For 17 years, Prof. Thomas W. Cairns coached the University of Tulsa's women's volleyball team -- without pay and while working full-time as a respected professor of mathematics. The women he coached in 1976 were part of the first generation of female college athletes, recruited at the very beginning of efforts toward gender equity in college sports.

The story of Tom Cairns, a volunteer head coach at a Division I university from 1976-1992, shows how colleges resisted Title IX, how talented young women learned to define themselves as scholar-athletes, and how the relationship between coach and college athletes can shape and direct lives. It also shows what college sports can be like when it's about the game, not the money.