Six Idaho leaders will be honored at a first-of-its-kind event celebrating athletes, coaches and trailblazers who have paved the way for the next generation of girls and women in Idaho sports.
The six honorees represent decades of achievement, advocacy and leadership across athletics, journalism, education and public service.
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Among them are two of Idaho’s most accomplished athletes: three-time Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong and Paralympic champion Muffy Davis.
Idaho EdNews founder and CEO Jennifer Swindell — previously the Idaho Statesman sports editor — joins Rhodes Scholar Kaya Evans, teacher Mary Karol Taylor and student-athlete Ava Johnson as the other honorees.
The inaugural Change Make*Hers Gala will be held the evening of Feb. 4 at the Stueckle Sky Center in Boise. The event will be hosted by iWIN Sports, an initiative of the Taylor LEAD Foundation.
“These six embody the spirit of what we’re building through iWIN Sports,” said Angela Taylor, president of the Taylor LEAD Foundation. “They’ve broken barriers, elevated others, demonstrated resilience and proven that when girls and women are given real access to opportunity, they don’t just participate — they transform entire fields and inspire generations to come.”
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The evening’s keynote speaker is former Stanford University women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer, the second-winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, with 1,216 career victories. She led the Cardinal to three NCAA championships and coached Taylor, a former Mountain Home High star, for two of those early 1990s championships. Taylor went on to coach in the college ranks before becoming an executive with the WNBA.
Here’s more on this year’s honorees:
Kristin Armstrong (Legend Award)
Armstrong is the most decorated U.S. women’s cyclist of all-time. She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time world champion and six-time U.S. national champion. Armstrong made history as the only female U.S. athlete to win the same event in three consecutive Summer Olympic Games. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, she became the oldest female cyclist to win an Olympic medal, capturing gold in the individual time trial one day before her 43rd birthday. A University of Idaho graduate, Armstrong owns and operates Pivot by KA fitness club in Boise and mentors athletes through coaching and entrepreneurship.
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Muffy Davis (Courage to Lead Award)
Davis will receive her award following an extraordinary journey from a life-changing ski racing accident in Sun Valley that left her paralyzed at age 16 to becoming one of the most accomplished adaptive athletes in history. She’s earned more than 25 World Cup victories and medals across three Paralympic Games in alpine skiing and road cycling. She is also a member of both the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame and the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame. Davis is a former Idaho legislator and serves as a Blaine County commissioner.
Jennifer Swindell (Trailblazer Award)
Swindell became Idaho’s first female sports editor and one of the first in the nation. She served in leadership roles at the Idaho Statesman for 20 years. During her time as sports editor, she moved girls and women’s sports to the front pages of the Idaho Statesman’s Sports section at a time when stories were typically buried behind men’s sports coverage. In 2013, she founded online news source IdahoEdNews.org, which serves millions of readers each year and holds lawmakers and educators accountable for taxpayer dollars and student achievement. She also served as the first female board president of the Idaho Golf Association and was one of the first women recruited to a federally funded wildland firefighting crew in the early 1980s, paving the way for women’s equity.
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Kaya Evans (IX Stories Award)
Kaya Evans is a 2023 Rhodes Scholar who recently completed her master’s degree in comparative social policy at the University of Oxford. At the College of Idaho, Evans captained the soccer team while earning All-American and all-conference honors and majoring in political economy. She has worked in Idaho political consulting and served as a minority party attaché for the Idaho House of Representatives, assisting in drafting legislation on fair housing and judicial integrity.
Mary Karol Taylor (Team of Allies Award)
Mary Karol Taylor is a teacher-librarian at South Junior High in Boise and founder of Nations United Soccer. Since 2016, her nonprofit has served more than 100 primarily refugee and immigrant youth, helping them overcome adversity through soccer. The program has seen 13 players go on to play in college, nearly 100 make their high school teams, and 25 former players form an adult team competing in the Mountain West region.
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Ava Johnson (The Alice & Charles Taylor Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award)
Ava Johnson is a 2025 graduate of Mountain Home High School and current Boise State University nursing student. The valedictorian and four-year varsity athlete in basketball and softball created a mental health initiative called “You Are More Important Than You Realize,” which expanded across Mountain Home after Johnson watched her sister endure multiple ACL injuries and recognized the need for mental health awareness among students.
