DENVER – MSU Denver has for decades been a leader in providing equal opportunities for women in intercollegiate athletics.
 
Today is the 26^th installment of a 52-part tribute by Roadrunners Athletics to pioneers and leaders in intercollegiate athletics at MSU Denver.

Each Thursday, a key female figure in Roadrunners athletics history will be recognized.
 
Today, basketball star Vanessa Edwards is featured.

Edwards' record-setting two-season MSU Denver career comprised the 1994-95 and 1995-96 seasons and she accomplished nearly four seasons worth of production.
 
She finished her career ranked second in program history with 1,159 points (she still ranks ninth), and is still the program's all-time leader with a scoring average of 20.7 points per game, and is also still first with a career field goal percentage of .569 (463 of 813). She still ranks fifth all-time with an average of 8.8 rebounds per game.
 
Edwards still holds the program single-season record of 653 points, which she scored in her senior season, and her junior-year output of 476 still ranks seventh. Her 24.4 points per game as a senior is easily still the program record, while her 17.0 points per game as a junior ranks sixth. Among her other legacies, she scored 22 points in the first half of a Jan. 24, 1996, game against UCCS, which is still the most ever scored in the first half by a Roadrunner.
 
She was named Colorado Athletic Conference Player of the Year in both of her seasons in downtown Denver, while leading the Roadrunners to a two-season record of 35-21, including 22-2 in CAC play. MSU Denver won the CAC Tournament in 1994-95 and was the CAC regular-season champions in 1995-96 while earning the program's first-ever trip to the NCAA Division II Tournament.
 
In 1995-96, she was named to the All-America second team by Daktronics as well as All-America honorable mention by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, after earning all-region first team honors from both organizations. 

Title IX, the groundbreaking law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at schools that receive funding from the federal government, went into effect just over 50 years ago – on June 23, 1972.