Around this same period, my parents’ verbal sparring escalated, and while I couldn’t have realized it, apparently my five younger siblings had ring-side seats. Their relationship had been strained for some time. And whether it was my father’s annoyance at David’s decision that set him off, or something else, he wasn’t treating my mother kindly.
Anything he would do to upset her, upset me because she had always been so good to all of us. She used to stay up until midnight, sometimes lugging huge baskets of laundry downstairs, which was no small feat in a family as large as ours. I can’t remember not hearing the washing machine or the dryer run. And when she wasn’t folding, she was standing over the ironing board. Yet when friends wanted to come over to swim, she never said no, even though it meant more towels to clean. The Meyers’s house was open to everyone, and she treated the neighborhood like family.
I thought about how my father told David he never wanted to speak to him or see him again if he couldn’t get his way. It reminded me of how complicated our relationship with our father had been. As kids, we used sports to win his attention when he was home, though I’m sure we didn’t know that’s what we were doing at the time. He enjoyed athletics, we enjoyed athletics, and the moments we spent together usually revolved around some sporting event. Mom was amazing, but she was always there for us. Dad was the big fish, and athletic achievement was what lured him. Now David had the ultimate bait, but he was long past fishing for our father’s attention.
It tore me up inside, yet as bad as I felt, I couldn’t allow what was happening back home to derail my college career. There were too many classes and tests I had to make up after having been on the road with the team—along with other sports to pursue. I tried comforting myself knowing that Mom was tough. She’d survive. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. Fixing their marriage wasn’t my job. My job was clinching a championship for Coach Kenny and somehow making it to the Olympics as a high jumper. And UCLA had the most famous track coach to have ever lived.
Ducky Drake had coached both Rafer Johnson and CK Yang at UCLA and at the ’60 Olympic decathlon in Rome, where Rafer won the gold. Now Duckie was the trainer for Coach Wooden’s men’s team.
He and I had a special relationship. I could open up to Duckie. He never brought up the Olympics in Rome when we talked, even though everybody knew about it. It was just in the air, part of the fabric of UCLA sports. But for me, the story of Rafer and CK under Duckie’s coaching was uniquely inspirational.
Both men had grown up on opposite sides of the world to become good friends and teammates under Duckie at UCLA. But when both then made it to the 1960 Olympics in Rome—Rafer representing the U.S. and CK representing Taiwan—athletes the world over held their breath. The two men were virtually neck and neck throughout, with Rafer ahead in one event and Yang the next. Each went into the final event thinking he would win the decathlon until they both discovered that they were paired in the same heat. Yang had always beaten Rafer in the 1,500 meters, but now he would have to beat him by ten seconds to win.
Each approached Duckie separately. Duckie told Rafer, “You have to stay with him no matter what. You can’t let him get away.” To CK Yang, he whispered, “He has never beaten you before. He cannot stay with you.”
Yang crossed the tape in 4:48.5 with Johnson just behind him at 4:49.7. Ultimately, the score was Rafer - 8,392, Yang - 8,334. Rafer won the decathlon by 58 points to take the gold, but he would always say it was basically a tie. The two men remained great friends until Yang’s death in 2007.
“Annie, you’d be a strong quarter miler,” Duckie told me one day. “You should think about doing the pentathlon.”
Duckie knew I held hopes to compete in the Olympics in track and field. He knew the high jump was my specialty, but my technique was more of the “Eastern Roll,” where your body went over horizontal with the bar. I learned how to do the Fosbury Flop my freshman year at UCLA and kept my sights set on the Olympics with the most famous track coach encouraging me.
I took Duckie’s advice and also competed in the Pentathlon at UCLA. Like Coach Kenny, Duckie was a great mentor. But then I had a lot of mentors during my years at UCLA.
And too many coaches.
