In 1968 educators in Tennessee organized the Tennessee College Women’s Sports Federation to serve as a governing body for women’s intercollegiate sports. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was established in 1971 to provide governance and leadership in the assurance of standards of excellence and educational soundness in women’s intercollegiate athletics. In 1972 the Tennessee College Women’s Sports Federation reorganized itself into an expanded AIAW, which replaced the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, founded in 1967 by what is today the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, of which the AIAW was a subunit. Tennessee became one of 260 charter members of the AIAW.
Women’s intercollegiate athletics teams played in the AIAW until moving to the NCAA for the 1981–82 year. The only AIAW National Championship won was the 1981 Track and Field championship, under Coach Terry Crawford, which was the first UT women’s national championship.
The AIAW, having lost significant funding and membership to the NCAA when that organization opened its programs to women athletes, ceased to operate in 1983. Its archives are at the University of Maryland Libraries.