Pamela and Susan

We thought we were going to Politics and Prose in D.C. for a talk and signing of our book, Shattering the Glass.

We did, but that’s burying the lead.

The important thing is, we told a myriad of stories about women fighting for the opportunity to play basketball, a pursuit sometimes constrained or simply squashed by the larger culture over the game’s history. As Bell Hooks said, “People resist by … telling their story.”

We tell those stories — with hopes that the current upward loop in women’s basketball remains, but it’s never guaranteed, as our book shows. There is one unwavering truth: since the invention of basketball in the Victorian era, women have loved to play.

We honor the fervent fans and history lovers who braved the wind and downpour on March 20 to hear us spin and recount stories at P and P’s Union Market. We enjoyed fielding questions and signing copies of our newly released edition.

Afterward, with the rain at bay, folks ventured to La Cosecha, a nearby Latin restaurant market, and to other destinations. No doubt if the Mamam bakery had been open at that hour, it would have pulled people in. We availed ourselves of Mamam as the superb French eatery it is on two occasions during our brief stay.

Before leaving D.C., we also experienced first hand how sports stories are told not just through books and talks but through carefully crafted displays of memorabilia, images and brief explanations. We enjoyed meeting with sports curator Damion Thomas and assistant Melanie Taylor at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Melanie then gave us a tour of the sports exhibit. It was impressive – just like the rest of the museum. Thank you, Damion and Melanie, for taking the time and interest to host us.

Especially thrilling for us was seeing the USA uniform of Lusia Harris, who starred in the 1976 Olympics — the first time women’s basketball was played in the competition. Now that’s a story worth telling.

At such a perilous time for this nation and the world, it sometimes seems frivolous to post about basketball. But we carry on. Here’s why.

Those who seek to drag American society back to an imaginary past often portray the women’s movement as cynically contrived, throwing society dangerously out of balance.

The history of women’s basketball, however, shows that generations of American women have both delighted in vigorous competition and seen sports as an integral component of efforts to raise women’s social status.

Turn-of-the-century college students preparing to be teachers and social workers; high schoolers inspired by the advent of female suffrage; Black women dedicated to community uplift; eager participants in women’s liberation – all drew on sporting experiences as they pursued expanded ambitions.

Telling and retelling their stories of strength, joy and determination is vital to a full understanding of our nation’s past, especially at a time when powerful leaders seek to roll back women’s gains and to rewrite their history.

So we’ll keep doing it.

So excited to have Shattering the Glass out in the world!

We’ve been sharing some tidbits on social media – one each day or so. We’re gathering them here. Enjoy! If you like what you see, you’ll find a lot more in the book.

February 2: The Meaning of Sports for Women

In the late nineteenth century, the United States became an increasingly urban, industrialized nation.  Organized team sports, which seemed to mesh neatly with the demands of a competitive industrial society, grew in popularity and significance. College women and men frequently used sporting metaphors to describe the world they were preparing to enter.

“Educated women who seek employment must keep in mind the fact that only by the sweat of the brow is man’s bread won,” Atlanta University’s L.I. Mack wrote in 1900. “They must also remember that if they descend into the arena, they cannot hope for success unless they accept the conditions under which an athlete must strive. They must be prepared for hard work, for persevering work, because the race will be the same for them as for the men. The men will go beside them, struggling for the same prize; and, since men have, in the start, the advantage of the women, they must brace up every energy, and bring into play every faculty, to avoid defeat and ensure victory. Whatsoever they undertake, they must, and will, and do go through with it to the end.”

Players at Hampton University, 1907. Courtesy of the Hampton University Archives.

February 4: Early Teams

Most women’s college basketball programs focused on intramural play, with games that pitted one class against another – freshmen against the juniors, sophomores against the seniors and so on. Students, most of whom had little experience with competitive athletics, joined in with enthusiasm.

In 1900, students at North Carolina’s State Normal College proudly recounted their athletic gains. “In athletics we are the progenitors of a new regime,” the class of 1900 announced in their summary of class accomplishments. Previously, “the walls of the now elegant library enclosed all our efforts toward physical culture. There we wrestled in the dust with greased poles and dumb-bells, while ‘all outdoors’ remained unnoticed.” But the class had taken action. “The enthusiasm ran so high over basket ball in the spring that a determined few lent themselves to the task of cleaning and preparing the grounds,” they noted. “The athletic spirit spread until now every class in the school plays basket ball . . . .”

Team from State Normal College, Greensboro, N.C., 1900. Courtesy of the University Archives, Jackson Library, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

February 5: First Women’s Intercollegiate Game

In 1896, basketball teams from Stanford and the University of California met in the nation’s first intercollegiate game, won by Stanford.

The idea of women playing an energetic sport in public was controversial, and men were banned from the San Francisco armory where the game took place. Both of San Francisco’s newspapers filled their pages with descriptions of the game. One assigned its story to Mabel Craft, an aspiring young woman who would later become one of the state’s leading reporters, as well as an outspoken advocate for the rights of women and African Americans.

Craft’s article went straight to the point. Basketball, she wrote, “wasn’t invented for girls, and there isn’t anything effeminate about it. It was made for men to play indoors and it is a game that would send the physician who thinks the feminine organization ‘so delicate,’ into the hysterics he tries so hard to perpetuate.”

Stanford University’s victorious team. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University.

