Knox College Athletics

Kristin Garrison’s impact on women’s varsity athletes at our school took place only six months after her arrival on campus when she became the first women from Knox College to qualify for the NCAA National Indoor Track meet as a long-jumper in 1993. She went on to represent Knox three more times in the NCAA Div. III indoor and outdoor tract nationals, earning All-American status in 1994. The conference long-jump champion in 1995, she earned eight letters in indoor and outdoor track before her graduation in 1996.
 
Kristin’s success in women’s soccer was equally impressive. She lettered in soccer in 1993, ’94, and ’95, was the team captain in her junior and senior years, Joanne, who anchored the team’s defense in 1995 and together they helped lead the women’s soccer team to the Midwest Conference play-offs. The women’s team finished the season with all-time best record of 11-5 and defeated a Grinnell team that season which had won 52 consecutive regular season conference games before losing to Knox. Kristin informed her teammates before the Grinnell game that in Knox tradition of outing academics before athletics, she must take the GRE on game day and hoped to join the team before the contest was over. She took the test in her soccer uniform, raced to the field when she was finished, and arrived in time to kick in the winning goal in one of the most athletic victories in our school’s history. She was the recipient of the Evelyn Bielefeldt award which recognizes the senior woman with the most “special athletes” to ever play at Knox.
           
Kristin’s accomplishment away from the athletic fields was similarly outstanding. She earned honors in biology, served as a Resident Advisor to the first-year students, and was involved in several extra-curricular activities.
           
Kristin currently resides in Albuquerque and is employed as a Senior Research Technologist at the University of New Mexico. If Leo Durocher’s famous dictum, “Nice guys finish last” was also intended to include women, Kristin Garrison proved him wrong. Please join me in recognizing this remarkable woman’s induction into the 2002 Knox-Lombard Hall of Fame.