
TAMIKA CATCHINGS
INDIANA FEVER MVP, CHAMPION, AGELESS WONDER
KRISTEN SPOLYAR
BUTLER / LEBANON, INDIANA
AIDING HER UKRAINE TEAMMATES
CAITLIN CLARK
INDIANA FEVER
THE WOMAN WHO CHANGED IT ALL
01 Basketball
SCORING WHIZZES, A HALL OF FAMER, THE ULTIMATE TEAMMATE, PLUS INDIANA FROM PREPS TO THE PROS
OPPOSITE: In 2021, Indiana Fever icon Tamika Catchings revealed during her enshrinement ceremony for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame that she wrote in the seventh grade her goal in life was “to be a professional basketball player in the NBA.” Her induction after dominating in the WNBA was delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. DAVID BUTLER II / IMAGN IMAGES
TYRA BUSS | INDIANA UNIVERSITY
‘The kid is fearless’: Scoring machine from the Illinois border defined multisport star
PUBLISHED FEB. 12, 2014
EITHER YOU BELIEVE IN TYRA Buss, or you don’t.
Someone who looks like Barbie and hoops like Kobe? Who averages 47 points a game? Who is a champion in tennis, track, baseball, and punt, pass and kick? Who ranks No. 1 in her class?
Who attends Catholic church on Sunday and signs autographs for adoring little girls after each game?
Buss’ own father, Tim, conceded it all strains credulity.
“Sometimes you look at it, ‘Am I in this dream here?’” he said. “It’s mind-boggling when you talk about the numbers and look at some of that stuff. It’s just hard to imagine that that’s your daughter.”
Indiana University fans can imagine what it will be like to have the reigning Illinois Ms. Basketball next season. Yet it might be exaggeration to suggest
she will be to the IU women what Cody Zeller was to the men.
Buss, 17, is a high school senior at Mount Carmel (pop. 7,300), which is along the Wabash River and about 110 miles southeast of Bloomington. She is listed at 5-feet-7, probably stands 5-6 and is not ranked among the nation’s top 100 prospects in the 2014 class.
Zeller is 7-0, played in the McDonald’s All-America game and became a No. 4 pick in the NBA draft.
“I think it might be unfair to call her our Cody Zeller,” Hoosiers coach Curt Miller said. “But we needed a face to our program. We need a name to give us some buzz in our state and in this community.”
Buss is about as Hoosier as it gets for someone on the other side of the border. She was born in Vincennes and plays for the only Illinois school in the otherwise all-Indiana Big Eight, which includes Zeller’s alma mater,
Washington. Mount Carmel also produced Archie Dees, a two-time Big Ten MVP for Indiana in the 1950s.
She wasn’t difficult to recruit. She liked what she called “one big happy family” at IU, the only college to which she made an official visit.
Those close to her said her biggest adjustment won’t be to the Big Ten, but to separation from family. Her father is the school superintendent, and her mother, Kelly, is her track coach. One brother, Tyler, 27, is the boys basketball coach and her other brother, Kyle, 23, is the assistant coach. Tyra has been dating her boyfriend, Levi Laws, 17, since Feb. 5, 2010 (they mark the date).
Buss said Miller promised to turn around the program, and the Hoosiers had exceeded expectations this season with an unprecedented 14-0 start and a 17-6 record. Average home attendance is 2,770, an increase of 28% over last year.
That’s without Tyra Buzz.
“I want to be part of a program that I could help change,” she said. “A lot of people were like, ‘Don’t you want to go to Connecticut or somewhere like that?’ I was like, ‘No, I want to go somewhere we can beat Connecticut.”
Miller likened her to Jordan Hulls, whose skills and work ethic influenced IU’s culture. But even Miller acknowledged that Buss’ numbers “are almost unbelievable.”
Just as unbelievable is what she has done in the football town of Mount Carmel, where the Golden Aces have played in three state championship games during the 2000s and brother Kyle was an all-state quarterback. At Taco Tierra or Norm’s Barber Shop, they talk Tyra as much as football. Fans drive from miles around to see her play.
In a Jan. 13 game against Princeton, the No. 1 Class 3A team in Indiana, there was a sellout of 1,400 in Mount Carmel’s 86-year-old gym. Nine
OPPOSITE: After her final college game, in which she played 40 minutes with a team-high 16 points, Tyra Buss cut down the net at Assembly Hall. She led the Indiana Hoosiers over Virginia Tech 65-57 for the 2018 WNIT championship. She set IU career records in six categories, including points (2,364) and assists (574). BOBBY GODDIN / INDYSTAR
CAITLIN CLARK | INDIANA FEVER
From scoring marks to endorsement deals, Fever guard flourishes in a class by herself
IT WOULD BE INACCURATE TO characterize Caitlin Clark as the eye of the hurricane. She is not all calm amidst the storms around her.
