Hall-of-Famer Susie Toomey Builds Unparalleled Legacy at King Thanks to Title IX

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." –Text from Title IX legislation in 1972.

This is the continuation of a series of Body, Mind & Soul special Title IX at 50 stories that highlight member student-athletes, coaches and administrators of Conference Carolinas.

JACKSON, TENN. - Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 was more than a seminal moment in professional sports and American society. 

It also shattered the ceiling for young athletes of color to consider a day they might become a big-league ball player.

Prior to that time, young Black and Latin players like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente didn’t even dream of rising to such heights. For nearly 60 years, Major League Baseball was an all-white boys club.

Now fast forward to the year 1972, and another monumental change occurred in both sports and the fabric of America. Title IX, the national legislation that required equal opportunity and benefits for women in any education program or activity that received federal funding, became law.

While gaining equality in college athletics is still a work in progress these many years later, women’s sports has unquestionably thrived in terms of performance, opportunity and popularity since that landmark decision.

After nearly a century, young girls like Brandi Chastain, Candace Parker and Sue Bird began thinking their dream of becoming professional athletes could come true.

In Conference Carolinas, nothing exemplifies the women’s sports sea change more than the remarkable career of Susie Toomey.  

Her journey in athletics during the advent of Title IX is a story that should be remembered. Toomey, a member of King University’s Athletic Hall of Fame after a remarkable 22 years as the volleyball coach for the Tornado, still recalls those early days when there were no scholarships, travel budgets or training equipment.  

In fact, as a college athlete at the University of Tennessee, she and her teammates wore their non-descript t-shirts and shorts from P.E. class for Volunteer volleyball matches. Talk about humble beginnings.

“We played for the love of the game,” said the 74-year-old Toomey of her time on the Knoxville campus. “There was little money for travel. We screen-printed our t-shirts for game jerseys and wore our own shoes. We played in the old alumni gym. It was dark and dingy. And there were no team locker rooms for women, so we would dress in the Physical Education area.”

At that time, she could not even fathom a future career in coaching. Even on the college level, coaches were only paid a minimal stipend. Yet, thanks to Title IX, the coaching pay scale for women’s programs began to reach legitimate, sustainable levels.  

After a graduate assistant stint at East Tennessee State introduced her to college coaching and more than a decade serving as a coach at various Northeast Tennessee high schools, Toomey landed her first full-time college head coaching post at King in 1985.

After 22 years and 978 matches at King, Toomey retired as a bona fide legend in school history. As the veritable Queen of King, her achievements are almost unworldly. Among them:

· Chiseling out a 749-221 overall record and .766 all-time winning percentage.

· Steering her teams to 15 conference championships, including a final flourish of 10 straight titles from 1997 to her final season in 2006.

· Piloting King to 13 NAIA District Tournament berths and three regional championships.

· Earning 21 different coaching accolades, including NCAAA District Coach of the Year six times, Conference Coach of the Year 10 times, the NAIA Region XII Coach of the Year on four occasions and NAIA District 24 Coach of the Year once.

·  Being honored in 2015 by the King Female Athlete of the Year being renamed the Susie Toomey Female Athlete of the Year.

Oh, and get this: she never had a losing season at King. Strangely, Toomey’s explanation for such a run of success almost sounds counterintuitive. 

“The main thing is that winning was not the No. 1 priority,” she said. “My focus was always building lives for young women, helping them grow spiritually, academically and athletically. Total package. I was just so concerned with team relationships. I did a lot of team building before team building was well known.”

Beyond developing her players into a cohesive unit each season, Toomey credited much of her winning reputation to two things.

She said the real key was targeting high school athletes that would fit into King’s culture in recruiting. The coach zeroed in on team-first players who also wanted to experience growth in their spiritual lives.

“I sought players in recruiting that wanted to be like us,” she said. “King is a Christian college. You didn’t have to be Christian but you needed to accept certain rules. I didn’t want you out drinking and partying. I wanted you to become a dedicated athlete. So, they had to buy into the program and be committed to be the best they could be. And I didn’t want to have to drill it in their heads. I wanted them to want it. That’s a big difference.” 

