Joan Cronan

Sport: Dave Dixon Award

Induction Year: 2020

University: LSU

Enshrined in 2019 in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, Cronan was women’s athletics director at the University of Tennessee from 1983-2012. She then assumed the position of AD and Vice Chancellor before retiring as Athletic Director Emeritus.

An Opelousas native, Cronan has undergraduate (1966) and graduate (1968) degrees from LSU and also worked for a year at Northwestern State (1967) where she coached volleyball, basketball and tennis. Her first coaching job was at her alma mater, Opelousas High, where she was assistant coach under Anne Hollier for the 1966 Class AA girls’ basketball state champions in what was then the state’s highest classification.

In 2019 Cronan was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the United States Sports Academy.

Cronan was the inaugural recipient of the NCAA President’s Pat Summitt Award in 2017. The award recognizes an individual for “positively influencing college athletics and their experiences through the individual’s career-long commitment to advocating for women’s sports.”

Cronan has also received the top leadership awards from the National Collegiate Athletic Directors (James Corbett Award), Lead1 (Homer Rice Award), and Women Leaders in College Sports (Lifetime Achievement Award). The Sports Business Journal recognized her as a 2014 Champion: Pioneer and Innovator in Sports Business.

Cronan joined UT from the College of Charleston, where she was athletics director for 10 years and was later inducted in the school’s Hall of Fame. In her tenure there, CoC was selected as the No. 1 women’s athletics program in the country in 1980 by the American Women’s Sports Federation.

Cronan has also been inducted in LSU’s Alumni Hall of Distinction, Fellowship of Christian Athletics Hall of Champions, Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame, NACDA Hall of Fame, Society of Health and Physical Educators Hall of Fame,

Cronan is the author of a book “Sport is Life with Volume Turned Up: Lessons Learned That Apply to Business and Life.”

Her late husband, Dr. Thomas L. Cronan, received his master of science degree from Northwestern State during their year in Natchitoches.

The University of Tennessee and the city of Knoxville have honored her by naming the Lady Vols’ Practice Center after her and designating a street as “Joan Cronan Way.”