February 6: Charlotte, N.C.’s First Women’s Game

Coverage of Charlotte’s first women’s intercollegiate basketball contest, between Elizabeth and Presbyterian colleges in April of 1907, showcased both the appeal and the controversy surrounding women’s growing interest in athletics. As with many early games, male spectators were barred. When several scaled nearby buildings to see the game, they were arrested. The Charlotte Observer chronicled the action.

“It was exactly 4:30 o’clock when the two teams ran out, greeted by a tumult of cheers and an avalanche of streamers. The players, it is understood on good authority, were attired in abbreviated skirts, that nothing might impede the celerity or the alertness with which they leaped, dived heroically and sped determinedly toward their rivals’ goal. It was a scene such as is not witnessed every day in staid old Charlotte.”

“The only regret in town was that all save women were barred. Had the gates been thrown open the coffers of the athletic clubs of the colleges would be filled with gold, for business would have been suspended and the populace would have turned out en masse.”

 Charlotte News cartoon, courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

February 7: Fort Shaw Indian School Team Triumphs

In October of 1904, at the St. Louis World’s Fair, the women’s basketball team from Montana’s Fort Shaw Indian School defeated a Missouri all-star team and claimed the title “World Basket Ball Champions.”

The team proudly bore their trophy home. They left behind a powerful statement about Native American abilities. “To the great surprise of several hundred spectators,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed, the Fort Shaw players proved “more active, more accurate and cooler than their opponents.”

You can learn more about the team and players here, and in the book Full Court Press, by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith.

Photo courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

February 8: The Spread of High School Basketball

In the 1920s, as high schools sprang up in a growing number of American communities, basketball teams multiplied. Students loved the game – girls as well as boys. Archives and scrapbooks across the country preserve pictures of countless girls’ high school teams grouped around a ball and looking proudly into the camera.

Many decades later, North Carolina player Lavinia Ardrey Kell summed up the excitement of those early days: “I would love to be young one more time, just to get to play basketball.”

Winchester Avenue team, Monroe, N.C., 1920s. Courtesy of Rosa Rushing.

February 9: Iowa Style

Support for girls’ high school basketball reached a peak in Iowa. When the Iowa High School Athletic Association voted to eliminat the sport, a group of small town coaches rebelled, and formed the Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union. They created a state basketball tournament that became a beloved state institution, and girls’ basketball soared past boys’ in popularity.

“Take a tour through the country and you’ll find an old tire rim nailed to the side of a building. These are never rusty. They are kept polished by a constant rain of shots from an aspiring girl and one or two neighbor girls or boys.” – John Schoenfelder, Clutier High School coach, Clutier, Iowa

Ida Grove high school team, Ida Grove, Iowa. Reproduced, with permission, from the Collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Library.

February 10: Bennett College

In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of Black colleges sponsored competitive women’s basketball teams. The many social, political and economic challenges faced by Black communities meant that Black women were used to engaging in a broad range of activities. Neither administrators nor students saw contradictions between competitive sports and ladylike refinement.

“We were ladies,” explained Bennett player Ruth Glover. “We just played basketball like boys.”

Photo courtesy of the Heritage Hall Archives and Research Center, Bennett College.

February 11: Ora Washington and the Philadelphia Tribunes

A tennis and basketball phenomenon, Ora Washington became Black America’s first female athletic star in the 1920s and 1930s. She made her basketball reputation as the leader of the Philadelphia Tribunes, sponsored by Philadelphia’s Black newspaper.

As one admirer put it: “No one who ever saw her play could forget her, nor could anyone who met her.”

Images courtesy of the Philadelphia Tribune.

February 14: Margaret Sexton

From the 1920s into the 1960s, the winner of the Amateur Athletic Union national tournament was widely considered the best team in the nation, although such claims were limited by the lack of Black teams, which were rarely invited. Each spring, teams representing companies, business colleges, and a few four-year colleges competed fiercely for the title.

“It meant an awful lot to me,” explained 5-time AAU champion Margaret Sexton. We gave up meals—I mean you didn’t have time to eat. A lot of times after work you just ride the bus and go to practice or whatever and it was really wonderful.”

Photo courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

February 15: Hanes Hosiery

The Hanes Hosiery Girls, who worked and played for Hanes Hosiery in Winston Salem, N.C., won the AAU championship in 1951, 1952, and 1953.

Eckie Jordan (front), who stood 5’2″, was a mainstay of the team and was named AAU tournament MVP in 1951.  “Coach thought I was too short to play,” she noted, “but I proved him wrong.”

Photo courtesy of Eckie Jordan.

February 16: Beauty Queens

The AAU women’s basketball tournament, which crowned the nation’s top team, often featured a beauty contest. Jimmie Vaughn (in crown) added the title of queen to accomplishments that included All-American honors, a free throw championship, and multiple national titles. Cornelia Lineberry (in knee pads) was named queen in 1947.

Photos courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

February 17: Nera White

With an AAU career that lasted from the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Nera White was acknowledged as the best female player ever, named an All-American an unprecedented 15 times.

“They think some man came up with the first finger-roll layup. Not true. Nera White did that forever.” – Margie Hunt, Wayland Baptist player

Photo courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

February 18: Wayland Flying Queens

The Wayland Flying Queens from Wayland Baptist College dominated AAU play for most of the 1950s, winning six of eight titles between 1954 and 1961. They were named for their mode of transportation – local enthusiast Claude Hutcherson flew the Queens to games in his fleet of Beechcraft Bonanzas.

