Florida Gators

Editor's note: This story was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated with relevant information on this week's events in honor of Rogers.


"You can go back to antiquity to find women doing extraordinary things. But their history is forgotten or denied to ever have existed, so women keep reinventing the wheel. Women have always done these things and they always will." – Janet Guthrie, the first woman to earn a starting spot in the Indianapolis 500 (1977) and Daytona 500 (1977)

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Each day was an unopened package waiting to be revealed to Veronica Meinhard. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she was fresh out of a Venezuelan high school and living in a different country, making new friends and building an extended family at UF.

A member of the University of Florida women's swim team, Meinhard enrolled late at UF in the fall of 1988 and had some gaps in her daily schedule. To fill in the blanks, Meinhard spent time in the offices of Gator Boosters, the fundraising arm of the University Athletic Association, offering to help with tasks.
 

She was a sponge in search of knowledge in her new surroundings. It was during this time when she learned how the donors who stopped by the office supported her and many Gators student-athletes through scholarships. The experience made a lasting impression in ways Meinhard couldn't envision at the time.

"It was heady stuff for a kid,'' she said. "To realize that people in the community would provide funding without really knowing any of us was amazing."

That generosity inspired Meinhard to pursue a career as a fundraiser in higher education.

Over time, Meinhard began to cross paths consistently with Ann Marie Rogers, Florida's associate athletic director in charge of women's sports. The two eventually struck up a cordial relationship. By her junior year, Meinhard completed a required practicum as part of her degree in Rogers' office.

Meinhard was the fresh-faced newcomer interested in learning more about how a college athletics department worked. Rogers was the veteran administrator who nearly 30 years earlier had arrived at Michigan State University when young women such as Meinhard had no college athletic opportunities available.

Meinhard paid close attention every time she was in the presence of Rogers.

"She was really intimidating. You just knew when Ann Marie entered the room it was time for serious business. She was a strong advocate for us. She just had a way of running meetings -- unapologetic, clear and fair," Meinhard said. "She was also incredibly kind. I always felt she had our best interests at heart. She could flip a switch from being tough to being like your mom if she needed to. I always appreciated that versatility and looked up to it."

Rogers made a similar impression on other female pioneers in women's college athletics.

Former University of Tennessee women's athletic director Joan Cronan spent much of her 29-year career in Knoxville during the period Rogers was at Alabama (1974-85) and Florida (1985-2003). First, they were colleagues, competitors. Eventually they became friends facing many of the same obstacles.

"I have the ultimate respect and regard for Ann Marie,'' said Cronan, who is now Tennessee's athletic director emeritus. "Whenever we were in meetings, I always knew when she spoke, she had something of impact to say. To say Ann Marie was a leader would be an understatement. What I remember the most about Ann Marie is that it was always about the experience for the student-athlete. She had an incredible sense of integrity. We could disagree or agree, but we both knew we were coming from a spot of integrity."

Following a 25-year career in development and alumni affairs, including college athletics, Meinhard is currently President and founder of Juniper Philanthropy Partners in New York City. Still, her connection to Rogers has not dimmed over the years and is set for a more permanent marker.

Meinhard and her wife, State University of New York Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson, donated $1 million to the UAA in honor of Rogers. The University of Florida Board of Trustees approved a measure in March 2020 to name the swimming and diving pool at Stephen O'Connell Center the Ann Marie Rogers Swimming and Diving Pool. A dedication ceremony to celebrate the naming will be held Friday morning at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center and on Friday evening, Meinhard and Johnson are hosting a celebration of Rogers' career inside the F Club at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

While Meinhard's roots run deep at UF, Johnson faced her own hurdles on the other side of the country as she pursued an engineering career, a mostly male-dominated field. A former Dean of Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, former Provost at Johns Hopkins University and an appointee as Undersecretary in the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, Johnson holds more than 100 U.S. and international patents and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She has had a distinguished career as an engineer, educator and inventor, and played field hockey and lacrosse at Stanford University. In 2012, Johnson was named to the "40 years of Title IX: 40 Women who Have Made an Impact" by the Women's Sports Foundation, ESPNW and Women in Cable and Telecommunications.

"Kristina fought her own battles for women to have equal access on the playing field and in the laboratory as a student-athlete and an electrical engineer, in the process earning tremendous respect from her peers,'' Meinhard said. "Recognizing someone like Ann Marie means a great deal to her too given her own experiences."

Meanwhile, the 79-year-old Rogers, who retired at the end of 2003, said she never imagined having something named after her one day. She was too busy trying to improve the playing field for women.

When she received word recently of the honor, yes, there were tears.

"I've been retired for quite a long time and I never expected something like this," Rogers said.
     
The passing of Title IX in 1972 set the stage for today's landscape in women's college athletics.

In a world much different than when Rogers started at Alabama and oversaw a meager $75,000 budget for the women's athletic programs, coached the women's golf team and supervised five other coaches, female student-athletes at Florida in 2020 compete in cross county, indoor and outdoor track and field, volleyball, swimming and diving, soccer, lacrosse, gymnastics, tennis, golf, softball and basketball. The coaches of those teams are some of the highest-paid in the country in their respective sports.

Rogers played a vital role in shaping that future, helping build women's athletic programs at two of the Southeastern Conference's landmark institutions: Alabama and Florida. After earning her undergraduate degree from Michigan State and a master's in physical education from Eastern Michigan, Rogers started her career as a P.E. instructor at Smith (Mass.) College in 1970. While there, she was asked by students to direct an effort to create a women's athletics program.

An administrative career was born.

"That really piqued my interest," she said.

