The Arthur Ashe Award for Courage Quiz

Answer: North Carolina State

Valvano got his first head coaching position at an American college at the age of 23 when he was hired by John Hopkins University. In 1980, he was hired at North Carolina State. As part of the Cinderella run by the school Valvano introduced a late game strategy that has now become common in basketball to foul the opponents late in a game as a way to regain possession.

Valvano received the diagnosis of metastatic adenocarcinoma in June, 1992. At the time he had left North Carolina State and was working as a broadcaster for ESPN. As part of his acceptance speech of the Arthur Ashe Award in 1993, Valvano re-iterated one of his famous catchphrases from his coaching days "Don't give up. Don't ever give up". The line has now become the slogan of the Jimmy V fund. Valvano urged the audience to laugh, cry, and think every day, a message that was then etched on his tombstone. Valvano would lose his fight 55 days after the speech on April 28, 1993.

Answer: Major League Baseball

Palermo had just come from Arlington Stadium where he had been the third base umpire for a regular season game between the California Angels and Texas Rangers. He was having a dinner in a local Egyptian restaurant on July 7, 1991 when he became aware of a pair of waitresses getting mugged in the parking lot. Palermo joined five other men in chasing down the the thieves and had subdued one of the men when another suspect fired in to the crowd, striking Palermo in the leg.

Palermo had an accomplished career and had been selected to umpire in both the World Series and an All-Star Game. Just three months after the shooting, Palermo walked out to the mound with just the help of a leg brace and cane to throw out the first pitch at the first game of the 1991 World Series. With the same aids, he accepted the Arthur Ashe Award on-stage at the ESPY Awards in February 1994.

Answer: Billie Jean King

As the #1 rated women's tennis player in the world and the reigning champion of the US Open, Billie Jean King lobbied for equal compensation for men and women tennis players extensively in 1973. Her advocacy drew the ire of 55-year-old retired men's tennis player Bobby Riggs who defended the earnings discrepancy as being a result of an inferior women's product. Riggs challenged the 29-year-old King to a match, dubbed the "Battle of the Sexes", which King won 6-4,6-3,6-2. Despite the age gap, King saw the match as more than a publicity stunt but as a display that women's tennis was not to be discarded like many people, including Riggs, felt during that era.

King's advocacy for women's tennis did not end there. Along with nine other top women's tennis players, she formed the Women's Tennis Association union, and launched the rival World Team Tennis league, the first ever co-ed professional sports league with her husband Larry King. This work is done on top of her legendary on-court accomplishments which include 39 major championships (11 in singles play) and a career .818 winning percentage.

Answer: American Football

Pat and Kevin maintained low profiles after entering the military and did not attend the ESPY awards in July 2003. Instead their brother Richard was joined by their parents in receiving the award. Tillman joined the Army in 2002 after turning down a three-year contract from the Arizona Cardinals that would've paid him $3.6 million. Both brothers went to Ranger School and were redeployed to Afghanistan following initial tours of Iraq as part of the initial American invasion in March, 2003.

The pair was recognized with the Arthur Ashe Award eight months before Pat was tragically killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. He posthumously was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart by the armed forces. Kevin was honorably discharged in 2005.

Answer: 40th anniversary

Tommie Smith claimed the gold in the men's 200 meters at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, and John Carlos won the bronze medal. They were joined on the podium by Australian silver medalist Peter Norman. Norman did not raise his fist alongside the two Americans but did wear a badge for the Olympic Project for Human Rights in solidarity during the anthem.

The timing of their honoring in 2008 coincided with the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Those Games had been criticized for human rights abuses and reports that athletes were made to sign waivers that would prevent them from any demonstrations similar to the one of Smith and Carlos.

Answer: Tennessee

At her retirement, her 1,098 career coaching wins and astonishing .840 winning percentage were all-time records for any coach - male or female. She took over the women's basketball team at Tennessee in 1974 and coached hundreds of players over the following 38 seasons to eight national championships and 13 Final Four appearances. Summitt was not prepared to let her diagnosis take her off the sidelines - she announced her condition at the age of 59 in advance of her final season on the sidelines for the Lady Vols. Along with the Arthur Ashe Award, she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Pat Summitt died in 2016 at the age of 64.

Answer: True

Sam came out to his teammates and coaches at the University of Missouri in before the 2013 season but would publicly do so in a New York Times article in the following spring. In between Sam was named Defensive Player of the Year in the illustrious South-Eastern Conference, and helped the Tigers to an appearance in the Cotton Bowl. Sam was drafted 249th overall by the St. Louis Rams in the 2014 NFL draft but was released by the team after training camp that fall. Sam noted that after he publicly disclosed his sexuality he received messages from many active NFL and college football players who remained closeted over fears of being a distraction or ostracized by teammates. Sam would never get a chance to play in the NFL, but did go on to be the first openly gay player to play in the Canadian Football League.

Answer: Decathlon

Jenner set a then-world record of 8618 points in the decathlon and won convincingly over silver medalist Guido Kratschmer of West Germany. Jenner became a hero in the United States in the months after winning the gold and used the fame to launch a minor career in entertainment along with endorsement deals. From 1991 to 2013 Jenner was married to Kris Kardashian and step-parent to Kris' four children - Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, and Robert. Jenner appeared throughout the various reality TV series that starred her stepchildren.

In her 2015 interview, Jenner discussed her lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria and announced her transition. She became the first transgendered woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair, and her ESPY appearance to receive the award was her first major public appearance following her transition.

Answer: Special Olympics

Shriver's younger sister Rosemary had an intellectual disability, and from a young age Eunice noted the lack of leisure programs available to disabled people. In a sign of public opinion towards intellectual disabilities at the time, Eunice would serve on the US Panel on Mental Retardation in her brother John F Kennedy's administration.

The Special Olympics were started as a summer camp for children under the name "Camp Shriver". In 1968 the first Special Olympics was hosted in Chicago, and over 1000 athletes attended. By 2010, the Special Olympics had became a year-round host to tens of thousands of local events and competitions with millions of participants and hundreds of thousands of volunteer coaches and officials around the world. Shriver was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her advocacy of those with disabilities in 1984.

She died in 2009 at the age of 88.

Answer: Gymnastics

Nassar cared for the US National Gymnastics team while concurrently a professor at Michigan State University from 1996 until 2014. In September 2016, Rachael Denhollander was the first to publicly accuse Nassar of sexually assaulting her, launching a string of both active and former gymnasts speaking up and bringing forward their own stories of Nassar's misconduct.

Some of the victims included gold medalists Aly Raisman and Simone Biles. Their speaking out was a pivotal moment in the #MeToo movement calling for an end to the stigma and victim-shaming associated with sexual assault. 141 women took the stage at the ESPYs in 2018 representing the survivors of Nassar - who was sentenced to three concurrent de facto life sentences.