She is competitive, sometimes combative.
In 2024, during her rookie of the year season in the WNBA, the 6-foot Indiana Fever point guard acquired six technical fouls. One more, and she would have been suspended.
Revealingly, 17% of the league’s flagrant fouls in 2024 were committed against Clark.
That is the ugly side of the Caitlin Clark Effect. We have witnessed jealousy, pettiness, polarization and racial overtones.
The other side? Beauty.
Beauty as rare as her logo 3-pointers or breathtaking passes.
As befitting a woman raised Catholic, consider the verse from Romans 12:21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So much good has come out of Clark’s arrival in Indianapolis.
There are sellouts at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and venues across the league. WNBA attendance, TV ratings and merchandise sales are up. The number of teams is going up.
Meanwhile, those storms outside have mattered little to what’s inside.
“It’s something that never gets old, truly. To see young girls and even young boys wear your jersey, or want a picture, or want an autograph, that’s the reason you do it,” Clark said on “Good Morning America,” which came to Indianapolis during 2025 All-Star Game festivities.
“You were just that young girl, honestly, a short time ago. For myself, it just puts perspective on everything.”
A love of competition
Maybe it was inevitable that Caitlin Clark would become a Hoosier hooper.
But she played everything. Softball, volleyball, tennis, golf. She was all-state
in soccer.
She was playing basketball against boys as early as age 5 because, well, her father could not find a girls league. Teachers at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School in West Des Moines, Iowa, knew she was unlike her classmates.
“She just went toe-to-toe with all the boys,” said Katie Tiggs, who was Clark’s second-grade teacher. “It didn’t matter who she was playing against or what she was doing, whether academics or outside at recess.”
She transformed from good to great after disappointment, according to Kristen Meyer, the Dowling Catholic High School coach. Clark made the USA Basketball under-16 team, but not the under-17s a year later. There was solace that summer because she led her AAU team, All-Iowa Attack, to a Nike national championship.
Dowling Catholic never won a state championship, but Clark finished her high school career as the No. 4 scorer
in Iowa history with 2,547 points, featuring a single-game high of 60. As a senior, she averaged 33.4 a game.
Passing Pistol Pete
Out of high school, Clark made an oral commitment to Notre Dame but reconsidered. She stayed in the state and joined coach Lisa Bluder at Iowa.
As a junior, she led Iowa into its first Final Four since 1993. In a 77-73 semifinal upset of No. 1 South Carolina, the defending national champion, she scored 41 points. In the title game, LSU beat the Hawkeyes 102-85, despite Clark’s 30 points and eight 3-pointers.
As a senior, in her final regularseason game, she became the all-time NCAA scoring leader (men or women), surpassing LSU’s Pete Maravich.
In an NCAA tournament quarterfinal, matched again against LSU, Iowa won 94-87 to go back to the Final Four. Clark had 41 points and 12 assists. Iowa beat Connecticut 71-69 in a semifinal to
OPPOSITE: Caitlin Clark became a beloved sports figure not just for her skill but her flash and flair, such as after draining a logo 3-pointer against the Chicago Sky in June 2024. Clark led Iowa to two NCAA championship games and set NCAA records for points in a season (1,234) and career (3,951). JACOB MUSSELMAN / INDYSTAR
LAUREN BAILEY
WESTFIELD / NOTRE DAME
RAN AFTER BEING RUN OVER
MAICEL MALONE
INDIANAPOLIS
GOING SO FAST FOR SO LONG
JADIN O’BRIEN
NOTRE DAME
EXORCIST TRIED FOR AILMENT
KARA WINGER
PURDUE
NINE TIMES A U.S. CHAMPION
DANIELLE CARRUTHERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
KEPT OVERCOMING HURDLES
CANDYCE MCGRONE
INDIANAPOLIS
ALWAYS FOLLOWED HER CALLING
ASHLEY SPENCER
INDIANAPOLIS
A FAMILY STEEPED IN TRACK
LYNNA IRBY-JACKSON
INDIANAPOLIS
GOLDEN GLORY IN RELAYS
DEDEE NATHAN
FORT WAYNE / INDIANA U.