It was unusual for a college to sponsor a top-flight women’s team, and players leaped eagerly at the chance to go to college while playing the sport they loved.

Carla Lowry, who grew up in small-town Mississippi, would never forget the moment she picked up a copy of Parade magazine and saw the Queens on the cover. “It said that they had won their eighty-first game and their third national championship. I thought: ‘By God, I want to go play with those guys.’ So I hopped on a bus.”

Photo courtesy of Wayland Baptist University.

February 19: Highland High Ramlettes

In the spring of 1949, North Carolina’s Highland High Ramlettes traveled from Gastonia to Durham to play in the all-Black NCAC women’s basketball tournament. They took the crown.

The trip was almost as exciting as the victory. As tournament MVP Gladys Thompson (#36) pointed out:

“Girls didn’t get to go many places. I had a strict mom. She was strict. And to get to go to Durham, North Carolina. That was a long way for us. Girls now they have boyfriends that just drive. But see they didn’t have cars to take us places then. As a matter of fact, when I played basketball, I wasn’t courting. My mama didn’t allow me to court until I graduated from high school. She did not. You had a friend to take you to the prom, but that’s it.”

When Gladys Thompson was eventually allowed to court, she married classmate Ervin Worthy and had a son named James. Since Ervin Worthy never played the game, any talent NBA great James Worthy inherited came from his mother.

Photo courtesy of Highland High School Alumni Association.

February 20: Nashville Business College

In the 1960s, Nashville Business College became the most successful team in AAU history, winning 10 of the 12 championships held between 1958 and 1969. Coach John Head put together a stellar group of players that included superstar Nera White and future coaching great Sue Gunter.

Head’s approach was simple; the team ran two defenses, two offenses and two breaks. Players practiced them every day, and that was all they needed. As Gunter put it: “Everybody that we played knew exactly what we were going to do when we came into the gym. It wasn’t a matter of scouting us. But they couldn’t beat it, because of the execution.”

NBC championship team, 1960. John Head is at center, Sue Gunter just to the left and Nera White at far left. Photo courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

February 21: American Institute of Business

In honor of my arrival in Iowa, longtime hotbed of women’s basketball, here is the team from Des Moines’ American Institute of Business, one of many AAU teams sponsored by “business colleges” that primarily taught secretarial skills. AIB was runner-up in the 1943 AAU tournament, losing to another Iowa school, Davenport’s American Institute of Commerce.

Photo reproduced, with permission, from the Collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Library.

February 22: Iowa Women’s Archives

So wonderful to finally visit the Iowa Women’s Archives, where women’s history – including women’s basketball history – is preserved and protected. Its permanent endowment was financed by co-founder Louise Noun, who raised the funds by selling her Frida Kahlo painting, Self-Portrait with Loose Hair.

Strong-Minded Women Make History!

Photo reproduced, with permission, from the Collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Library.

February 23: Missouri Arledge Morris

In 1955, Missouri Arledge became female basketball’s first Black All-American. The Supreme Court had just issued its Brown decision, and institutions across the country felt pressured to desegregate. Arledge’s college team, Philander Smith, was invited to the AAU tournament. They reached the quarter finals, upsetting the number four seed along the way. Arledge’s play won her the All-American honor.

Arledge, who stood just over 5’10”, did not start to play until eighth grade, when Carl Easterling, the girls’ basketball coach at Hillside High in Durham, N.C., spotted her in gym class. At first she only went to practice because Easterling provided a personal escort. “He would come to my class, the last class of the day and wait outside the door, take me by my hand and walk me up to the gym,” she explained. “That’s the only way I would stay.” Finally, Easterling tired of the daily walk and tried a bribe. “If I did well, he would try to ensure that I got a scholarship to college.” Many black colleges still fielded women’s teams, and her talent earned her a dozen offers. She picked Philander Smith.

As happened so often with desegregation efforts, however, early progress quickly lagged. The next Black All-American, Sally Smith, would not be named until 1969.

Photo courtesy of the Morris family.

February 24: Work and play

Life on a company team was far from glamorous. At Hanes Hosiery, for example, players worked full-time jobs, and team responsibilities included taking care of their own uniforms.

Basketball skill did not necessarily transfer to factory work. While Eckie Jordan felt at home on the court, she was lost on the production line. “I started working in the seaming department but I didn’t stay on that seaming job any time,” she explained. “That’s when you still had seams, and I never did sew a straight one and so a year later I was in the office.”

Photos courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

From 1949 to 1965 a women’s basketball team traveled the Midwest and South, taking on men’s teams in town after town and usually beating them. Hazel Walker’s Arkansas Travelers was spearheaded by Hazel Walker, an Arkansas native who had been one of the AAU’s brightest stars before she decided to take the leap to the professional ranks.

The Travelers followed a grueling schedule. “We had a lot of doubleheaders,” Walker noted. “Sometimes we would play one game at seven and then drive forty miles and play again that same night. Then we had to get up and move the next day. We played eleven or twelve games a week sometimes.”

But for women who loved basketball, it was ideal. “Once you make up your mind, that is all there is to it,” Walker wrote Francies “Goose” Garroutte in a recruiting letter. “I guarantee you, you will be happy, satisfied, have the best time you ever had or will ever have, save money, and play all the basketball you want to.”