Another difference-maker in Toomey’s program involved international mission trips during the team’s summer breaks. Her recruiting pitch could very easily have been, “Become a King volleyball player and see the world!” Literally.

The idea started rather innocently during one of Toomey’s early years at the university.

“We had two players from Puerto Rico on our roster, so I thought it might be nice to take the team there,” said Toomey. “Their families were able to set us up with some volleyball and we helped build a school there.”

King combined team members and other general students from the school population for the trip.

“By day, we made concrete bricks,” the coaching legend remembered. “And at night, we played some club volleyball teams and spoke with them and shared the Christian message. It was a great experience and team bonding opportunity.”

 What appeared to be a one-time venture soon became a team tradition. Before long, the King volleyball teams were visiting such foreign lands as Germany, Brazil, Austria, Switzerland, France, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Africa and Cambodia.

“We started taking a trip every two years,” Toomey said. “Most of our players were girls from Appalachia. Most of them had never been on a plane before. You should have seen their faces!”

The players were solely responsible for raising the money for their travel costs. Individually, many would write appeal letters or participate in fundraising events.

“We planned some of the trips ourselves,” Toomey added. “Others were led by representatives of SCORE or Ignite International. We might have worked in an orphanage and helped them anyway we could. We stayed in all types of places. In Munich, we stayed in an old monastery that was no longer in use. In Brazil, we were in a nice hotel because someone locally had connections. In Austria, we stayed in a hostel.”

What makes Toomey’s on-court achievements even more remarkable is King always operated with less scholarships and financial support compared to many of their opponents.

“We always had limited scholarships,” she said. “I was working with only two scholarships when I first got the job. Back then, many of our women played dual sports (basketball and volleyball), so we would chop up the scholarship in different amounts. When we joined Conference Carolinas, at least they had limits on scholarships.

“At that time, we were playing against schools that offered more (six) and we were playing with only three. Part of our success was we recruited high-academic students, so they could get partial academic aid at King.”

For Toomey, as noted, her athletic sojourn began in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee--a stone’s throw from the University of Tennessee campus.  

Her father (Robert Kelly), the youngest of 13 children, was the only one in his family to attend college. He held several jobs during Susie’s childhood, ranging from football coach and teacher, to church pastor and real estate agent, to farmer.

It was her mother (Edna) who may have influenced Toomey the most in terms of the career path she eventually took. A regional basketball standout in high school, she played on many teams in the Knoxville industrial league. Colleges back then offered limited financial assistance for female athletes during the pre-Title IX era.  

Edna turned down a partial scholarship from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee because the family could not afford the remaining tuition costs.  

“She ended up not going to college,” Susie said. “We have clippings galore about her basketball achievements. She definitely would have gotten a scholarship if Title IX had existed. She was that good of a player.”

Instead, Edna worked at a department store and raised a family.

Until she signed up to play college volleyball at Tennessee, most of Susie’s athletic activity consisted of YMCA leagues and physical education classes. With federal legislation still years away, Toomey didn’t even consider a future in coaching once she graduated from UT.

“My full emphasis in training was to become a Physical Education teacher. I thought that’s where I was headed.”

Then, out of the blue, an unexpected opportunity presented itself. After graduation, Toomey enrolled at nearby East Tennessee State to pursue her master’s degree, while teaching P.E. classes and serving as a graduate assistant for the Buccaneers’ volleyball team. 

“Several weeks before the season, the head volleyball coach ended up resigning to take the job at Marshall,” she recalled. “Suddenly they didn’t have a volleyball coach. They knew I had played at UT, so they asked me to coach the team that first year. I just kind of jumped into it, not knowing what I was doing.”

With some of her East Tennessee State players older than she was (21), Toomey proceeded to learn on the job and post a modest but winning season.