THE WINDING ROAD TO SYDNEY
MORGAN UCENY
PLYMOUTH, INDIANA
AN ACCIDENTIAL WORLD NO. 1
05 Track and Field
A MYSTERIOUS AILMENT, RUN OVER BEFORE A RACE, SO MANY HURDLES, SCORES OF MEDALS AND GLORY
OPPOSITE: In 2001, DeDee Nathan cleared 5 feet, 7 inches in the high jump at Oregon’s Hayward Field en route to repeating as U.S. heptathlon champion. From Indiana University and Fort Wayne, Nathan later became the first woman to compete for and coach an Indiana state championship track team. JACK GRUBER / USA TODAY
ASHLEY SPENCER | INDIANAPOLIS
From a family immersed in track, hurdler delivered her late grandmother’s vision
PUBLISHED AUG. 13, 2016
THERE HAVE BEEN TWO ABIDING loves in Ashley Spencer’s life: her grandmother and the hurdles.
As with any love, there can be pain. For two years, pain accompanied every stride.
But when the 23-year-old walks into Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Stadium, with 400 meters of track and 10 hurdles confronting her, the load will be lightened. Memory of her “Nana” will mean everything and weigh nothing.
As she told her mother: “Now I can take Nana to the Olympics in my heart. She’ll go everywhere with me.”
‘I’M GOING TO MISS THAT’
A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer devastated a close-knit Indianapolis family. Joyce Smith Campbell, grandmother to Ashley, was given three to five months to live.
Demietrus and Rita Spencer didn’t want to deliver the news over the phone,
so they drove to Champaign, Illinois, in spring 2013 to tell their daughters, Ashley and Ahlivia. They were members of the Illinois track team and graduates of Indianapolis’ Lawrence North. They wore pink bracelets at the Big Ten championships to honor their grandmother.
Months of upheaval followed.
Ashley qualified for the world championships in the 400 meters and had to prepare for a trip to Moscow. Her coach, Tonja Buford-Bailey, left the Illini for Texas. Ashley had to decide whether to stay or go and ultimately transferred to Texas. She developed a quadriceps injury that was to inhibit her for two seasons.
Meanwhile, her grandmother fought cancer. She did not complain, except once. She told her daughter: “I want to see my granddaughter run in the Olympics. I’m going to miss that.”
As the grandmother’s condition worsened, Ashley was summoned home from Austin. All of the family gathered in
Nana’s bedroom.
She died March 21, 2014. She was 64.
Track had long been a refuge for Spencer, but no more. Her grandmother died six days after she was overtaken in the 1,600-meter relay, costing Texas the NCAA indoor team title by a half-point.
She continued to train the same. Yet she was not the same. Someone gifted with speed and endurance ran into something unendurable.
“Her soul was broken, her mind was broken, she was away from family,” her mother said. “It was tough for all of us. It just broke her.”
A 400-meter paradox
That Ashley Spencer is a medal contender in the 400-meter hurdles makes perfect sense … and makes no sense whatsoever.
She has requisite speed, as evidenced by two NCAA titles and one world junior gold medal in the 400-meter dash. Of the 20 fastest hurdlers in history, only three
have run faster 400s (without hurdles) than Spencer.
“I think she could be one of the best ever in this event,” said Buford-Bailey, an Olympic bronze medalist in the 400 hurdles in 1996.
Yet until this season, Spencer had run 400 hurdles exactly four times. She is less experienced than prodigy Sydney McLaughlin, who made the Olympic team at age 16.
Despite all that, Spencer’s time of 54.02 from the Olympic Trials ranks No. 5 in the world -- and two women ahead of her who won’t be in Rio. Sports Illustrated picked her for a bronze medal. No native Hoosier woman ever has won an individual medal in Olympic track and field.
When Spencer was at Lawrence North, she was coached by her aunt, Le’gretta Smith. The then-assistant coach did not want her nieces racing each other and put Ashley in the hurdles, away from Ahlivia.
OPPOSITE: Ashley Spencer of Indianapolis enjoyed a victory lap in Rio de Janeiro. She came from behind to win a bronze medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2016 Olympics. That made her the first native Hoosier to win an individual medal in Olympic track and field. CHRISTOPHER HANEWINCKEL / IMAGN IMAGES
AT A GLANCE: KARA (PATTERSON) WINGER
Born: April 10, 1986, at Seattle.
High school: Skyview, Vancouver, Washington.