During my sophomore year, UCLA women’s basketball changed. I was upset to see Coach Kenny let go. In his place, they brought in Ellen Mosher. I had known Ellen Mosher since our days playing AAU ball. Ellen had been a shooter from Iowa where she played girls’ six on six and AAU basketball for the Raytown Piperettes before she moved to California. Though she was good, my opinion was that she wasn’t good enough to coach me. I’m not sure whether I struggled with authority or had a tough time with all the changes in my life, but I put up the same wall as I’d done when jumping from school to school when I was younger. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t happy about switching to a different style of play. The result was that I was being extremely hard on her, which probably hurt the team’s chemistry. All I knew was that I wanted to win a championship for UCLA, and I didn’t see how that was possible playing musical coaches.
During my sophomore year, we were expected to win our conference. During UCLA’s 90-48 victory over USC at Pauley Pavilion, I had nine steals that night (out of 82 for the year). Two nights later, we overpowered Fresno State, 96-47. In that game, I had fifteen assists bringing that stat up to 128 for the year. But the game at Cal Poly Pomona was a different story. We played against a team coached by Darlene May, and they had a game plan. I was still working on my emotions, and Darlene used that to her advantage by having her team get me in foul trouble. Meanwhile, Ellen Mosher was still walking on eggshells around me. She knew she needed to earn my respect, for my own good and that of the team. She put me on the bench in the first ten minutes of that game, and we saw our lead crumble, ultimately losing to Cal Poly by 28 points.
“So, did you guys beat them?” someone asked when we got back to campus.
I flinched my jaw. “It was a nearly 30-point loss.”
“They lost by 30?”
“No,” I said, a combination of anger and embarrassment streaking through my voice, “we did.”
Nobody could believe it. The season continued with the Bruin Women 19-4 overall. In the end I was named All-American for a second time, however it was little consolation. Just as the previous year, we advanced only to the AIAW West Region in San Jose where we were again eliminated by Billie Moore’s CSUF Titans. Then at the NWIT championship game, we once again lost to Wayland Baptist 90-77. This time, I attributed it to Mosher’s coaching.
Looking back, I’m sure I was the worst kind of thorn in Coach Mosher’s side. I could be stubborn beyond all rationale. I was born stubborn. As a kid, I could sit at the dinner table for three or four hours rather than eat my dinner if it was something I didn’t like, like meatloaf.
“You’ll finish that, Annie,” my dad would say, frustrated that one of his children was every bit as defiant as he was.
No I won’t. Instead, I’d look up at the framed Vince Lombardi quote that hung on the wall. “Winning Isn’t Everything; It’s The Only Thing.” I’d fall asleep with my head on the kitchen table rather than give in.
Here again, what some might call a failing, others might call a strength. I’ll bet Coach Mosher had her own choice words for it.
What I didn’t realize then was the importance of one’s attitude, especially in the face of adversity. When would I realize that I couldn’t keep blaming others?
Don’t Whine, Don’t Complain, Don’t Make Excuses. I needed to remember Papa’s words now. “In order to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower,” was another Woodenism, and I suppose it was true, regardless who you were following. But while my attitude may have stunk, my game did not. I was playing well and making a name for myself personally. The one hole in my heart was for our team to win one for the school.
Eventually I would help lead the Bruin women to their first and only AIAW Championship, however, it would seem like a long time coming
. And it would be under a different coach, a woman who, like me, was rapidly becoming well-known in the world of women’s basketball. But first, there would be a stopover for both of us in Montreal.
8
The Olympics - A Dream Comes True
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
In the summer of 1976, the stars aligned. The dream I’d had for so long was finally about to come true, just not the way I’d planned it. Woman’s basketball had never been an Olympic sport before, but our neighbors to the north were hosting what would become a historic first. There was only one problem. We took the Gold in the Pan American Games in Mexico, but we finished a disappointing eighth at the 1975 FIBA1 World Championships in Columbia, and therefore didn’t earn a berth to the 1976 Olympic Games.
