Another View
First of two parts
The 1981-82 Cheyney State women’s basketball team competed in the first-ever NCAA women’s national title game, losing to Louisiana Tech. It was an all-Black team coached by an all-Black female staff at an HBCU located near Philadelphia.
The first and still only Black school to play for a national Division I title, Cheyney State’s achievement is a historical fact that for too long has been overlooked and underreported. But this Saturday, April 27 in Knoxville, Tenn., that will be finally corrected.
The Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (WBHOF) Class of 2024 includes four players (three of them former Minnesota Lynx stars), two coaches, and one contributor, a “stellar group” its press release claims. And it includes the 1981-82 Cheyney Lady Wolves, who are going in the Hall as “Trailblazer of the Game.”
Long overdue, say the Black players.
Ann Strong, 6-1 freshman, Toledo, Ohio: “Being recognized 40-plus years later is a wonderful feeling. Although this should have been a part of history that should not have been pushed to the sidelines.”
Shay Taylor, 6-4 soph, Jersey City, NJ: “It feels like the veil has been lifted and the recognition is now being applied.”
Yolanda Laney, 5-10 soph, Philadelphia: “I would like for current and future generations to know that Cheyney State’s rightful place in women’s college basketball history cannot be erased.”
Cheyney featured eight high school All-Americans and C. Vivian Stringer, originally hired as a professor but who later volunteered to coach both volleyball and women’s hoops. She eventually would make the Hall of Fame and retire with over 1,000 victories.
Besides Strong, Taylor and Laney, the other Lady Wolves players were frosh Paulette Bigelow; sophs Sandra Giddings, Karen Draughn and Rosetta Gulliford; juniors Lena Dabney and Debra Walker; and seniors Faith Wilds and Valerie Walker, the team’s co-captains. The small Black school took on bigger schools, reached No. 2 nationally, and finished 28-3. Its third defeat of the season came against No.1 Louisiana Tech, snapping a 23-game winning streak.
Stringer went on to lead two other schools, Iowa and Rutgers, to the Women’s Final Four, the only coach to take three different schools to the final quartet.
I knew about Cheyney. I met Deb Walker and two of her teammates here in town for the 2022 Final Four. They told me the whole story about the Cheyney all-sistah squad.
Strong: “Our team was the pioneers for the first NCAA tournament and the first and only HBCU team to compete in the tournament. We fought all kinds of obstacles.”
Laney: “It was no accident that Cheyney State College made it to the NCAA’s inaugural Women’s Basketball game. It was by design and destiny. It will forever be written in the history of sports that a team with high school All-Americans chose to attend a small HBCU 25 miles outside of Philadelphia. The Cheyney State women’s basketball team should have been inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame years ago.”
Seimone Augustus, Maya Moore and Taj McWilliams-Franklin all played together in Minnesota and won WNBA championships. Violet Palmer was the first NBA Black female official and worked five NCAA Final Fours during her more than two decades of officiating. All four Black women are part of the seven-member 25th anniversary WBHOF class.
As are the Cheyney Lady Wolves.
As soon as the WBHOF announcement came out last November, Deb Walker made me promise that I would make this Saturday’s induction ceremony.
Next week: Our promise is fulfilled.
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