LTC Honors First Volleyball Team and First Head Coach

When Dee Abrahamson arrived at Lincoln Trail College in the mid-1970s, she didn't come to coach volleyball. Or basketball. Or softball. In fact, she hadn't coached any of those sports before. She came to manage the campus swimming pool.

What happened instead helped shape the future of women's athletics at Lincoln Trail College and, eventually, women's collegiate sports across the country.

"The whole thing really started with the students," Abrahamson recalled during her return to campus this fall, when LTC honored its first volleyball team during the program's 50th anniversary season. "When I came here, it was about my teaching. But they said, 'We want to play.' So we sat around a table, and I said, 'What are you good at?' They said volleyball. So I said, 'Okay. I'll learn.'"

In 1975, Abrahamson became the first head coach of volleyball, women's basketball and softball at Lincoln Trail College. At a time when Title IX was still new and many colleges were only beginning to consider formal opportunities for women to compete, LTC's first teams shared one driving force: the athletes' desire to play.

"The motivation came straight from them: 'We want to play, and we'll do whatever we have to do to do it.'"

Resources were limited. Equipment was sparse. There were no film rooms or scouting reports. Schedules were handwritten and held together with more hope than experience. But what they lacked in infrastructure, they made up for in determination.

"We didn't have video to watch of the other team. Nobody did," Abrahamson said. "We had to figure out what they did best and overcome it. We didn't have any of that support. So that's different now."

The lessons learned in those early seasons went far beyond scoreboards.
"Sports mean so much — learning how to win, learning how to lose, learning how to overcome adversity, learning how to appreciate each other," she said. "There's nothing better than that."

Those ideas became foundational not only for LTC, but for Abrahamson herself. After leaving Lincoln Trail in the late 1970s, she went on to a distinguished career in collegiate athletics, most notably in softball. She spent more than two decades at Northern Illinois University, leading the team to a 416-286-5 record and an appearance in the 1988 Women's College World Series. She later became a nationally known administrator and rules interpreter, helping shape the governance and competitive structure of NCAA softball. The National Fastpitch Coaches Association honored Abrahamson with the NFCA Distinguished Service Award in 2007. She was inducted into the NIU Athletics Hall of Fame as a coach in 2002 and as an administrator in 2017. In 2019, she was inducted into the Mid-American Conference Hall of Fame and into the NFCA Hall of Fame in the Pioneer category.

But returning to LTC brought something even more meaningful than career accolades.
It brought her back to the beginning.

This fall's ceremony honoring the 1975 volleyball team brought together former players, families, community members, and current student-athletes. For many, it was the first time they had seen one another in decades.

For Abrahamson, it was a moment of reflection.

"To come back and see these women, to see what's grown from those early practices in the gym…it means the world," she said.

Current LTC Head Volleyball Coach Dana Goodwin said honoring Abrahamson and the trailblazers who played for her was both emotional and necessary.

"Everything we do today rests on the foundation Dee and those early teams built," Goodwin said. "They didn't just start a program. They created a culture of strength, resilience, and possibility. Our athletes today benefit from opportunities those women never had — and that's because they pushed forward anyway."

The progress since those first seasons is clear. Today's student-athletes train year-round, compete against nationally ranked programs, and play with resources and support that reflect decades of growth in women's sports.

The game has changed. The opportunities have expanded. Yet the core remains familiar.

Abrahamson sees it every time she watches a team take the court.

"There's something special about being part of a team," she said. "What they gave to each other, they carried with them. And they've passed it on."

For Lincoln Trail College, the story of women's athletics began not with a budget directive or a strategic plan — but with a group of students who believed they deserved a chance, and a young educator who chose to say yes.

Fifty years later, that yes is still echoing.