One night a year, Idaho girls are in the room.
Not watching a livestream. Not reading about it afterwards. In the room, at the table, while the women who did it first are at the podium.
What it actually is
Designed the way a game is.
From the red carpet on the way in to the last paddle raise of the night, every part of the evening is built for you to be in it rather than watching it. A spirit tunnel of student-athletes. A live scoreboard. Heat on Your Feet™ under the tables. Auction games played in the room rather than announced at it.
Three hundred and eight tickets sold out last February, and forty student-athletes were seated among those guests as guests of the Foundation. Not at a side table — in the room, at the tables, next to the people funding their seasons.
What people describe afterwards is never the food or the speeches. It is a girls’ soccer team walking into a place they had plainly never been before, not quite sure they were allowed to be there, and staying anyway. It is a row of girls leaning over the balcony rail with their eyes wide.
And it is that one of the women on the stage — a Rhodes Scholar — had played college soccer in Idaho a few years earlier. Somewhere in that team, a girl was deciding it could be her.
February is chosen. We held the first gala on National Girls & Women in Sports Day itself. February 3, 2027 is the fortieth anniversary of that day, and this year we have moved a week later on purpose — so there is a full week of events running from the anniversary to the gala rather than a single evening.
That is what a ticket buys and what a sponsorship funds. Proceeds go to iWIN Sports — grants that pay a registration fee, camps, clinics, and the programs that keep girls in sport past the age most of them quit — and to the operations that deliver them, which at our size means one salary.
The goal is for every gala dollar to go directly to grants, programs and scholarships. Building the endowment is how we get there.
Last February
The first one sold out.
“I think the event is great, but what’s better is the purpose of the event.”Tara VanDerveer · 2026 keynote · quoted in the Idaho Press, February 5, 2026
The awards
Six honors, and each one names something specific.
Most galas have honorees. Very few have a structure. Each of these recognizes a different way somebody moves girls and women forward in sport — and every one of them was given for the first time in 2026.
The Legend Award
For an athlete whose record changed what an Idaho girl believes is available to her.
2026 · Kristin Armstrong — three Olympic gold medals in cyclingThe Courage to Lead Award
For someone who kept going when the route they were on disappeared, and then built a new one for others.
2026 · Muffy Davis — Paralympic champion and legislatorThe Trailblazer Award
For the person who was first through a door, and then held it open.
2026 · Jennifer Swindell — Idaho’s first female sports editorThe IX Stories Award
For a young woman whose path through sport is the argument this Foundation exists to make.
2026 · Kaya Evans — Rhodes Scholar, College of Idaho soccerThe Team of Allies Award
For someone building access from inside a school, a club or a community, usually without recognition.
2026 · Mary Karol Taylor — teacher-librarian, founder of Nations United SoccerScholar-Athlete of the Year
The Alice & Charles Taylor award, to a LEAD Scholar who embodies all four letters.
2026 · Ava Johnson — Mountain Home, now at Boise State2027
This year’s honorees and keynote.
Announced through the autumn, one at a time. Sponsors and ticket holders hear first.
Six honorees, revealed one at a time
Nominations are open, and anyone can submit one. If there is somebody in Idaho who has quietly moved girls and women forward in sport and never been thanked for it — a coach, a teacher, an official, a parent who drives the van — we would like to hear about them.
The 2027 keynote
Last year Tara VanDerveer stood at this podium — Naismith Hall of Fame coach, three national championships, Olympic gold, and the woman whose first head coaching job was at the University of Idaho. We are working on this year’s.
Sponsorship
Autumn is when this gets decided.
Commit by December 1 for full inclusion in printed materials. Nine levels, from $1,000 to $35,000, each including a table of ten. Corporate budgets close in the autumn, so this is the window. Sponsorship shapes printed materials, signage and the program — and the presenting position is a single slot each year. Tell us what you are considering and we will come back with what it would fund.
Premium table of ten, and the top of the ladder.
Presenting partner. Named alongside the gala itself, one a year, plus a premium table.
Where custom activations start — your own moment in the evening, or an award presented in your name.
Five young people in the room who could not otherwise be there, and recognition from the stage.
Each of the six awards is presented by a sponsor. In 2026 those were Saint Alphonsus, Trak Software, J.R. Simplot Company, TOK Commercial, Stoltz Marketing Group and You Are More — each named from the stage as the award was given, and again in every piece of coverage that followed. Six slots, one per award, and they are the most visible thing on the night.
What a sponsor actually gets
Quarterly reporting on the specific things your money funded — a grant cohort, a camp cycle, a scholarship — rather than a name on a general fund. When somebody in your organization asks in June what the sponsorship bought, you will have an answer.
And what your people get
A table in a room with forty student-athletes. Networking Collective memberships for a women’s employee resource group. A Changemakers Circuit session for your staff. Benefits your employees consume, not just a logo.
Tickets
Individual seats and tables.
Be told first
Last year sold out. Tell us you want a seat or a table and we will contact you before tickets go public — sponsors and previous attendees first, then everyone on this list.
Attending as a student, a coach, or a school group? Write to us. There were forty student-athletes in the room last year and none of them paid for a ticket.
Or work it rather than attend it. Fifty people made the first one happen — setup, registration, the auction, teardown. It is the best seat in the house and it costs nothing. Volunteer for February 10 →
February 10, 2027
Somewhere in that room will be a girl deciding it could be her.
Working out that the distance between where she is sitting and where those women are standing is shorter than anybody told her. That is the whole event, and everything else is dinner.
The Change Make*Hers Gala powered by iWIN Sports · The Taylor LEAD Foundation · 501(c)(3) · EIN 99-2465893