As the host country, Canada was guaranteed a berth, as were the Soviet Union, Japan, and Czechoslovakia, the World Championship gold, silver, and bronze medal winners. There were only two more slots open, and I was determined that Team USA would nab one of them. Not only was I certain that we’d earn a berth, I was determined to help ensure we brought home a medal for our country, making us a part of history. But I never kidded myself that it was going to be easy.
The tryouts for the first-ever U.S. Women’s Basketball Team to compete in the Olympics were held in four different regions of the country, and everyone and their mothers were invited. It was an open try-out, in keeping with the backbone of our national ethos in the year leading up to the United States Bicentennial.
In truth, the selection of players had largely been pre-ordained. It would be the same women who’d been the USA National Team star players at the World Cup, the Jones Cup, and the Pan Am Games. But the general public didn’t realize that. Women from around the country hoped to make the team. They came from every social and economic class, and comprised nearly every ethnicity. Even those who knew they didn’t stand a chance came. They wanted to be able to boast one day to their children and grandchildren that they had tried out for the 1976 Olympics.
The road to the Olympic tryouts for the western region was a long one. Nine hours to be exact. My oldest sister, Patty, drove me and Monica Havelka, an AAU teammate and competitor from Long Beach State, up the back route 395 through Lake Tahoe, where tall pines bordered a winding road that wrapped around a huge, crystal-blue natural lake. We stopped several times to settle our stomachs and then fill them. From there, we headed on the I-80 to a gym in Sacramento. It was the summer of 1975 and nearly hot enough to fry an egg on the asphalt. When the car conked out on us, we thought it had overheated. Come to find out, we’d simply run out of gas, thus solidifying the notion that if men refused to ask for directions, women (at least young women) refused to look at gauges.
It was late in the afternoon by the time we got the car filled up and over to the gym. There were nearly 1,000 players trying out across the country, and a quarter of them were here at the regional trials in Sacramento. I signed up, got my number, and rested.
On the second day I found myself playing on the courts with a mixture of women whose athletic abilities ranged from good to don’t quit your day job. I was driving in for a lay-up when someone’s foot came in underneath me. I went down, twisting my ankle. After bandaging it, I was still unable to play for the rest of the tryouts. The fact that I ended up making the cut anyway angered a lot of women who thought it was unfair that I should be chosen when I didn’t complete the tryouts.
“Annie Meyers could beat any one of you hopping around on one foot,” Juliene Simpson told a couple of women who complained to the officials.
By now, Juliene had competed with me in nine international competitions over the last three years, and who knows how many times we’d competed with or against each other in the AAU. She had taken me under her wing from the moment we’d met at the tryouts for the USA team up in Albuquerque, and we’d been roommates at every international event since. Whenever we had a scuffle on the court, we’d always leave it there. Juliene was a great friend, and now—like always—she was sticking up for me when the cat had my tongue.
“Of course Ann is going on to the master trials,” Billie Moore told the Olympic Committee Members. “If I haven’t seen enough by now, then we’re doing something wrong.”
Like Juliene, Billie knew my game inside and out, coaching against me both at the college and international level. Billie arrived at Cal State Fullerton from Kansas about six years earlier while Patty was in her senior year, and it took Billie no time to bring their women’s team to a national championship. Both Patty and Billie had the same no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners style. I was glad that the ABAUSA2 had picked her as coach of the first-ever Olympic US Women’s Basketball Team, along with Sue Gunter as her assistant. We felt good about our leadership.
Twenty-four players emerged from the four regional trials to meet up in Warrensburg, Missouri for the final pre-Olympic tryout. If it had been hot in Sacramento, Warrensburg was a sauna straight from the underworld…hot and humid. Worse, there was no air-conditioning in the gym, so we’d arrive at the gym drenched from just walking from the dorms. And we’d stay that way. But we didn’t mind. We were two dozen women literally dripping with hope. The Olympic Committee chose the twelve Olympic contenders—the athletes they thought could play well together and get the job done.
