A turning point came during the fifth Pan American Games in Mexico City, when the US had no women’s basketball team despite having 16 talented female athletes present
By Cliff Crase
The women in the United States have played an integral part in the success our country has earned in wheelchair sports on the national and international scene. You can name any event from track and field to swimming and archery and females have excelled, and on many occasions surpassed, the feats of their male counterparts in the grueling challenges of being in the upper echelons of wheelchair sports. The girls have collected an enormous quantity of gold medals for the USA. The Yankee women have never taken a back seat to any competitor in individual competition. However, the distaffers have been riding the back seat as far as basketball is concerned.
Off and on, during many international meets, we’ve witnessed other countries floor a women’s basketball team and the U.S. would hastily slap a number on the back of a handful of women U.S. Team members, flip them a jersey, toss’em the ball, and say “shoot.” The ragtag approach was hilarious to the point of being absurd. The instantly produced basketball belles were no match for the well- coached and trained contingents from Israel, Argentina, Jamaica and Canada to just name a few. Murmurs of complaint were whimsically heard from the frustrated felines. No concentrated effort was ever made to assure a good international women’s basketball team.
Well, hang on to your shifty sneakers ’cause it appears that over the horizon there are a few changes in store for the basketballettes. There never was any doubt that the USA has the talent.
Couple that with desire, and just add a bit of organizing and voila! A great move is in full swing to assemble a team for competition in 1976 at the Olympiad in Toronto. Making a team to compete internationally is a thrill, but learning to play and participate on teams throughout the country is just as important and thrilling as going international.
The competitors always did want to participate in the game of roundball, but probably the one most motivating reason for seriously launching an all-out campaign to encourage more Yankee ladies to learn the dribbl’n, shooting, passing techniques and to sport a U.S. women’s basketball team for international competition was spawned in Mexico City during the fifth Pan American Games. Argentina had a super team, Jamaica looked real fine, and Canada had a good group of cagers who played their hearts out while the women on the U.S. team could only spectate. With 16 good female athletes to choose from, the Yanks had a bundle of talent assembled, but not as a team.
FOUL you say? You betcha!! The absence of a U.S. women’s team at the fifth Pan American Games was THE cataclysmic moment that got the ball dribbling for the Yankee gals to ensure a place in the seeding bracket of the women’s division of wheelchair basketball in Toronto at the 1976 Olympiad. Will their diligent struggle become a reality? Jimmy the Greek and I think it will, 10-to-1.
This year marks SPORTS ’N SPOKES’ 50th anniversary, and as part of the yearlong celebration of this major milestone, this special department is dedicated to some of the best columns from late founder Cliff Crase. This month’s Classic Cliff is from the November 1975 issue of SPORTS ’N SPOKES.