Lois Madsen’s first year at Naperville Central was in 1973, when there were few girl’s sports available. She set the standard for female athletes at Central by participating in various sports including volleyball and tennis. After graduating from Central in 1975, she continued a career in coaching and teaching and is now retired.
The following Q&A questions and responses are taken both from a panel discussion of all five inductees and from a Central Times interview with the inductee.
Q: How does it feel to be included in Central’s Athletics Hall of Fame?
A: This is a really great honor, the school does a really nice job with this and it really makes you feel special.
Q: Were there any lessons you learned from your career that you’d like to share with students today?
A: The number of friends that you make when we get involved in any kind of sport or activity. I’m a former teacher, I am retired, but I would highly encourage students to get involved in something- it makes school so much better.
Q: Can you give us one game or match that you remember from high school?
A: There was a moment when we were playing volleyball and we were all really good friends. The entire team was like one soul, one brain. You just knew where people were gonna put the ball. You knew what they were gonna set. It was the most odd experience that you don’t get very often when you play together as a team, but when everybody’s like in one cold cranking, sink of thought, there’s something extraordinary about that in sports.
Q: What do you think about where women’s athletics is today?
A: I would say that it still has a really long way to go. I think until you start seeing more women coaches, women coaching men and traditional men’s sports, more women officiating, which you don’t really see. One of the women that is coming to dinner tonight, played for the women’s national team, and she’s about eight nine years younger than I am and even that generation had to wear the men’s uniforms, which were completely baggy. They got half the money. I don’t want to get on my soapbox here, but the women’s national team in soccer finally got equal pay and we’re talking 2023, so I still think there’s a long way to go for women in women’s sports, even though we’ve made huge strides, and there’s lots of opportunities, but I want to see some women umpire in baseball, that type of thing. There shouldn’t be any reason why they’re not there.
For more on the 2024 inductees, click here.
