How it came to be that women's basketball is the talk of the town

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Half a century ago, no one paid attention when my friends and I played basketball. We were kicked off the court, but shoved back in the game, clearing the lane for Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and other contemporary stars.

Over the decades, women's opportunities grew thousandfold with media exposure. Today girls never question their right to play ball.

Born at the turn of the 21st century, Caitlin Clark grew up with female sports role models. As early as second grade, she wrote her goal — play in the WNBA. At Iowa, she helped pack arenas. America watched, mesmerized.

In the 1960s, in my own second-grade story, I wrote that the lockers played ball against the wastebaskets during recess. Inanimate objects in school had a greater chance of competing than girls. We shot hoops anyway for the love of the game.

My junior year, we were allowed to compete in three basketball games a year. My senior season, we won a conference title and played 14 games, which was more than most schools where girls' sports remained nonexistent. No one kept records. Still, my little sister and the next generation wanted to play basketball like me. In 1977, their Sterling High School team won Illinois' first IHSA Basketball State Championship.

Back in my day, without specialists, and pre-/post-season programs, we had to be our own trainers, dietitians, strength coaches and shot doctors. My dad, coach Jim McKinzie, gave me a head start by perfecting my jump shot. Coach Phil Smith helped me reach the pro level.

In 1978, I received Illinois State's first athletic scholarship. Right place. Right time. Right people. My coach, Jill Hutchison, and ISU fought for Title IX mandating equal opportunity for women in college athletics. Her graduate research proved women's hearts wouldn't explode playing full court. In 1970, the girls' 3-on-3 half-court game gave way to the five-a-side full-court play. In 1972, Hutchison and ISU's women's intercollegiate athletics director created the first women's national basketball championship.

In 2024, Clark broke the all-time NCAA scoring record and acknowledged Lynette Woodard's scoring record during the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) era.

"By 1981 the AIAW staged 41 championships in 19 sports," columnist Sally Jenkins wrote in the Washington Post in February. "Which is exactly when the NCAA swooped in with a hostile takeover, pressuring universities into abandoning the AIAW, to absorb what the women had built."

In the infancy of Title IX, I played in the AIAW era. We pushed hard, pulled all-nighters and still made it to class. Driving ourselves cross-country in campus station wagons, we competed against Michigan, Indiana, Ohio State and today's Big Ten schools.

Marketing? Corporate America never promoted brands with no-names like us. Name-image-likeness (NIL) did not exist. Social media, zilch. Media exposure, nada.

Today thousands watch women's basketball obliterating records of attendance and viewership.

In the late '70s WBL (precursor to the WNBA) players' paychecks bounced months before the league declared bankruptcy. No one wanted to watch a bunch of "amazon women" play men's favorite game. Decades later, I cried when I saw my first WNBA game during the Minnesota Lynx dynasty.

We sacrificed all for a dream so far-fetched and ahead of its time that we were ridiculed. Scars of scorn remain etched in our souls. Without Lusia Harris, Lynette Woodard, Nancy Lieberman and the superstars of the AIAW and WBL era, there would be no Bueckers, Clark or Reese. Women's sports, if considered at all, were an afterthought. Thanks to media exposure and exciting play, fans now argue over officiating, players talk trash and the women's game is the talk of the town.

Gender disparity still exists in colleges, corporations and societies, but the icons of the Caitlin Clark era have demonstrated women's sport will grow if given a chance.

"Build it and they will come," said Hutchison, ISU's legendary basketball coach and Women's Basketball Hall of Fame recipient in 2009.

From AIAW to Title XI to NCAA Final Four to WNBA, the ghosts of the game are hooting and hollering and dancing in the rafters. Forget bracket standings. Ignore NCAA results. Celebrate the final score. Women win!

Pat McKinzie Lechault is a former professional player, international coach and teacher living in Minnetonka and Switzerland. She is the author of the book "Home Sweet Hardwood: A Title IX Trailblazer Breaks Barriers Through Basketball."