More than 50 bouquets of flowers from well wishers across the nation poured into the DePaul University Athletic Center in Chicago last July when the university named Jean Lenti Ponsetto, a 20-year veteran of college coaching and athletic administration, as its new athletic director. A crateful of cards also arrived for the former four-sport college athlete, including one card from a junior high school girl who expressed what many felt: “What an amazing role model you are for other young women around the country.”

The flowers and cards signified not only the respect Lenti Ponsetto, 46, attracts from athletic administrators, coaches, athletes, educators and friends across the country, but also acknowledged the rare appointment of a woman to a key leadership role in the male-dominated world of college sports administration.

Of the 318 university athletic programs that compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA),only 22 are led by women. Lenti Ponsetto has joined this elite group while also serving as the only woman ever to chair the NCAA Division I Championships/Competition cabinet, which oversees all of the division’s championship events, playing and practice rules, athlete safety, drug education, as well as the financial impact and image of all NCAA events.

“Jean has established herself as a leader in intercollegiate athletics and, as chair of the Championship committee, has handled a very difficult cabinet position within the association,” said Cedric Dempsey, executive director for the NCAA. “I have the highest respect for her and couldn’t be happier that DePaul has give her this opportunity. I’m confident that she will do an outstanding job for the university.”

M. Dianne Murphy, director of athletics and recreation at the University of Denver and president of the National Association of Women Collegiate Athletic Administrators (NACWAA), praised Ponsetto for her “great integrity, great sense of humor and tremendous leadership skills.”

“It’s gratifying to see women being recognized for their experience, talents, vision and leadership abilities,” Murphy said. “Jean is certainly one of the most outstanding administrators, male or female, that I know in the country.”

Among the influences that shaped Lenti Ponsetto’s career has been Title IX, the federal mandate against sex discrimination in education that celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, but is under review by a commission appointed by the Bush administration. Lenti Ponsetto is a passionate advocate of the legislation because of it opened gym doors to more female student athletes and encouraged women athletes to pursue careers as coaches and athletic administrators. Since Title IX was enacted in 1972, the number of women participating in college sports has increased five fold and the number of high schools girls playing varsity sports has grown to one in 2.5 from one in 27, according to NAWCAA.

“Outside of the civil rights laws, and when women got the right to vote, I’m not sure that there’s been anything that has had as great an influence on American women and our society than Title IX,” Lenti Ponsetto said. “Title IX really made it acceptable for women to participate in sports and to be fit. This participation gave them a certain level of confidence about who they are, and it also says a lot about who we are as a culture.

“Athletics is a training ground for working under pressure,” she said. “It involves trial and error, getting to know people, working out problems as a team. It helps develop confidence and self-esteem that prepares students for careers and what comes next in life. That’s why I would hate to see Title IX minimized or changed in any way, shape or form.”

As a young girl growing up in the 1960’s, before Title IX, Lenti Ponsetto received encouragement to participate in sports from her mother, the late Rose Lenti.

“My mom was tremendously influential in my decision to play sports as a little girl, and then go on to high school and college and play,” Lenti Ponsetto said. “In her own right, she was a very good athlete. She was a swimmer and played softball. My mother was one of those people who said: ‘You can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. Being a girl doesn’t mean that you can’t have dreams and that you can’t go out and conquer the world, if that’s what you want to do.’”

Rose Lenti, a homemaker, and her husband, Frank, a truck driver, raised six children – Jean, Frank Jr., Eugene, Michael, David and Marilyn on the South Side of Chicago. Jean, the fourth child, was closest in age to her brothers Eugene and Michael, with whom she played sports at the local park district.

“We ran track, we played basketball, we played touch football with all the kids on our block,” Lenti Ponsetto recalled. Her early sports experiences taught her important life lessons about fairness, teamwork, and gender and racial equality, she said.

“When I went to grammar school, we lived in a neighborhood that was changing. I was one of three or four white kids in my class. But my parents felt strongly about us having the opportunity to be in a multi-cultural environment. We were taught to respect everybody’s culture, to respect everybody who lived on our block and in our neighborhood. I think my parents were a little bit ahead of the times in terms of having an appreciation for what the world was going to look like as their children grew up. The experience was invaluable to me as I went on to play sports, and, later, when I decided to go into coaching and athletic administration.”

Despite the family’s modest means, the Lentis sent all six children to Catholic schools. In high school, Lenti Ponsetto played basketball and volleyball, the only two sports offered by the all-girls Catholic high school she attended. Her older sister, Marilyn, who attended DePaul, convinced her to attend the Catholic university, home of the Blue Demons.

Lenti Ponsetto joined the tennis, volleyball and women’s basketball teams in her freshman year at DePaul in 1974, and she participated in softball when it was added as a varsity sport two years later. Her athletic achievements earned her a spot in the Blue Demon Hall of Fame. It was at DePaul that she met a fellow athlete, Blue Demons basketball star Joe Ponsetto, whom she later married.

Lenti Ponsetto earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education and health from DePaul in 1978 and planned on a career in high school athletic coaching when she was offered a position as assistant women’s basketball coach at DePaul. She took the DePaul job and never looked back.

Since then, Lenti Ponsetto has moved up the ranks of DePaul’s athletic administration, with promotions to assistant athletic director, associate athletic director and senior associate athletic director, a post she has held for the last seven years. In 1998, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and National Association of Collegiate Women’s Athletics both named her Administrator of the Year.

When Athletic Director Bill Bradshaw left DePaul for Temple University in June, Lenti Ponsetto was the overwhelming choice among DePaul administrators to become the new athletic director.

“Jean represents the best of DePaul athletics through her long-standing relationship with the university and its values,” said James Doyle, DePaul vice president for Student Affairs. “She has a strong management style guided by vision and decisiveness. She sees the big picture and has a thorough understanding of athletics in the academic environment. Most importantly, she is 100 percent committed to student athletes.”

Lenti Ponsetto oversees a staff of 52 and is responsible for DePaul’s 235 student athletes who participate in 15 sports. While athletic success, securing quality facilities and program funding are among her main concerns, Lenti Ponsetto has set her highest priority on ensuring that athletes have opportunities to develop their potential, both athletically and academically. She focuses her efforts on recruiting student athletes who want to graduate and providing excellent support services to help them reach their academic and athletic goals.

Lenti Ponsetto was recently selected to be an NCAA Champion, a key administrator chosen to be a spokesperson on NCAA issues. She is especially known for her knowledge of NCAA rules, compliance and gender equity issues. Her past NCAA involvement includes service on committees that oversee men’s and women’s college basketball issues, budgets and television coverage. She was a key advisor to NCAA President Dempsey on the association’s $200 million broadcast-rights negotiations with ESPN.

Family support remains a source of strength for Lenti Ponsetto. She’s never far from the brothers she played sports with as a girl—Eugene coaches the women’s softball team and Michael works in the athletic facilities department at DePaul. With her husband Joe, who is chief of the Special Prosecution Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s office, Lenti Ponsetto lives a block from campus in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The couple doesn’t have children, but as Lenti Ponsetto likes to joke, “I’ve got 235 children.”

“One of the best thing about my relationship with Joe is that he was a student athlete himself,” Lenti Ponsetto said. “Having played college and high school basketball, he grew up in gyms and he’s very comfortable in this environment. He knows how important it is for me to spend the time doing what I do. He knows that I’m happiest when I’m doing my job and watching our students compete.”