College: Purdue.
Highlights: Two U.S. records in javelin (218 feet, 5 inches in 2010, 223-5 in 2022). … Four-time Olympian (2008, 2012, 2016, 2021). Second at 2024 trials but lacked qualifying standard for Olympics. … Silver medal at world championships (2022). … Nine U.S. titles (2008-11, 2014-15, 2017-18, 2022). … NCAA runner-up (2009).
When the two did throw, they did so in an empty park.
“I actually loved training in the pandemic,” Winger said. “I felt really good training at my house.”
Her first ACL injury came at the 2012 Olympic Trials, and she was hurt again in August 2020. She could have retired but made it to the Tokyo Olympics, where she was U.S. flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
She lamented she never made “that big
Personal: Married since 2014 to former thrower Russell Winger. … Flag bearer for Team USA at closing ceremony of 2021 Tokyo Olympics. … Served as Athlete Advisory Committee secretary on USA Track & Field’s board of directors. … Public lands advocate. ... Earned master’s in business administration from DeVry University.
jump.” She did persevere.
“That was part of my mission in coming back this year,” she said. “Show people you can throw for a really long time, if you love it, if you take care of the details, if you honor the journey more than the results. And I hope that remains true.”
In a post-javelin career, Winger will continue working for Parity, founded in 2020. The company strives to close the gender pay gap for elite women’s athletes.
RIGHT: Kara Winger, in her fourth Olympics, was the American flag bearer at the closing ceremony of the 2021 Tokyo Games. ROB SCHUMACHER / IMAGN IMAGES
OPPOSITE: Winger celebrated the defining moment of her career: a silver medal in the 2022 world championships at Eugene, Oregon. On her final javelin throw, she climbed from fifth to second with a distance of 210 feet, 1 inch. She became the first Purdue woman to win an outdoor global medal in track and field and the first American woman to win a javelin medal at a world championships. “I’m amazed these results are coming after my second ACL tear,” she said. “When you do the right stuff, your dream can come true.”
BEN LONERGAN / EUGENE (ORE.) REGISTER-GUARD
ANITA ALLEN CASKEY
STAR CITY, INDIANA FROM THE ARMY TO ATHENS
LEE KIEFER
NOTRE DAME
AMERICAN FENCING FIRSTS
CHLOE DYGERT BROWNSBURG, INDIANA MEDALS IN THREE OLYMPICS
MISSY SCHWEN RYAN BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA
DONATED KIDNEY, WON MEDAL
LAUREN HOLIDAY
INDIANAPOLIS TEAM USA SOCCER MAINSTAY
06 Other Sports
KIDNEY DONOR ROWED TO MEDAL, FENCER MADE U.S. HISTORY, CYCLIST ON PODIUMS, A SOCCER STALWART
OPPOSITE: In July 2024 at the Paris Olympics, Americans Lee Kiefer and Lauren Scruggs squared off for the gold medal in foil. Kiefer, a Notre Dame graduate, won 15-6 to defend her gold from the Tokyo Games, the first time an American had won the event. Kiefer, Scruggs and two teammates captured gold in the team event at Paris. YUKIHITO TAGUCHI / IMAGN IMAGES
OPPOSITE: Anita Allen and her horse cleared a barrier in the riding event of the modern pentathlon at the Goudi Olympic Complex in Athens. She was first in the equestrian discipline and finished 18th overall at the 2004 Games. GINGER WALL / WILMINGTON (DEL.) NEWS JOURNAL
AT A GLANCE: ANITA ALLEN CASKEY
Born: Sept. 10, 1977, at Star City, Indiana.
High school: Pioneer, Royal Center, Indiana.
College: U.S. Military Academy.
usually foretell an Olympic future. And there likely wouldn’t have been one if Allen’s father hadn’t asked her to retrieve a recruiting letter tossed into the backseat of the car. It was from the track coach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Life at West Point was demanding. Allen slept three or four hours a night and fought an eating disorder that developed during high school. She wouldn’t elaborate on that other than to say her treatment was to phone home.
She starred in cross-country, and after graduating stayed with the team as an assistant coach. It was in that capacity, during a trip to training camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that Allen met Rob Coley. A director in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, Coley raised the idea of the pentathlon.
Coley knew Allen could run. He asked whether she was a good shot. With a rifle, she replied.
As for fencing …
“I knew how to build fencing and tear it down,” she said.
