You Let Some Girl Beat You? (11 page)

“Women In Sports” was the heading on the June 26
^th
, 1978 cover of
TIME Magazine
. Inside was an article along with a picture of me in the winning game at UCLA. It pointed out that the Bruin women's game had averaged crowds of 4,000 that final year, with gate receipts more than offsetting expenses. Not long after, the NCAA finally came to realize that women's athletic programs could actually be profitable.

By the end of my Bruin career, I held twelve of thirteen school records, and I remain number one on the charts for steals (403) and blocks (101). I won my fourth consecutive All-American honor along with the Broderick Award as the nation's top women's collegiate basketball player. The Bruin women's volleyball team I competed on my junior and senior year again made it to the Final Four, and at the end of the year, I received the Broderick Cup as the Collegiate Female Athlete of the Year. I was also named the first All-University Athlete of the Year.

1978 happened to also be the inaugural year of the Wade Trophy, presented to the best women's basketball player in Division I competition. Even though we'd won the championship, the Wade Trophy went to Montclair State's Carol Blazejowski. My name was known across the country, but in a strange twist, there was another player named Anne Meyers from Dayton University, and a lot of the coaches back East unknowingly voted for her even though she spelled her first name differently. Again, it came down to budget. There were no big travel allowances for women's basketball back then, so just because the women's coaches might have heard about a good player on the other coast, they didn't always get to see her play like they do now. Blaze was certainly deserving of the Wade Trophy, but to this day, I believe I should have received one with her.

“Maybe we weren't at the Last Supper, but we're certainly going to be at the next one.”
~Bella Abzug

By the time I was wrapping up my senior year at UCLA, a group of suits on the East Coast had formulated a professional women's basketball league from a plan that had been percolating since the time I'd started college, and which drew strength after the women's team had done so well at the '76 Olympics. In the summer of 1978, with twelve teams participating, the league held a player's draft in Manhattan at the Essex House. The Women's Professional Basketball League, or WBL, planned to play a 34-game season with teams Chicago Hustle, Houston Angels, Iowa Cornets, Milwaukee Does, New Jersey Gems, New York City Stars, Washington Foxes, Philadelphia Fillies, and teams in New Orleans, San Francisco, Long Beach, and Dallas. The fact that not all the teams had made firm commitments to the league, or had even chosen names for themselves, didn't seem to matter.

I was flattered when I got a call stating that I was the WBL's overall first draft pick. But the timing wasn't right. I needed to finish up a few more courses at UCLA to earn my degree. With all the traveling I'd done playing USA basketball, I'd missed some classes, which I could make-up in my fifth year. I'd also been given a wonderful opportunity by my broadcasting professor, Art Friedman, to do the commentary for a couple of the men's UCLA basketball games with Ross Porter.

My hands were full, and they were bound to get fuller because I had my sights set on the 1980 Summer Olympics, which meant I had to retain my amateur status. I had little choice but to decline the Houston Angels' offer.

It ended up that I wasn't giving up a lot. Franchise owners estimated salaries at between $3,000 and $5,000. Eventually, the average salaries would be closer to $9,000. No one knew it at the time, but the problem was that many of those salaries would go unpaid. In my stead, twenty-year-old Molly Bolin, a blonde from Iowa, nicknamed Machine Gun for her ability to fire off shots, signed with the Iowa Cornets to become the first official member of what was already proving to be a beleaguered league before it even got off the ground.

No one had any idea the WBL might be cursed. Most of us were still hopeful that its existence was a sign of our viability as professional athletes. Men had been playing pro in the NBA since 1946. While we'd been made to wait forty years before we were allowed to get in on the Olympics action, it seemed our wait to get into the professional realm wouldn't be quite as long.

Women's basketball had come a long way in the last several years, advancing much further than it had in its entire eighty-three-year history. So much had changed in women's basketball since the days when snatching the ball was prohibited. But so much more had changed just in the time I'd been playing. And even though I wasn't ready to give up my amateur status, the formation of a professional women's basketball league was proof that the ladies' game had finally come of age. Little did I know that was still nearly two more decades away.

But for now, the immediate future looked bright.

1979 was shaping up to be almost as exciting as the previous year. I had been the captain of all the international teams I'd played on that summer and the first woman to carry her country's flag at the Pan Am Games, where the world's best athletes competed. I kept a journal. In it I wrote:

Saturday 6-30-79:
I was nominated to carry the flag, and I won the voting by “a lot”! I'm so excited and honored. It's really a great feeling, and I feel so proud and thankful. It's the first time a woman has ever been nominated!