Photo courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

March 10: Fighting for Resources

Before Title IX, players and coaches lucky enough to have college teams had to scramble for resources. Kay Yow, Sue Gunter, Chris Weller and other early coaches fought constant battles over basics such as uniforms and locker room space.

When C. Vivian Stringer got her first coaching job at historically Black Cheyney State College, she spent her own money to recruit and drove her team to games in an old, highly unreliable prison bus. Intersections were a challenge, she recalled: “I’d slow down but not enough to stop because we weren’t sure we were going to start again, so my assistant would crane her neck out the window and yell, ‘Vivian, keep going, no one’s coming.’”

As longtime University of Texas coach Jody Conradt pointed out: “Back then, the only reason to be a female college athlete was that you loved it.”

Sue Gunter, left, courtesy of East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State University; C. Vivian Stringer, right, courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

March 11: Making Law Reality

In the early 1970s, the Stanford women’s basketball team was fed up with second-class treatment – no locker room, no official uniforms, a tiny gym with no room for spectators. With the determination inspired by the women’s liberation movement, they let athletic director Dick DiBiaso know.

“We just showed up without an appointment, sat in the lobby until he agreed to see us, then listed our complaints, demands and requests,” team member Mariah Burton Nelson (#12) explained. “We told him Title IX had passed and that it was his job to start implementing it. We were angry. We were persistent. We were, I’m sure, a pain in the neck.”

As elsewhere in American life, the passage of landmark federal legislation was only a beginning. It had to be enforced – often against significant opposition. Women who sought to turn Title IX into reality had to take matters into their own hands.

Stanford University basketball team, 1975. Courtesy of the Stanford University archives.

March 12: The First National College Championship

In its early years, women’s college basketball was run by the Association of Intercollegiate Athletes for Women (AIAW). Formed by physical educators, the organization played a major role in ensuring that Title IX was applied to sports.

AIAW members believed in women’s strength and independence. “These women were so strong,” recalled C. Vivian Stringer. “They had doctorate degrees and stood up for their rights. My role models were women for once in my life.”

Early leaders were leery of the academic and recruiting scandals that plagued the male athletic model. They banned athletic scholarships and limited recruiting. Still, they began to build frameworks for competition.

The first national college tournament was an invitational put together by coach Carol Eckman at West Chester State College, near Philadelphia. In 1969, the West Chester team, starring future coach Marian Washington, won the first title. Eckman would hold two more invitational championships before the AIAW organized its first national tournament in 1972.

West Chester championship team, 1968-69, with Carol Eckman (back row, center) and Marian Washington (back row, right). Courtesy of Special Collections, West Chester University.

March 18: The Mighty Macs’ Three-Peat

The Mighty Macs from Immaculata College won the first three national tournaments held by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), a woman-led association that oversaw women’s college sports from 1972 into the 1980s.

Women’s basketball thrived in Philadelphia, with the Catholic church an especially prominent supporter. Young woman competed avidly in the city’s many pickup games, and in Catholic Youth Organization Leagues.

In 1972, on the strength of local players that included Marianne Crawford, Theresa Shank and Rene Muth, Immaculata defeated West Chester State, 52-48, to take the first AIAW title. They capped off an unbeaten season by winning the 1973 title, and completed their three-peat in 1974.

Crawford, Shank and Muth would all go on to become distinguished college coaches – Crawford’s Old Dominion teams won national championships in 1979, 1980 and 1985, and Shank led Rutgers to the AIAW title in 1982.

Immaculata team, 1972, including Theresa Shank (left) and coach Cathy Rush (center, blonde). Courtesy of Immaculata University.

March 20: Chris Weller and the Early Years of Title IX

As we sit at the Charlotte airport, heading to our signing in DC, we’re reminded of the pioneering work done by Hall of Fame coach Chris Weller at nearby Maryland.

Growing up in the 1960s, Weller was frustrated by the lack of athletic opportunities in her community. “They had nothing for girls sportswise,” she explained in an interview. “There were basically three career choices for women – secretary, teacher or nurse.”

As a student at the University, Weller helped to start a club basketball team, and as she played and organized team events, “I felt like I grew and found myself.” She became an outspoken advocate of opportunities for women.

When she became the women’s basketball coach in 1975, she worked to expand her team’s resources, and to convert the men’s coach, the legendary Lefty Driesell, to the cause, with some success.

“Finally, he understood I was just as passionate about my team as he was about his,” she said. “At press conferences where he went first, he would end by introducing me and saying, ‘Now those girls are serious.’ I cringed every time he would say ‘girls,’ but he’d come a long way.”

One day, Weller’s team was stood up by a group of male players they were supposed to scrimmage in preparation for a big game against Old Dominion. Driesell stepped in, dragging his team managers with him. “‘I’ll do what you need,’” she recalled him saying. “I told him I needed a tall player on the low block,” she continued, “and he said, ‘I can do that.’ To this day I regret not having a tape of Lefty running up and down the court with his managers playing us.”

Chris Weller, University of Maryland, 1978. Courtesy of Chris Weller.

March 22: Delta State Dominates

From 1975 to 1977, Delta State University, located in the small town of Cleveland, Mississippi, dominated the women’s college game. The Lady Statesmen upset three-time champion Immaculata in the 1975 championship, 90-81. They then took the next two titles.