Allen performed well in tests for coordination and swimming, and the Army
Highlights: Finished 18th (first in equestrian segment) in modern pentathlon at 2004 Athens Olympics. … Gold medalist at Pan American Games (2003). … Army team captain in cross-country and MVP in track.
Personal: Former captain in Medical Services Corps. … Earned master’s degree from Notre Dame. … Works as a hospital administrator. … Married since 2011 to Nathan Caskey with three children. … Lives in Minneapolis.
dispatched Allen to Colorado Springs in 2001 to train full time.
The Olympics were the goal from the beginning.
A relentless worker
She was such a beginner.
Swimming was new compared with the strokes Allen used in high school. Pistol was a new weapon. Fencing was difficult. Riding was scary.
“I was doing as much as I could every single day. Just to learn the sport,” Allen said.
She was a diligent student and a fast learner. She sat on a horse every day for six months to familiarize herself with the way the animal moved. She ran twice a day. She did what her coach asked, and more.
“Sometimes she pushes herself too much,” said U.S. coach Janusz Peciak, who won a gold medal for Poland at the 1976 Olympics. “She pushes sometimes almost beyond what her body can do.”
She soldiered on, and in 2003 she was fourth in the U.S. championships. Two Americans make the Olympic team, and she was getting close.
After the nationals came the Pan Am Games at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. By then, she told herself she would quit if she didn’t perform well.
“I was going to give my best shot there,” Allen said. “I owed the Army nothing else. Especially when your friends are getting killed.”
In the fourth event, she encountered the pentathlon’s worst hardship — a balky horse.
Allen’s coach advised her to use an unconventional strategy: growl. At each fence, she growled and the horse jumped. They knocked off one rail.
“She had almost a perfect ride on that bonehead,” said her father, Dean Allen. Allen went into the closing 3,000-meter run 42 seconds behind leader Katie Rodriguez of Cuba. The start is handicapped based on total score to that point. Allen erased the deficit and secured a berth in Athens that went to the winner. Yet the tears afterward were not totally of joy.
All she could speak about was one of her closest friends, Leif Nott, a U.S. solider who had died in Iraq shortly before. She said the victory was as much his as hers.
CHLOE DYGERT | BROWNSBURG, INDIANA
The crash was scary, the injury ghastly, the comeback epic for cycling medalist
PUBLISHED JULY 21, 2021
FEW WITNESSED HOW BAD IT really was. Photographs of the wound are so grisly, they cannot be published.
Ten months ago, Chloe Dygert lost control of her bike during road cycling’s world championships at Imola, Italy, and went over a guardrail. Her resultant injury was announced as a lacerated left leg. That does not begin to describe it.
So much skin was torn away, and there was so much blood, it looked like a combat wound from mid-thigh to knee. The postsurgical scar resembles that from a shark bite.
This is the same Chloe Dygert who goes for three gold medals — and is favored for one — at the Tokyo Olympics. She rides into mythic territory. It would be akin to Wilma Rudolph beating polio and sprinting to three gold medals in 1960, or Joan
Benoit coming back from knee surgery to win the first Olympic women’s marathon in 1984.
“To see where she is today, compared to where she was, it’s just stunning,” said David Dygert, father of the cyclist from Brownsburg, Indiana. It is. And yet it isn’t.
Although Dygert is only 24, she has long exhibited a pain threshold and ambition that sometimes alarm those close to her. All coaches, peers, family and friends can do is help channel all that.
Dygert has vowed to compete in seven Olympics. That means going until age 43, as did her former coach, Kristin Armstrong. At 19, she won a silver medal in team pursuit at her first Olympics in 2016.
Two years ago, Dygert became the youngest time trial winner — with the biggest margin — in the history of the road worlds. One of her agents,
Guillermo Rojas Jr., said she would never be satisfied to be one of the greatest cyclists of all time.
“She wants to be known as one of the best athletes of all time,” Rojas said.
Dygert has never said so publicly. In fact, after a phone interview with the IndyStar last October, she has consented to one non-NBC interview (with the Wall Street Journal) since mid-November.
She has been healing, rehabbing, training. It is a single-mindedness that has allowed her to do what she has done — and to get into position for what she could do.
“Basketball, I wasn’t the best at.
I didn’t know what I could be,” said Dygert, who played for a team featuring IndyStar Miss Basketball Stephanie Mavunga, in a June 2019 interview. “I didn’t know I could be an Olympian in anything.
