Nashua-Plainfield students earn national award for ‘Unsung Hero’ history documentary

By Kelly Terpstra, Of the Reporter

Dr. Christine Grant was a pioneer for gender equity at the University of Iowa who helped bring about national implementation of Title IX, requiring equal opportunities for all in the fields of athletics and academics.

The former U of I women’s athletic director and Hawkeye women’s field hockey coach also had a tremendous impact on three Nashua-Plainfield High School students – juniors Kadence Huck, Paige Franzen and Cal Levi.

Their research project about Grant resulted in the trio winning first place in their high school division from the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in the center’s 2023 international Discovery Award competition.

The N-P students had been one of 12 finalist teams for the award and received $2,500 for their documentary, “Why Not Us? Dr. Christine Grant’s Pursuit of Gender Equality.”

The 10-minute documentary was played during a surprise award presentation for the three students at the Husky gymnasium last week.

Norm Conard, executive director of the Lowell Milken Center in Fort Scott, Kansas, told the Nashua assembly, “You have three students here who developed a powerful documentary. It’s so well put together. It’s so well done. It has such a great message.”

Levi, Huck and Franzen thanked their history teacher, Suzy Turner, for helping come up with the idea of featuring Grant and for overseeing the project. Turner received a certificate for outstanding education from the center.

“You show a little interest in it and she’ll push you the rest of the way,” Levi said about Turner.

The documentary featured several interviews with Grant’s colleagues and students, including Jean Berger, executive director of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, and current Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder, who guided her Hawkeyes to the NCAA title game this past spring.

Berger had been one of Grant’s students and was at the ceremony at the N-P gym to honor the students. Hanna Howard, the National History Day state coordinator, was also at the ceremony.

The three students said the documentary really started to take shape when they made a trip to Iowa City last December to begin researching Grant.

Along with a U of I professor, Levi, Huck and Franzen sifted through more than 90 boxes of Grant’s personal collection one morning.

“Everything we found was just great,” Levi said. The challenge was making it work with the documentary.

The passage of Title IX in 1972 was instrumental in the advancement of women’s athletics in the United States. Grant helped fight court battles and testify for Title IX legal cases.

She also helped Iowa win 16 conference championships in field hockey and the 1986 NCAA crown. Grant died Dec. 31, 2021, at the age of 85.

“We were like, oh, yeah, we should really do this one because it has Iowa connections – it kind of just kept snowballing,” said Franzen, who was a state medalist at this past spring’s state golf meet.

Huck – one of the better runners in track and cross country in the state – knew this was the right project for her team.

“Because we are athletes, and two of our three group members are female, we were inspired to learn more about the actions of this Unsung Hero who created more opportunities for us to play the sports we love,” Franzen, Huck and Levi explain in their project’s process paper.

“Beyond overcoming harsh criticism and institutional roadblocks for five decades to forge new opportunities for females in athletics nationwide, Grant’s actions successfully transformed women’s experiences in education, the workplace, and overall society,” they wrote.

Franzen said she realized how powerful the documentary had become after a viewing at National History Day near Washington, D.C., this past June. The N-P trio submitted a different version of their Grant documentary to that national competition in the summer, but did not advance to the finals.

“We were at Nationals and we had people that came in to watch it. There were people sitting in the audience and you could tell it resonated with them, too,” Franzen said.

Turner said she was proud of her students and happy that so many more people could know the legacy that Grant created and the lives she affected.

“It became much more than a project. It became something that changed their lives,” said Turner.

“For the two young ladies, they are directly impacted by Dr. Grant’s work,” Turner said. “Kadence and Paige are both very high-level athletes with their ceiling yet to be reached and they’ve already reached quite high. They can see the impact of her work and the doors that that opens for them.

“Cal is just great. Cal does all the tech work,” she said. “They’re like a well-oiled machine. I just can’t say enough about these young people and the work that they’ve put in.”