The team had a deep history. Coach Margaret Wade (below, center) had been a member of the Delta State varsity back in 1933, the year that school administrators decided basketball was “too strenuous for young ladies” and abolished the team. “We cried and burned our uniforms,” Wade said, “but there was nothing else we could do.” Wade made a career as a high school coach. When the Delta State team re-formed in the wake of Title IX, she became its coach.

The Lady Statesmen also embodied the sport’s future. In 1974, Mississippi’s top high school player in the state was Lusia Harris (below, second from right) in nearby Greenwood. Although Delta State was a historically white school, and Harris was Black, recruiter Melvin Hemphill drove over to Greenwood to talk to her.

Harris had planned to attend historically Black Alcorn State, but that school had no women’s basketball team. She agreed to take the leap. Brushing off racist comments from opposing teams’ fans, she played a key role in the team’s successes. She then became a central player in the first U.S. Olympic team, which won the silver medal in the 1976 Olympics. In 2022, just before she passed away, the New York Times produced an Oscar-winning short documentary on her life.

Delta State team including coach Margaret Wade (center) and Lusia Harris (second from right). Courtesy of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

March 26: The Women of Troy

As we and so many others wish Juju Watkins a smooth recovery from her ACL tear, we thought we’d spotlight USC’s first championship era, when the Women of Troy won back-to-back titles in 1983 and 1984.

Cynthia Cooper, Pam McGee (below, left), twin Paula McGee (below, center), and especially the charismatic, extraordinarily talented Cheryl Miller (below, right) represented a new trend in the women’s college game – an influx of skilled Black players from urban areas.

The Women of Troy played a fast, exciting brand of basketball. “We just ran,” recalled Paula McGee. “We were open court, and you had big players that could get down the floor. So we would play defense, rebound and run. We beat people because we ran the whole floor.”

USC was also the first championship team from a major media market. The work of USC’s well-heeled publicity department helped elevate the players from basketball stars to media personalities – female counterparts to the “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers. The attention brought welcome new publicity to the women’s game.

In just two years, Juju Watkins has more than upheld that tradition with her dynamic performance and the attention she has brought to present-day women’s play. We send our best wishes to her and her team in this tough time.

Pam McGee (left), Paula McGee (center) and Cheryl Miller (right). Courtesy of USC Sports Information.

April 4: Tara VanDerveer

We’ve arrived in Tampa and are waiting for the Final Four to start. It seems a great time to revisit the career of coaching great Tara VanDerveer.

VanDerveer grew up in upstate New York, and pursued basketball with passion from an early age. When local boys left her out of playground pickup games, she saved up her allowance and bought the best basketball she could find. “If the boys wanted to use the ball, they had to take me with it,” she later wrote.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, opportunities did not come easy. Her junior high school had no team, and her high school team “played all of four games but held no practices.” When she enrolled at the University of Indiana, which had one of the strongest women’s programs in the country, her team’s second-class status was palpable: “Basically, it was steak for the men, hot dogs for the women.”

Still, she persevered. In 38 years coaching at Stanford, she nurtured generations of young women, took her teams to three national championships, and retired with the most lifetime wins in college basketball history. She coached the high-profile 1996 Olympic team to a 60-0 record and the gold medal.

Along the way she became a tireless advocate for the sport, doing everything she could to demonstrate the heights of skill, teamwork and just plain excellence women could reach. “I’m always telling my Stanford players to put out their best effort every single game because somewhere out there someone is watching women’s basketball for the first time,” she wrote in an account of the Olympic year. “We want to give them a reason to tune in again.”

Tara VanDerveer with Stanford player Jennifer Azzi. Photo by Rod Searcy, courtesy of Stanford University.

When we were writing Shattering the Glass, we didn’t imagine we’d be asked to make a presentation at Christian Dior. But basketball and fashion have plenty of connections.

These days, such links show clearly in the wide variety of imaginative “fits” that have become a standard part of the WNBA’s pregame tunnel walks, as well as the fashion industry’s growing interest in female athletes.

But dress and appearance have always been key themes in American women’s history. Women have historically been expected to signal their adherence to prevailing ideas of womanhood through what they wear and how they move. Departure from these standards can be revolutionary.

Basketball players have had a fraught relationship with such expectations. Women engaged in what has historically been seen as a “masculine” endeavor have often been regarded with suspicion – a hazard that uniforms have frequently been designed to counteract. Some players have used conventional dress to blunt the impact of vigorous play.  Others have found ways to step beyond existing norms.

Our Dior presentation, part of which can be viewed here, started with the long skirts and bloomers of the late nineteenth century. We then moved to the often-controversial shorts of the 1920s and 30s, to the satin, curlers and lipstick of the 1940s and 50s, and eventually to the present day, when female players are finally able to express themselves in more diverse ways.

The event came about through cyber-driven serendipity. Olivia Nielson, an avid basketball player and Dior mentee has been working with a group of other mentees to shape a Dior and UNESCO-sponsored project, DAMECORE IMPACT, that focuses on increasing young women’s access to basketball and the strength and confidence it builds.

She had used the original edition of Shattering in her graduate school thesis. One day in January, as she was browsing through Amazon, our new edition (with its striking new cover) showed up as a recommendation. She was delighted to learn we’d done an update and found us on LinkedIn.

We created an event that gathered some of the young players Olivia was mentoring, along with a few others. Participants met at the Dior offices in New York; we Zoomed in. They asked great questions, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks again to Olivia, DAMECORE and Dior for making it possible.