All of the different captains from the different sports had voted for their choice to carry the U.S. flag. As captain of the women's basketball team, they wanted me to have that honor. That feeling of fitting in, the one I'd searched for throughout elementary school and high school, the sense of acceptance I wanted playing basketball with my older brothers as a kid, the approval I sought from my parents, the perception of belonging we all long for from the moment we are conscious of being an individual—all of that was now filling me up in spades.

On July 1, I carried the American flag into the arena near the Pan Am Village in Puerto Rico with the United States congregation following behind me. I was careful not to dip the flag. It's well known among athletes that the United States doesn't bow to sovereign powers. Other countries may bow to the host country, but not the U.S. We never have, and it sure as heck wasn't going to happen on my watch.

Puerto Rico was hot and muggy. As a proud athlete representing her country, it could have been twice as hot and the ceremony twice as long, and I still wouldn't have minded. I looked up to see 100,000 spectators in the stands that day, and couldn't help but wonder what my parents would have thought had they been there. They'd both come to the Pan Am Games in Mexico a few years earlier, but their relationship had become so strained that I'd had to invite Juliene everywhere we went just to provide a buffer. This time, I was on my own.

The '79 Pan Am Games Opening Ceremony lasted almost six hours, and I held our flag high the whole time, the first woman to do so. If it was heavy, it was worth it. But with these games, there were new responsibilities…and pressures.

At these Pan Am Games, one of my former teammates from the '76 Olympic USA Team had also been given a new responsibility. She was now my coach. And the adjustment for both of us was difficult.

Pat Head (Summitt) had not coached a USA team before this summer, and she and I seemed to butt heads (obviously not unusual for me). She was a lot like Billie Moore in that she was a tough coach and I was a tough player, and we challenged each other. I had been relegated to coming off the bench, which was incredibly frustrating. Not only was I the captain of the team, but I'd been the captain of every USA Team to play in every international competition that summer. But as the coach in each of these events, she'd have me come off the bench—the same thing Kenny had done to me my freshman year. I'd been a starter with Pat on the Olympics team, I'd won a national championship, and been named Player of the Year since then. I was confused and hurt…and it didn't help that I kept my emotions to myself.

We were two strong-headed women, both equally determined in our beliefs. I believed I should be starting and playing more. I don't know whether Pat felt I wasn't playing up to her expectations or felt I wasn't leading. But having me come off the bench was like putting me in a straightjacket, and when I came out, I usually came out swinging.

More than anything, I wanted to prove I was worth my weight in gold, even if Pat didn't think so. As usual, when I was feeling frustrated, I looked to my family for guidance, so I called home.

Patty had answered the phone. “Looks like the first woman to carry the flag for our country is getting a lot of press. You're all over the front page of the
L.A. Times
carrying the flag!”

It all felt surreal. “I was also interviewed by this guy with
Sports Spectacular,
” I told her. It had been a young Dick Stockton, one of the many journalists I would work with later in my career who would tell me he was shocked to see that an athlete so timid when answering reporters' questions had opted for a broadcasting career.

“We're saving the newspaper for you, Annie. It's a great shot,” Patty said. “Word around town is that you're joining the WBL.”

That came from Ed Arnold, a newscaster for ABC TV, Channel 7. Before leaving for the Pan Am Games, Ed had asked me if it was true that I was going to join the new women's basketball league. Early on, the WBL was getting ink.
Sports Illustrated
said, “It was as if ABC was getting ready to replace
Charlie's Angels
with a woman's basketball league,” and I was getting a lot of questions about my possible involvement. I'd kept my answer short and sweet with Ed. “Nope. I'm going to play in the Olympics.” Now the piece was airing in L.A. while I was in Puerto Rico.

We ended up winning the Silver at those Pan Am games. And after I arrived back to the States, I received Sam Nassi's call about trying out for the Pacers. After Mark and I met with him and Slick, I confirmed my decision to go out for the Pacers and announced it to my entire family when we were all together on a family trip in San Diego.

While it turned out that playing for the Pacers had been a fantasy, signing with them was not. I'd become the first woman to broadcast an NBA game as a result of Mark's negotiations, but eventually I missed playing basketball too much to stay on in the booth.

Now a new decade was about to dawn literally and figuratively. I was playing with the Gems in New Jersey and when the off season would come, I'd train for another shot at the
Superstars
. There was just one problem. It was looking more and more like the WBL had bitten off more than it could chew and soon the bill would be coming due.

 

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1980 New Jersey Gems

Voted “Most Athletic” in High School

1975 All American brother and sister - me, a Freshman, David a Senior