Despite her young age, the school decided to retain Susie as their head coach the following two years. However, life does not go in a straight line. First, Toomey suffered broken arms and a fractured hip in a serious auto accident at the end of the spring season. Then, her husband got a job in Louisville, Kentucky and she chose to leave her first college coaching job to be with him.

Ironically, it was while coaching high school volleyball in Louisville that Toomey first fell in love with coaching. That love carried over to several high school coaching jobs before King came calling in 1985.

While her early conditions at King were far from plush, she buried her head and went to work. Meanwhile, some of her first players on the volleyball team played a role of Title IX activists in 1988, gaining some concessions in the fight for equal treatment.

“The way we got a locker room for women’s volleyball and basketball was when some players from both sports got together and wrote to the appropriate people (Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) for information on Title IX. I had no idea they were doing it, although the girls did talk to me about it and how frustrated it was.  

“They took it upon themselves, and when they got the info, they went to Dr. Donald Mitchell, then our President, to plead their case. They told him we were not meeting the guidelines. Not long after that, the school added toilets and created locker rooms in the basement of the gym.”

Toomey finally left coaching due to arthritis, as the school promoted her top assistant, and son, Chris, to the head position. He served in that capacity from 2007-2014. Sadly, after moving to St. Louis to become a church minister, he passed away unexpectedly at the age of 46 last year due to a cardiovascular issue–possibly a condition complicated by contracting COVID.

His death has received an outpouring of love in both the volleyball and church communities. Earlier this month, King hosted a memorial volleyball tournament in his honor. The event is expected to be an annual event.

Soon after his passing last year, the university also held a night of remembrance in the King student cafeteria, where hundreds of current and former volleyball players were among those in attendance. His mother, Susie, understandably shed some tears in appreciation.

And Chris’ church in St. Louis recently raised $60,000 for his newly-created foundation, which will provide high school and college students funding for future mission trips.

Susie Toomey, who also served as interim athletic director and eventually the Senior Woman Administrator for King University during her tenure, seems both amazed and perhaps a little wistful for the amazing growth of women’s athletics on the college level.

“Thanks to Title IX, there are so many opportunities for women in so many sports. When I started, there may have only been two or three women’s teams in the athletic department. Now there are umpteenth sports. And there are also so many opportunities to be coaches or involved as administrators. And, the big thing is there’s better coaching, better facilities, better equipment and training methods.

“But as I have said, we used to solely play for the love of the sport. Over the years, like men’s sports, women’s sports have become more of a business. There is so much more emphasis on winning. It adds a lot of pressure on the coaches.”

Toomey still marvels when she watches regular-season and NCAA Tournament volleyball matches every week on ESPN and other media outlets like the Conference Carolinas Digital Network in 2022.

“I love it!” she said. “I’m so glad it’s gotten to this point. When I first started, you probably couldn’t even see the whole match. Now it's scheduled through the entire match. I particularly love to hear from dads who didn't know anything about volleyball, and how much they now love it. It’s become so much more visible, is an exciting game, and they’re amazed at the athleticism of athletes and what they can do.”

Now retired and living in Jackson, Tennessee – 425 miles from King – to be close to her daughter and family, Toomey can certainly look back fondly at a career and life well-lived. She is very certain about what her greatest accomplishment was while building a legacy at King.

“I have no doubt it was impacting lives, especially in a spiritual way. I think I, and my assistant coaches, sought to teach the girls life skills, such as how to deal with conflict, how to negotiate situations, how to win and lose with class, as well as how to be women of integrity, how to love people and how to serve others.”

The same could be said for Susie Toomey. She served hundreds of student-athletes like a Hall of Famer because that's who she is.

Bob Rose is a longtime sports public relations executive who has worked for the San Francisco Giants, Oakland Athletics, the NFL Cardinals, Cal, Stanford and other organizations. Bob works with Assistant Commissioner for External Relations Brian Hand and the entire Conference Carolinas office to help tell the stories of the tremendous student-athletes, coaches and administrators in Conference Carolinas.