Friends and family members of the honorees, Janet Hopps Adkisson and Pat Lesser Harbottle, as well as current Seattle University student-athletes, including many members of the women's golf, women's soccer, women's volleyball, and men's and women's track and field teams, were in attendance for the 2011 Seattle University Athletics Tribute Dinner, held Sunday, May 1, at The Space Needle.
Adkisson and Harbottle were the featured speakers as the Seattle University athletics department culminated its series of events celebrating the Year of the Woman. Both Adkisson and Harbottle were top female student-athletes for Seattle University playing on men's teams because women's athletic teams did not exist in the 1950s.
Adkisson thanked Father Albert A. Lemieux, Seattle University president from 1948 to 1965, and Father Francis Logan, the head tennis coach during her time at the university, for giving her a chance to compete on the men's team. Adkisson also talked about her days as head coach of the Seattle U tennis teams, refering to a road trip in which two of her players spent time in the last row of the van with her six-year-old daughter working on a coloring book.
Harbottle, the 1955 U.S. Women's Amateur golf champion, also mentioned Fr. Lemieux in her remarks as well as the practice round she played with her now-husband John Harbottle, who she called Johnny Bottlecap. With Johnny O'Brien, one of the honorees in last year's Tribute Dinner, in attendance, she also mentioned the thrill she received from watching him from the stands at sold-out Hec-Edmundson Pavilion in 1952 when Seattle University defeated the Harlem Globetrotters.
A fundraising silent auction once again accompanied the dinner, with all items donated through efforts of the coaches and student-athletes of the athletic teams and the money raised going back to help those programs.