Photos: Hazel Walker and her Arkansas Travelers (Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame); Alyssa Thomas, Dewana Bonner, Arike Ogunbuwale, (Connecticut Sun and Dallas Wings, published by Harpers’ Bazaar in May 2024); Bennett College (Greensboro Historical Museum); DAMECORE gathering (Meagan Leverone).

The week after Christmas, from 1949 to 1960, thousands of North Carolinians converged on Raleigh to watch some of the best men’s college basketball in the country.

The occasion: the Dixie Classic, the brainchild of N.C. State coach Everett Case, which pitted the men of North Carolina’s “Big Four” teams – N.C. State, UNC, Duke and Wake Forest – against the best competition available.

Men’s college basketball has become such a North Carolina institution that enthusiasm for the sport seems almost natural, prompting speculations on the quality of the state’s water or on the color of the sky, which so suspiciously resembles Carolina Blue. But it was in fact the result of inspired, systematic promotion by Case and other coaches.

During the Dixie Classic’s run, spectators crammed North Carolina State’s palatial R.J. Reynolds Coliseum to cheer on their favorite teams. The Classic quickly established itself as one of the best tournaments around, attracting the nation’s top teams and players. It pitted North Carolina against the world, and fans reveled in every victory.

A similar effort could boost the women’s game. This past November, for example, more than 15,000 fans made the trek to Charlotte for the Ally Tipoff, filling the Spectrum Center with color and partisan energy.

The top-flight experience provided by Ally Financial and the Charlotte Sports Foundation has made the Ally Tipoff an attractive invitation. With a few tweaks, the contest could become the women’s basketball version of the Dixie Classic, an annual event that pits the top Carolina teams – South Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and UNC – against the best in the country.

Such a high-profile event would attract more of the corporate sponsorship and television coverage essential to present-day sporting success. It would also help weave women’s basketball more tightly into Carolina sporting culture.

Men’s basketball in North Carolina grew from a cultural moment. Not only was college basketball on the rise, Tar Heel leaders were seeking to establish their state as an modern, energetic player in an increasingly prosperous nation. The young men who played the rapid, complex game with skill, poise and teamwork became a compelling model for individual identity and state pride.

Women’s basketball is having such a moment now, with new attention to the game and growing respect for its skilled, confident players, who embody a wide range of women’s capabilities. The dramatic successes of coaches such as South Carolina’s Dawn Staley have shown that passionate fan devotion can be sparked and nurtured.

But the sport’s history makes clear that women’s basketball support has been marked by repeated ups and downs. More work will be required to make the present-day energy last.

Photos: Everett Case and N.C. State team (Bernie Batchelor Studio, Inc.); Dixie Classic Crowd; Oscar Robertson at Dixie Classic; South Carolina and N.C. State at Ally Tipoff (Tracy Glantz, The State); Ally Tipoff banner (Charlotte Sports Foundation) South Carolina star A’ja Wilson with teammate Tiffany Mitchell and Vanderbilt’s Rebekah Dahlman (Richard Shiro, AP Photos).

A more comprehensive version of this modest proposal appeared in multiple papers in North and South Carolina on February 13 & 14, 2025, including the Charlotte Observer. 

We’ve got a great schedule of appearances and events coming up. Join us if you can!

February 15: All Good Books, Columbia, S.C., 3-5 p.m.

February 17: Charlotte Talks radio show, WFAE, 90.7FM, 9 a.m. and on website

February 17: Virtual Talk, Damecore Impact, Christian Dior Couture, New York, N.Y., 1 p.m.

February 19: Park Road Books, Charlotte, N.C., 7 p.m.

February 22: Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City, Iowa, 4 p.m.

It’s always great to be invited to the UNC women’s basketball alumni game. There’s nothing like chatting with players whose experience stretches across the six decades since Title IX – and even with a few who played prior to the landmark law.

The state of North Carolina has an especially deep tradition of women’s basketball success – one that started long before the Tar Heel women captured their 1994 national title.

In the mid-1930s, the teams from Greensboro’s Bennett College regularly beat all comers among the nation’s HBCU teams. They were widely acclaimed as the best Black college team in the country.

At the time, leaders at most predominantly white colleges saw competitive sports as unladylike. Black college leaders had far broader visions about women’s capabilities, and about the qualities they would need to develop to effectively serve their communities. Women’s basketball thrived.

Women’s industrial basketball also flourished. Companies that depended on female workers often sponsored women’s teams, to advertise their products and bolster employee morale. Southern textile mills, which had always employed women, developed a particularly strong basketball culture.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Winston Salem’s Hanes Hosiery hired noted men’s coach Virgil Yow to build up its women’s team. Scouring the South for top recruits, Yow created a powerhouse squad. Hanes captured the Amateur Athletic Union title, considered the women’s national championship, in 1951, 1952 and 1953.

The daughter of one of Virgil Yow’s cousins, Kay Yow, would make her own history as a pioneering coach at Elon College and N.C State.At Elon, she was the most successful women’s coach in the state when Title IX emerged. N.C. State Athletic Director Everett Case hired Yow to build a fledgling Wolfpack team into a national contender, and she did. She also coached the 1988 U.S. Olympic team to the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics.