Rogers moved on to become women's tennis coach at Princeton in 1973 and in August 1974, was hired at Alabama to work for legendary Crimson Tide football coach and athletic director Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Rogers has a Bear story or two, of course. She was an outlier before people knew what one was.

"He was a big man,'' she said. "He was sitting in his office chair and he was looking at me and he said, 'What's a sweet little thing like you doing in a business like this?' I've never forgotten it."

As a reflection of the times, Rogers' hiring at Alabama during a decade marked by social change – Bryant integrated Alabama's football program in 1970 and the Crimson Tide dominated the sport with three national titles over the next 10 years – made headlines around the country.

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Still, respect took time. When the state's newspapers wrote feature stories about her, sometimes rather than publish the stories in the Sports section, they would run in the Women's section.

Rogers forged ahead. She said two key veteran administrators, Southeastern Conference Commissioner H. Boyd McWhorter and Charley Scott, chairman of Alabama's athletic committee and later AD at Mississippi State, inspired her to continue her career in athletic administration despite the hurdles.

At McWhorter's urging, Rogers wrote the regulations that set in motion the creation of official SEC Championships in women's sports in the early 1980s. She would drive from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham to the SEC headquarters and spend weekends on the project.

"It's amazing what has happened and certainly as a woman, we deserved it,'' Rogers said. "When I went to college there was no athletics for women. I feel like a pioneer who has been able to watch it build and grow. I was very, very fortunate in many ways to be a part of that growth."

Rogers rewrote history at Alabama, creating equal opportunities for young women, who like her, enjoyed sports and wanted to play them and perhaps build a career in athletics. Following a decade in the Yellowhammer State, Rogers was hired at Florida by Athletic Director Bill Carr in 1985.

Soon she wondered if she had made a wise decision.

"I remember at the SEC meetings he called me in and said he was leaving,'' Rogers said. "That just devastated me. I hadn't been at Florida that long and he was my boss. That was a very upsetting time. We moved on from there with Bill Arnsparger, so everything worked out alright and I didn't get fired, so that was good."

A few years later Rogers made one of her best moves at Florida by hiring volleyball coach Mary Wise over a pair of more experienced male coaches. There was pressure to go with the safe hire. Rogers chose Wise who is preparing for her 31st season at UF and is among the all-time winningest coaches in the sport's history. Rogers also played an instrumental role in Florida adding soccer and softball programs during her UF tenure.

While Florida has long been considered a model institution in its approach to women's athletics, spearheaded in large part under the direction of former Athletic Director Jeremy Foley's mission to provide adequate resources and field successful teams across the board, Rogers served as a key advocate for the women's programs.

The coaches and student-athletes always knew she had their back.

"I think one of Ann Marie's greatest strengths was her perseverance,'' Wise said. "She understood that we were in for the long fight and the changes might not be able to made overnight, but in time and under her leadership and continuous support of women's athletics, we could make the changes. You could argue Florida was ahead of every school in the entire Southeast. That thread could all be directed back to Ann Marie. She was the one who set the tone.

"From her, many of us learned that your voice doesn't have to be the loudest in the room to be heard."
   
Following her retirement, Rogers and her husband Bruce remained in Gainesville and part of the Gators community, attending sporting events and catching up with familiar faces when they bumped into them in town.

Meinhard stayed nearby as well for many years, eventually rising to director of major gifts at Gator Boosters, Inc., before taking a position at the University of Maryland in 2016 and then on to New York for her current job. During her time in Gainesville, she stayed in touch with Rogers and would sometimes drop by her home for walks and talks about life. And while at the University of Maryland, it wasn't uncommon for Veronica to ask Ann Marie to "drive" her home while they talked on the phone at the end of a workday.

When Meinhard and Johnson married five years ago, Rogers attended their wedding.

"Veronica is an amazing person,'' Rogers said. "She is a very bright individual and never meets anyone who doesn't become an immediate friend. That's why she was a great fundraiser because people were just so attracted to her. She did a wonderful job at Florida as a fundraiser. I think she probably influenced me more than I influenced her."
 

Meinhard has perhaps a different view.

She remembers being in awe of Rogers as she spent more time around her and got to know her life's story. She shared that story with Johnson when the couple began to consider options for their latest philanthropic endeavor.

It was an easy call for both.

"What a tremendous tribute to Ann Marie Rogers, one of the pioneers of women's collegiate athletics," Gators Athletic Director Scott Stricklin said. "Ann Marie certainly had an impact on countless student-athletes, coaches and staff during her time and this gift by Veronica and Kristina speaks volumes on the extent of that impact. We are very thankful for the generous gift, but as Veronica has reminded us all, we are just as thankful for Ann Marie and her leadership and accomplishments."

"I couldn't be more proud of what Veronica and Kristina are doing to name the pool in honor of Ann Marie," said Executive Director of Gator Boosters Phil Pharr. "Veronica has a long history with this place; as a champion swimmer, student-athlete and 22 years of service to University Advancement and Gator Boosters. This gift speaks volumes of the person she is and even more so of Ann Marie. Ann Marie was a great leader in women's athletics, at both nationally and at the University of Florida. The footprint she left on our women's program is huge and to have her name on this pool is a fitting tribute to her legacy with the Gators."

Rogers' impact on women's college athletics is undeniable. Meinhard recognized that 30 years ago and recognizes it today.

She is grateful to be able to shine a spotlight on Rogers' life's work.

"As we were thinking about an opportunity to give back to our respective alma maters, obviously mine being Florida, we were not interested in naming things for ourselves but rather using the opportunity to honor individuals who made an impact on our lives,'' Meinhard said. "We both understand the importance of Ann Marie's work and what it afforded women."

The Ann Marie Rogers Swimming and Diving Pool will serve as a constant reminder.