“But once I found cycling and found the sport that I can be the best at, it’s just changed everything in how I view things. I have to be the best, I need to be the best, I want to be the best, at all times.”
During the 2019 time trial in Yorkshire, England, TV commentators were agog at Dygert’s 92-second victory.
“Chloe is so fast, they need a helicopter to catch her.”
“She is officially destroying everything in her path today.”
“It doesn’t even sound real.”
“It looks a mistake has been made by the timing chip.”
When she went for a repeat last year, it was no surprise to see her ahead by 26 seconds near mid-race. Then she flipped.
Jim Miller, the USC Cycling director of sport performance, was in the trailing car and at her side within seconds
OPPOSITE: Brownsburg rider Chloe Dygert, after a bronze medal, took a selfie on the podium with silver medalist Anna Henderson of Great Britain and gold medalist Grace Brown of Australia at Pont Alexandre III. Dygert finished third in road cycling’s individual time trial at the Paris Olympics. ANDREW P. SCOTT / USA TODAY
Notre Dame graduate Lee Kiefer exulted in a fencing match against China’s Yuting Wang in team foil during the 2024 Paris Olympics at Grand Palais. The U.S. women ended up winning team foil, supplying Kiefer with her third Olympic gold. KATIE GOODALE / AUGUSTA (GA.) CHRONICLE
LEE KIEFER | NOTRE DAME
In her third Olympics, medical student captures first American gold medal in foil
PUBLISHED JULY 25, 2021
NOTRE DAME HAS SEVEN Heisman Trophy winners. It won’t be long until it has that many fencing gold medals.
The third came at the Tokyo Olympics, where Lee Kiefer beat defending champion Inna Deriglazova of Russia 15-13 in the women’s foil final.
Kiefer ripped off her mask after the final point and shouted, “Oh, my God!”
Mariel Zagunis, also a Notre Dame graduate, is the only other American fencer to earn gold, winning women’s
AT A GLANCE: LEE KIEFER
Born: June 15, 1994, in Cleveland.
High school: Dunbar, Lexington, Kentucky.
College: Notre Dame.
Highlights: Four-time Olympian (2012, 2016, 2021, 2024). …
saber events at Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008.
Kiefer’s gold is the first in Tokyo by an athlete with an Indiana connection. Indiana Olympians won 19 medals at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Kiefer, 27, a four-time NCAA champion and three-time Olympian, is a medical student at the University of Kentucky. Her husband, Gerek Meinhardt, won a team bronze in foil in 2016. Notre Dame established the Lee Kiefer/Gerek Meinhardt Award in 2018, honoring a fencer giving time selflessly and humbly in training.
Kiefer is so petite — 5-feet-4, 110 pounds — that it can be difficult to identify her sport in the Olympic Village. Marathoner? Gymnast? Coxswain?
“People probably just think I’m a guest,” she once said.
She took lessons in horseback riding and piano before devoting herself to fencing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she trained on a fencing strip she helped build in her parents’ basement.
She placed fifth in foil in 2012 and 10th in 2016. As long as 10 years ago, her bronze made her the second U.S. female fencer to win a medal at the senior world championships.
“It’s such an incredible feeling that I share with my coach, I share with my husband, with my family, just everyone that’s been a part of this,” Kiefer said. “I wish I could chop it up in little pieces and distributed it to everyone I love.”
Fencing has had a hold on her family.
“Before I left, my dad wrote me a card, and he said that we have been on this journey,” Kiefer said. “We have done our best and our pot of gold has been filled all along as we moved along, and just being here is the icing on top.
Three Olympic gold medals (individual foil in 2021, individual and team foil in 2024). … Nine world championship medals (three golds). … Four NCAA championships.
Personal: Married since 2019 to Gerek Meinhardt, a five-time
Olympic fencer with two bronze medals. … Father Steve was a captain at Duke. Older sister Alex was an NCAA champion at Harvard. Younger brother Axel was a Notre Dame fencer who competed at the world juniors. Mother Teresa immigrated as a child from the Philippines.
“I just feel so much love and I have so much to give back to everyone. My dad pushed me from the beginning. We used to bump heads all the time because we are both so competitive and demand excellence, but here we are. Thank you, Dad.”
Kiefer was 5-0 on the day. She won 15-4 over Singapore’s Arnita Berthier (another Notre Dame fencer); 15-13 over Canada’s Eleanor Harvey, 15-11 over Japan’s Yuka Ueno; 15-6 over Russia’s Larisa Korobeynikova; and 15-13 over Deriglazova.