Harvard’s Patricia Henry Named ECAC Katherine Ley Award Winner

CAPE COD, Mass. - Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Commissioner Rudy Keeling announced today that Patricia Henry of Harvard has been selected as the recipient of the 2010 Katherine Ley Award. Established in 1983, the award honors an ECAC woman athletics administrator who exemplifies the values and characteristics displayed by Katherine Ley. It recognizes someone of demonstrated leadership ability, a proponent of women's issues and a role model for women coaches and administrators. She will receive her award on Tuesday, September 28, at the ECAC Honors Banquet presented by Jostens. The luncheon will be held at The Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis, Massachusetts during the 2010 ECAC Fall Convention and Trade Show.

Henry has been a member of Harvard's senior administration in the department of athletics since 1980, and currently serves as the department's senior associate director of athletics. She oversees the programming of the largest Division I varsity athletics program in the nation, and is responsible for the development and well-being of nearly 1,200 student-athletes and 41 varsity teams.

Henry has served on the NCAA men's and women's swimming committee and is a former member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference executive council. Her work in collegiate athletics led to her being named as one of eight 2007 National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators (NACWAA) Administrators of the Year.

A strong proponent of women’s athletics, Henry is the founder of the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for Women's Athletics, which has greatly enhanced and broadened the programming and financial support for women's athletics programs at the university since the foundation's inception in 1981.

Henry was a catalyst behind the successful effort to bring the 2006 NCAA Women's Final Four to Boston. She served as president of the local organizing committee for that event, which generated $25 million in revenue to the Boston economy.

Henry also has worked with amateur athletics in a number of different capacities on the national and international levels. She has served on the United States Olympic Women's Rowing Committee and as secretary of the United States Olympic Committee Education Council and was co-coordinator of the 1984 Olympic soccer matches that were played in Harvard Stadium. She has been a delegate to the Taiwan Olympic Academy and was a lecturer and representative of the USOC at the Korean Olympic Academy.

Henry has served on a number of visiting committees and advisory boards at other institutions. She currently is a member of the Board of Trustees at her alma mater, Gettysburg College, and received its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009.

Before coming to Harvard, Henry had spent ten years as a teacher and swimming coach at North Penn High School in Lansdale, Pa. As a coach, she won eight league championships, one state title and saw four individuals and 11 relay teams achieve All-America status.

Henry is a 1971 graduate of Gettysburg, where she was a standout in field hockey and basketball and was chosen as the school's outstanding female athlete as a senior. She holds a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education and was inducted into Gettysburg's athletics hall of fame in 1987.

Henry earned a master’s degree in health and physical education from Westchester State College in 1975.

She is the first Harvard administrator to win the prestigious award, and becomes the fifth Ivy League administrator to receive the honor (Arlene Gorton, Brown; Josie Harper, Dartmouth; Joan Taylor, Brown; and Barbara Chesler, Yale) in its 27-year history.


About the ECAC^®
The ECAC is the nation's largest athletic and the only multi-divisional conference in the country with approximately 300 Divisions I, II, and III colleges and universities.  The ECAC stretches from Maine to North Carolina and westerly to Illinois. Established in 1938, the ECAC, a non-profit service organization, sponsors nearly 100 championships in 37 men's and women's sports and assigns more than 4,400 officials in 12 sports.  The ECAC also administers nine affiliate sports organizations and six playing leagues, and through the public relations arm of the conference, more than 2,500 student-athletes in 23 sports are recognized annually.  Finally, the ECAC serves as the primary conference for select members in the sports of men's and women's ice hockey and men's lacrosse.

About Katherine Ley
In 1966, Ley was one of the founders of the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the forerunner of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. After serving a 12-year tenure at the State University College at Cortland as chair of Physical Education and Athletics for Women, Ley became athletics director at Capital University in Ohio. At the time, she was one of only two women athletics administrators heading both men’s and women’s athletics.