Nike's 50th Anniversary: Celebrating the Trailblazing Tigerbelles - 2023 Clio Sports Gold
I’m willing to bet a plate of rice and beans (I’m Caribbean, that’s the highest of stakes) that you haven’t heard of the TSU Tigerbelles. Which is RIDICULOUS because a collegiate team with athletes who won 23 Olympic medals, set 40 world records, and were Nike’s first ever sponsored athletes to set a world record should be a household name. 

When Nike approached my team at AKQA to tell the story of the Tigerbelles for Nike’s 50th anniversary series, we were shocked and appalled that even the deepest of sport culture lovers among us hadn’t heard of them. As a lover of all things sports fashion, women’s history and Black history, I was pretty upset that I wasn’t familiar with the ladies who created track and field fashion as we know it today. 

We knew this story needed to be told in a way that was as legendary as the women it was about. So, we commissioned artists to recreate an iconic image of the team crossing the finish line of the National AAU championship in 1978. The story of the Tigerbelles is now memorialized in a 10 foot installation crafted entirely by track spikes, to be seen and known by all who visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. 

In addition to the installation, we created an Instagram reel, which was released on Nike’s Instagram, to further spread knowledge about this groundbreaking team of athletes. 

 

Social Video

 

Installation at the National Civil Rights Museum

Note from the author :

  1. This is the kind of work that made me want to get into this industry. I want to use our megaphone of reach and resources to magnify stories and inspire people.

  2. If you have, in fact, heard of the Tigerbelles, I owe you some rice and beans. Please contact me and I promise to make good.