When Dr. Carol Lally Shields arrived at Notre Dame as a student in 1975, she didn't know she was going to play basketball, let alone that she would help lay the foundation for women's basketball at the university for decades to come.
"I just kind of stumbled upon it," Lally Shields said. "I moved myself into my dormitory room, and as I walked up and down the stairs, I noticed that there was a little torn out sheet of paper that said, 'Women's varsity basketball tryouts.' I looked at it and said, 'That's not for me. I know I played sports in high school, but I really want to focus on science while I'm here at Notre Dame. I only get this chance once.'"Â
But after continuing to see the note over the next few days, she knew she had to go for it.
"I kept walking by that when I went to and from classes and I said, 'This is really bugging me. I really want to go out for basketball,'" Lally Shields said. "So, I tried out for the team, and I was surprised that I made the team and it really became a very important part of my life."
In the fourth year that Notre Dame had admitted women to the university and a few years after Title IX became law, Lally Shields became part of the first women's basketball team at the university. She was named co-captain of the team three times.Â
"I did not understand how important Title IX was and how much it impacted the University of Notre Dame and other universities," Lally Shields said. "I was more or less happy-go-lucky as I went about my basketball career, loving the sport and my teammates but never realizing that we were putting the cinder blocks for a magnificent ultimate program that was about to happen in the university. We were just building the foundation, not thinking much about it."
A successful basketball career, which included accolades like being the first woman to receive Notre Dame's Byron V. Kanaley Award for excellence in athletics and academics, prepared her for a career as a world-renowned oncologist.Â
"It was just the beginning of my career," said Lally Shields, director of ocular oncology service at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. "Not a career in sports, but a career with a lifetime given to patient care, and sports played a major role in my ability to handle all the challenges of being a doctor, a doctor that deals with cancer, cancer in babies, that can lead to death in babies. Being an athlete at Notre Dame just honed my skills, just polished me up to be the best doctor I could ever want to be. It taught me how to handle situations, how to handle victories, how to handle defeats, how to fix your problems so that you're doing better the next time you face the same problem."
Lally Shields is the 2023 recipient of the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the highest honor the NCAA can confer on an individual. The "Teddy" is presented annually to a distinguished citizen of national reputation and outstanding accomplishment. Lally Shields' award will be presented Jan. 11 at the  NCAA Honors Celebration.
She is the author or co-author of multiple textbooks and over 700 articles in major journals and was the first woman to receive the Donders Medal, which is presented by the Netherlands Ophthalmologic Society once every five years. Lally Shields is also married to an ophthalmologist, Dr. Jerry Shields, director emeritus of ocular oncology service at the Wills Eye Hospital.
"In my field, we get the benefit of helping the patient in three major ways," Lally Shields said. "We don't just fix sight, we save a life, save the eye and we hopefully save the sight."
Juggling the balance of a career and family life, she and her husband would schedule their office hours around their kids' activities.
"I didn't want to sacrifice any of my duties as a mom being at my kids' games," Lally Shields said. "I knew how much that meant to me when my dad was at my games. It steered the course in my life. It caused me to believe in myself."