Most of us expected the Olympic team would consist of the same players who’d made up the Pan Am team in ’75. After all, the world of basketball was no different than any other. At a certain level, it became an exclusive group who knew each other, their strengths, their weaknesses, where they ranked, and whether or not they had what it took to deliver. The Susan Boyles of the world, those phenoms who burst onto the scene from out of nowhere, were very rare. But we were all surprised when three of the Pan Am team players didn’t make the cut. Overjoyed as I was for myself, I felt terrible for the ones who hadn’t made it.
Today, not only is it no secret that the Olympic rosters are filled long before the tryouts, but there are no tryouts. You go by invitation, and, of course, your professional status no longer renders you ineligible. In 1976 there were no professional female basketball players, and we were the best of the nation’s college and amateur players.
Billie made it clear at the outset that we would have to learn to become chameleons. We may have all been superstars at our schools, but now we would be asked to play interchangeable roles for the good of the team. There would be no star point guard or center, only a well-greased unit with transposable parts, and that unit would have little time to practice functioning as a whole.
The twelve spots went to Juliene Simpson, Pat Head (Summit), Lusia Harris, Nancy Dunkle, Charlotte Lewis, Patricia Roberts, Sue Rojcewicz, Mary Anne O’Connor, Cindy Brogdon, Nancy Lieberman, and Gail Marquis. I was the starting 2 guard. We were women from every part of the country (although Dunkle and I were both from La Habra, which was extremely unusual). Even though women’s basketball was still in its infancy, most of us were the emerging stars that world class women’s basketball had come to know. Nine of us had played on the ’75 Pan Am Team. At twenty-three, Pat Head and Juliene Simpson were the veterans of the team, and our co-captains.
I had played with or against most of these women and knew we had a strong group. Nancy Dunkle, who had been playing for Billie Moore’s CSUF Titans, was now 6’2”, and her skyhook was just as pretty as ever. Juliene was still the impenetrable tank as our starting point guard, and Lusia Harris, our starting center, who went on to win three national championships for Delta State, was our anchor.
Also starting was Pat Head. Pat had grown up on a farm in Tennessee, so what might have seemed like hard work to anyone else, was just part of daily chores to her. There’s no doubt she was tough. She had hurt her knee when she was on the ’75 Pan Am team, but that didn’t stop her from playing any more than when she’d broken her jaw playing against the Russians on the ’74 National team. There was a grit an
d determination in Pat that I related to and admired. Whatever challenge Pat was ever going to be faced with in life, she’d meet it head on. There was no losing with her, not to anything. I felt like she, Juliene, and I were cut from the same cloth.
As for my role on the team, Billie let me know that she expected me to lead through my actions on the court and my intensity. She knew I was quiet off the courts, but she’d watched me play long enough to know that I always gave it my all. She also knew she could count on me to do whatever it took to take home a medal, short of armed robbery. But first, we had to earn a berth.
Together with our coach, assistant coach, manager, and athletic trainer, we trained three times a day, seven days a week in Warrensburg, Missouri before heading to Hamilton, Ontario, where we would vie with nine other nations in the qualifiers.
Billie and assistant coach, Sue Gunter from Stephen F. Austin, worked us hard. We would have to do a three-man weave lay-up starting at eight and go down to two without missing under a certain time. There were twelve players, so we had four groups of three. If one group missed a lay-up anywhere in their sets, or it took them too long to finish, every group would have to start all over until we all had completed the drill. Talk about team bonding. We cheered for each other because none of us wanted to have to run again! But with three practices a day, run we did.
The morning and evening sessions ended with a half-hour of what I called Blood and Guts, which were interval sprints from the baseline to the midcourt line, back to the baseline, then to the opposite baseline, and back again. Some call them suicides or lines. Once, a player collapsed head first onto the court, sobbing, and was told to get up, raise her arms above her head, and walk around. The worst thing you could do was not move your body afterward. Blood and Guts didn’t just increase physical stamina, it proved you could get beyond the pain. You had to get beyond the pain.
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