Athletics | 7/7/2026 9:16:00 AM

By Paul Suellentrop

On Monday afternoon, Wichita State University volleyball coach Chris Lamb explains back-spin and top-spin to a group of 60 young women during a serving drill at camp. Across campus, work continues on locker rooms and offices at Wilkins Stadium, soon to be connected to an indoor practice facility, opened last fall, that allows the Shockers to work on softball skills year-round.

Those scenes have their roots in car rides to play days, T-shirts purchased at the campus bookstore and fights for meal money. Natasha (Matson) Fife, a teacher in WSU's physical education department, helped start the movement for women's college sports in the late 1960's. She lived to see those efforts pay off with Charles Koch Arena packed for women's sports and success and attention unimaginable in the early days.

"I knew it would happen, it would go," Fife said in 2018. "It's satisfying to know that the interest is out there."

Fife, 89, passed away on Friday. In addition to her pioneering role at WSU, she was one of Kansas' greatest golfers, winner of five Kansas Women's Amateurs and a competing in four U.S. Women's Amateurs. She was inducted in the Pizza Hut Shocker Sports Hall of Fame in 2018. Fife earned a master's degree in physical education from WSU in 1967 after graduating from Texas Women's University in 1958.

"Natasha is one of the most important people in Shocker history," Director of Athletics Kevin Saal said. "Her commitment to women's athletics set the stage for many successes and benefited many student-athletes. When we look at our championship trophies and growing facilities, we can thank the women of her generation for their hard work and enthusiasm in those early days of women's college athletics."
 
Fife, who started teaching at the university in 1959, helped start Wichita State's women's athletic program in 1969.  Fife and fellow teachers Sue Bair and Yvonne Slingerland of the PE department looked for volunteers from the student body.

"They just came up to the PE majors room and said, 'Anyone want to play volleyball?'" Alana Pharis said in 2019. "We all said yes."

Wichita State joined the Association for Kansas Women's Intercollegiate Sports in 1970. In 1974, Fife was named the first women's director of intercollegiate athletics and Wichita State joined the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, starting what is considered the varsity era of women's athletics. She helped set rules and regulations for sports ranging from softball to field hockey.

The women's teams played and practiced in Henrion Gymnasium or at off-campus locations such as Heights High for softball. The first women's basketball schedule featured 13 games played in Kansas and three in Oklahoma with a season-ending tournament in Hays.

WSU didn't give out scholarships in the infancy of women's athletics. The team paid for their own meals. They bought T-shirts at the bookstore and wore them as uniforms for all sports.

"She really had a passion for what she did on the PE side and then took it to another level," said Becky Endicott, who worked in the athletic department for 26 years and retired as Senior Women's Administrator in 2020. "(Women) wanted a chance to compete. She took real pride in how the female athlete is treated, not only after passing Title IX, but how Wichita State had gone from giving them 25 cents per diem for meal money to putting them on the same playing field as any other athlete."

Title IX, enacted in 1972, helped women's athletics. WSU needed significant fundraising. Fife did the budgeting and organizing. The women's athletic department brought in Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby for a fund-raiser. Pizza Hut helped fund a basketball tournament.
 
"She was one brave individual to jump into that," said Bonnie Bing Honeyman, who worked as assistant women's athletic director, in 2018. "She and I would go to the mailbox. Any time we got checks, we would dance around. She was determined. She would get mad but wouldn't hardly show it. She was a person who kept on keeping on."
 
In 1981, the men's and women's athletic departments merged, and Fife stayed on as associate athletic director until 1984. Before departing the athletic department, she filed a Title IX grievance that pointed out inequities in scholarships, facilities, equipment and travel. The resulting investigation led to improvements in funding.

Fife, who retired from Wichita State in 1998, said joining the two departments was necessary and provided some stable funding for the women.
 
"That opened the door for everything we have now," she said.

Fife, from Winfield, is also well known for golf. She is a seven-time Kansas Senior Amateur champion. She was inducted into the Kansas Golf Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. At 14, she was present at Rolling Hills Country Club when 13 women founded the LPGA during the U.S. Women's Open in 1950.