Former Lady Flames Women’s Basketball player Sarah Hillyer (’93) has traveled the world using sports as a platform to empower women, athletes with disabilities, and refugees, while promoting peace and cultural understanding.
Hillyer, who graduated with a degree in sport administration before going on to earn her master’s in sports psychology at Murray State University and a doctorate in sport sociology at the University of Tennessee, is the founder and director of UT’s Center for Sport, Peace, & Society. The center administers the Global Sports Mentoring Program in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and espnW, a global media network dedicated to engaging and inspiring women through sports.
At ESPN’s Sports Humanitarian Awards in Los Angeles in July, the program received the Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Award, which honors those who have used innovative approaches to help the disadvantaged through sports. Hillyer accepted the award on behalf of the program.
“I am incredibly blessed to get to live out my heartbeat and my passion,” Hillyer said. “It’s crazy to think that something that started as such a small seed and a dream would become such a life-changing organization.”
The three-week program matches emerging women leaders from around the world with American women executives in sports and business organizations. Participants are nominated by U.S. embassies and must identify a critical need or challenge facing women in their homeland. The program helps them develop an action plan involving sports to address the challenges.
Since 2012, 147 participants from 72 nations have started nongovernmental organizations, influenced public policy, and transformed communities in their native countries, directly impacting more than 225,000 people.
Hillyer, who has been a torchbearer for humanitarian causes for nearly 25 years, said her career of service was cultivated on Liberty’s campus.
“When I was at Liberty, I saw Dr. (Jerry) Falwell constantly working on behalf of people who needed hope,” she said.
After graduating from Liberty, she traveled to China on the first “Friendship Basketball Tour” for women sponsored by Global Sports Partners (GSP). She was eventually contracted to head up GSP’s women’s division and founded the nonprofit Sport 4 Peace, which used sport as a tool to strengthen girls and women in countries where they are culturally, politically, or religiously oppressed.
Over the next few years, she made several more trips to China before expanding her work with Sport 4 Peace to Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Mongolia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. She spent a decade traveling in Iran, coaching women’s softball and becoming an ambassador for female athletes. (In 2012, Hillyer merged Sport 4 Peace with the UT College of Education to create the UT Center for Sport, Peace, & Society.)
At UT, she also started a unique program to train NCAA Division I student-athletes for 10-day summer sport-related service projects overseas. The team has traveled to Brazil to support the Paralympic Games in Rio and to Vietnam and Ecuador to operate youth sports camps and foster community welfare and cultural change.
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