The cheering crowd that filled Carmichael Arena at this year’s alumni game testified to the game’s enduring roots and its promising future (although the team lost a heartbreaking contest to Florida State and its dazzling star T’Naya Latson on a buzzer-beating basket).

We can’t wait to see what history gets made next.

Susan graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 1976. A journalism major, she was the Daily Tar Heel’s first female sports editor. Pamela earned her Ph.D. from the UNC history department in 1997.

Images: Susan with Sylvia Crawley (right) and Charlotte Smith at the 2024 alumni game; Bennett College team, 1935; Hanes Hoisery team, 1953; Kay Yow at Elon College, 1960s; Alumni game, 2025; Pam and Susan, 2025.

Some of our favorite parts of Shattering the Glass involve the remarkable history of Iowa women’s basketball. It’s an inspiring story, with developments that include support for a pathbreaking girls’ high school tournament, the incisive advocacy of University of Iowa athletic director Christine Grant, the successes of coaches such as C. Vivian Stringer and Lisa Bluder, and the record-breaking accomplishments of Caitlin Clark.

At the Ally Tip-off earlier this month, coaches and players from all the participating teams called their game’s present-day successes a “historic moment.” We were able to ask Hawkeye coach Jan Jensen about the ways she and her colleagues make sure that current players know where they fit in their sport’s long history. She gave a great answer.

The expanded edition of Shattering the Glass is almost here!

The first edition, published by the New Press in 2005, was the most comprehensive account of American women’s basketball ever written. It became an integral part of sports history classes across the country. Readers raved.

Bust Magazine termed it “an indispensable resource.” Renowned sportswriter Robert Lipsyte described it as a “nonstop romp through hoops history” that offered “not only lively storytelling but a fascinating window on race, gender, and class on and off the court.” Historian Jacquelyn Hall called it a “sweeping, century-long story that places women’s sports at the heart of the fight for women’s rights.”

Twenty years later, the sport we’ve always loved has taken on new significance. Throughout its history, basketball has made it possible for players and coaches to challenge the limitations imposed on women by American culture and society. Our new chapters explore the factors that have contributed to the game’s recent growth, and the ways that players have used their new visibility to engage issues that include race, sexuality and opportunity. It’s such an important story.

As the sport has changed, so have we. We were so young back then!

We still live across the street from each other in Charlotte, North Carolina. We’ve pursued plenty of projects in the past 20 years, including a history of women’s basketball at Army West Point, a book about using sports to teach U.S. history and an account of segregation, desegregation and resegregation at historically Black West Charlotte High School.

As our new picture shows (see top), we’ve taken on more color, along with a few more wrinkles and a pound or two.

We’ve been so excited to watch the profile of women’s sports rise. It’s been a privilege to be able to update our manuscript, to explore the ways the history we’ve chronicled relates to an ever-changing present.

The great thing about doing history is that it never gets old. The stories we tell – of Senda Berenson and Ora Washington, of Hazel Walker and C. Vivian Stringer, of Cheryl Miller and Pat Summitt, of Dawn Staley and Caitlin Clark – not only shed light on present-day events, they will prove illuminating far into the future.

We haven’t blogged in almost a year. It’s been a challenging time – in basketball, in the world, in our lives. We’ve had to focus particular attention on our families – Susan’s father passed away in June; Pam’s mother in July.

But we’ve been lucky to be able to work with a great team. Thanks to the staff at UNC Press, our editor and chief cheerleader Mark Simpson-Vos, and to the many coaches, players, fans, archivists and sports information officers who took the time to help us tell this new story.

We can’t wait to get it out into the world.

CHARLOTTE, NC

The inaugural Ally Tipoff has reached its final minute and the crowd of 15,000 has risen to its feet. The third-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes, captained by the incandescent Caitlin Clark, have been trading three-pointers with the eighth-ranked Virginia Tech Hokies. The lead has changed hands 11 times throughout the game. With 31 seconds left and the Hawkeyes leading 76-71, the teams break for a timeout.

There hasn’t been a scene like this in Charlotte since 1996, when the city hosted the Women’s Final Four. That year, the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, featuring freshman standout Chamique Holdsclaw and Charlotte native Tiffani Johnson, claimed the national title with an overtime win over the defending champion UConn Huskies in the semis, and then with a dominating victory over the Georgia Lady Bulldogs, 86-65.

Back in 1996, fans of women’s basketball evisioned a grand future. That year, a star-studded Olympic team dazzled crowds at exhibition games throughout the country, then took the gold medal in Atlanta. Not one but two professional leagues emerged from the excitement: the independent American Basketball League and the NBA-sponsored Women’s National Basketball Association. (Charlotte got one of the original WNBA teams, the Charlotte Sting, paced by University of Virginia phenom Dawn Staley).

A fierce rivalry between Tennessee, coached by Pat Summitt, and the University of Connecticut, coached by Geno Auriemma, energized the college game. Play constantly improved, driven by stars like UConn’s Diana Taurasi, LSU’s Seimone Augustus, and Tennessee’s Candace Parker. We completed the first edition of Shattering the Glass amid that optimism, hoping the sport would continue to expand.

But then momentum slowed. The ABL had lasted only two years. While the NBA’s deep pockets kept the WNBA afloat, many teams struggled. The league averaged nearly 11,000 spectators per game in 1998, but only 8,500 in 2004. The Cleveland Rockers folded in 2003, the Charlotte Sting in 2007 and the Houston Comets, which had won the first four WNBA championships, in 2008.

