RIVER FALLS — University of Wisconsin-River Falls Athletic Director Crystal Lanning received a massive honor over the summer, being named the Nike Executive of the Year by Women Leaders in Sports.
“The Nike Executive of the Year Awards recognize five senior-level executives for their contributions within each NCAA division and the broader sports industry. Honorees demonstrate leadership and vision while promoting excellence, professional development, diversity, and gender equity in sports,” a statement from UWRF Athletics reads.
Lanning, a current Hastings, Minn., resident, has been on the UWRF staff since 2004 after earning degrees at Winona State University and the University of Kentucky. She started as an athletic trainer and teacher before transitioning to assistant athletic director, and then interim athletic director in 2016. Lanning has held the AD position ever since.
“To be here for 22 years, it’s a pretty special place. If you look up and down our hallways here in the Athletic Department, and even across campus, you’re going to find people who have been here just as long and some who have been here longer. Just in our department alone, we’ve got many who were students here and never left, some who were students and left and came back and others of us who have just been here a really long time,” Lanning said. “The campus is just a place that people really enjoy being at. There’s great people.”
UWRF has had success throughout Lanning’s time in the department, but the last few years have been especially bountiful. The women’s hockey team is three-time defending Division III National Champions, the football team won a National Championship in 2026 and Jacob Balcome won two consecutive track and field indoor heptathlon titles. Lanning said the construction of the Falcon Center, a $63.5 million athletics facility that opened in 2017, has been “transformational” for many of the school’s sports teams.
“For so long, River Falls was a place with potential,” Lanning said. “There was always this, we need to get over the hump, type of thing. When we opened the Falcon Center, I think that really expanded recruiting possibilities.”
There were some great teams at UWRF prior to the Falcon Center, but its construction really brought the pieces together.
Division III athletics are extremely different in how they operate from Division I. Without scholarships and massive piles of NIL money, the coaches are really tested during the recruiting process. There is not a “quiet” period where coaches cannot contact each other, unlike Division I. Given that, Lanning gave credit for much of the Falcons’ success to the coaches.
“What a lot of people don’t understand about recruiting Division III is it’s an all-year-round, 24/7, 365 job,” Lanning said. “Without scholarships and things, they have to be more creative about the recruiting process. I really give a lot of credit to our coaches for the way they sell our programs, sell our university and the things we have to offer.”
The award especially meant something to Lanning due to her long-term involvement with Women Leaders in Sports. Lanning will be recognized at a national convention in Chicago during October for the honor.
“They’ve just really been an organization that I’ve really enjoyed being part of. The leadership experiences came at points in my career where first, I was looking to advance here at UW-River Falls, and then the second time was as I was going through the interim processes at athletic director. The program that I went through at the time really talked about and taught skills moving into that athletic director or commissioner role,” Lanning said. “It’s really about any ways to support women working in an industry that is mostly male dominated.”
Lanning’s tenure has brought not just success on the field, but academically as well.
“Academic achievement has remained a hallmark of Falcon Athletics. All 20 varsity programs have consistently maintained a cumulative team GPA of 3.0 or higher. Since 2021-22, over 1,000 UWRF student-athletes have earned Academic All-Conference honors, five WIAC Scholar-Athlete Awards and five College Sports Communicators Academic All-America selections,” the UWRF statement reads. “Lanning has also overseen significant growth of the department, including the addition of esports and men’s soccer and the reinstatement of baseball, which had been discontinued in 2002.”
As a former four-year letter winning goalkeeper at Winona State, Lanning still feels the itch every time gameday comes around.
“I am a gameday junky, so there is nothing more exciting for me than coming in on a gameday and seeing our team compete,” Lanning said. “I still get the chills on gameday.”