Main Navigation

Kathy Kreiner-Phillips to enter PAC-12 Hall of Honor

Former Utah NCAA champion skier and Olympic gold medalist Kathy Kreiner-Phillips will be inducted into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor on Friday, March 13, at the Pac-12 Men's Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas.

Former Utah NCAA champion skier and Olympic gold medalist Kathy Kreiner-Phillips will be inducted into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor on Friday, March 13, at the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. The class will be honored during a special halftime ceremony of the day’s first semifinal matchup.

The 2020 Hall of Honor class will be the 19th since its creation in 2002, and the third to feature legendary figures from an array of sports after the Pac-12 expanded the field to be inclusive of the broad-based athletics success across the Conference of Champions. Each year a new inductee from each Pac-12 university is welcomed into the Hall of Honor. Since expanding the field beyond men’s basketball, Missy Marlowe (gymnastics) and Steve Smith, Sr., (football) have been inducted from Utah.

At 14, Kreiner-Phillips was the youngest competitor at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, and placed 14th in the slalom. She became a regular on the World Cup circuit, claiming 46 top-10 finishes over 11 seasons, including a victory at Prfronten in the giant slalom in 1974.

At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, Kreiner-Phillips became the youngest gold medalist in skiing history by winning the giant slalom at age 18. She placed fourth overall in the World Cup giant slalom standings during the 1976-77 season. She won six Canadian national championships between 1975 and 1979. In her third and final Olympics in 1980 at Lake Placid, N.Y, Kreiner-Phillips placed fifth in the downhill – the best Olympic finish in the event by a Canadian woman at the time – and ninth in the GS.

Kreiner-Phillips joined the Utes in 1983 and helped the team win the NCAA’s first men’s and women’s combined national title, becoming the school’s first NCAA women’s champion by winning the giant slalom and finishing sixth in the slalom. She also earned All-America honors in 1984 after finishing fourth in the giant slalom, as Utah claimed its second consecutive NCAA Championship.

Kreiner-Phillips graduated from Utah in 1986 with a degree in physical education and went on to earn a master’s degree in sport psychology from the University of Ottawa. She currently works as a mental trainer for aspiring elite level athletes.

Kreiner-Phillips was inducted into Utah’s Crimson Club Hall of Fame in 2016.

Entering the Pac-12 Hall of Honor with Kreiner-Phillips are Sean Rooks (Arizona basketball), Melissa Belote Ripley (Arizona State swim), Bill Marolt (Colorado ski), Don Bowden (California track), Dan Fouts (Oregon football), Joni Huntley (Oregon State track), Jennifer Azzi (Stanford women’s basketball), Jonathan Ogden (UCLA football), Barbara Hedges (USC administrator), Lincoln Kennedy (Washington football) and Jeanne Eggart Helfer (Washington State women’s basketball and track).