The mismatch between improving play and stagnant audiences made it clear that the main challenges lay beyond the game itself. In 2008 the Seattle Storm was purchased by Force 10 Hoops LLC, a group of Seattle women led by Dawn Trudeau and including Lisa Brummel, Ginny Gilder and Anne Levinson. Gilder started attending league meetings, where then-NBA-commissioner David Stern focused on ticket sales. “At that point, he would just rail on everybody,” she explained in a recent interview. “‘You’ve got to sell, you’ve got to sell, you’ve got to sell.’ “I don’t think he ever really understood how much bias there was against women.”

Those biases ran deep. Men’s sports drew on many lines of support, including media exposure and corporate sponsorship. These key arenas were largely run by men, and each presented its own challenges.

Although Seattle was considered a progressive city, it was tough to build corporate support for a women’s team – even a high-performing squad such as the Storm, which had won the WNBA championship in 2004 and would win again in 2010. When Force 10 Hoops bought the team, longtime fan Peggy Haslach, whose financial firm often worked with NCAA teams, approached Gilder about taking on the Storm’s financial planning. Gilder made it clear that the Storm would give priority to firms that were willing to become team sponsors.

“I came back and I went to my boss and I said, ‘The Storm is willing to work with us, but here’s the deal, it’s pay to play,'” Haslach recently recalled. “‘So you have to sponsor the team.’ And he looked at me and he goes, ‘You know, Peggy, I have to do this only for those sports that I feel the whole firm can get into.'”

“And the thing was, the games were accessible,” Haslach noted. “They were inexpensive. And not only that, women were much better behaved on the basketball court than the guys. It was a family situation. So I learned quickly that they really didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

But now, 15 years later, circumstances seem more promising. For one, women have more corporate decision-making power. Many of today’s female executives played sports in high school and college, and some have reached the point where they can direct company resources towards the games that meant so much to them.

Ally Financial, the main sponsor of the Tipoff game, has become one of the leaders of this effort. Andrea Brimmer, a standout soccer player who became a top-performing advertising executive, put together a team of “badass” women that included former Yale basketball player Stephanie Marciano (seen with us below), former Michigan State softballer Bridget Sponsky and former UNC Chapel Hill track athlete Jackie Hartzell, who attended Hopewell High right here in Mecklenburg County. In 2022, the 50^th anniversary of Title IX, Ally pledged to start splitting the company’s sports promotion dollars 50-50 between men’s and women’s sports.

The bank also put its clout to use in broadcast negotiations.

Ally became a top sponsor of the National Women’s Soccer League in 2021 and a year later drove the effort to move the league’s championship game into a primetime TV spot, putting up extra money to make it happen. In 2023, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman negotiated a rights deal for an impressive $240 million and was resolute in what the rights required.  “Jessica, in the NWSL broadcast negotiations was, ‘It’s got to be a game of the week,” Brimmer explained. “’It’s got to be prime time. We’ve got to have a prime time championship. It’s requisite as part of the deal.’”

The Tipoff was dreamed up by Charlotte Sports Foundation executive director Danny Morrison, who was dazzled by Caitlin Clark’s performance at the 2023 Final Four and wanted her to play in Charlotte. Ally, which had a major presence in the banking-focused city, was an obvious partner. Morrison asked, and got a yes almost immediately.

The Tipoff’s promotion team resolved to shine the brightest possible spotlight on the game. Morrison, whose career included a stint as president of the Carolina Panthers, knew what it would mean to orchestrate a top-level event – one as far removed as possible from the sad situation at the 2021 NCAA tournament, which exposed the glaring inequities between men and women’s college ball.

The players were treated with style, from the state-of-the-art court to the top-quality locker rooms to the banners that greeted them as they headed to the court. Off-court attention was so enthusiastic that Clark reportedly had to hide beneath a hoodie when she ventured out onto the Charlotte streets.

The teams responded with a terrific game. They showed some early-season rust – neither team shot well in the first half. But as the halftime buzzer sounded, Virginia Tech’s Georgia Amoore hit a swisher from half court to pull the Hokies within one point – 33-32. After a slow shooting start, Clark drove repeatedly to the basket, drew 16 fouls and ended with 44 points to Amoore’s 31. The final score was Iowa 80, Virginia Tech 76.

At the postgame press conference, coaches and players raved about their experience. We asked Clark how she saw this moment in women’s sports history, and her response took social media by storm, as well as being featured prominently in the national press.

“Crowds like this should become normal for women’s basketball,” she said. “Iowa has a great history in Title IX, and making it important. I grew up a fan of women’s basketball, and I’ve always understood there’s really great players in this game who are really fun to watch. At the same time, they’re some of my biggest role models, and to see myself on this stage now, it’s very hard to wrap my hands around the environments we get to play in.”

It was a joy to experience such a standout event.

Our work on Shattering has taught us not to take such moments for granted. American women’s sports has a history of ups and downs. At the end of the 19^th century, student excitement over intercollegiate competition was diverted into intramurals and physical education. The vibrant competition that took shape in high schools during the 1930s and 1940s was largely squelched in the conservative Cold War era. Then came the post-1996 stagnation.

But at the moment, from where we sit, things look pretty good.

Note: The photo of the 1996 Olympic team is courtesy of USA Basketball and the photo of the Ally banner is courtesy of the Charlotte Sports Foundation. We took all the others.