“There will be a lot of other women’s Olympic basketball teams,” Billie Moore told us that day. “But there will never be another first. You will always be the first.” That did it. Everybody toughened up. The second game, we had an easy gain over Bulgaria 95 -79, with Dunkle scoring seventeen points, Trish Roberts scoring sixteen, and I scored fifteen. We’d refocused after the loss to Japan. Best of all, we now had Sue back, which helped Billie.
Two days later we played the host country, Canada, and won 89-75. Many years later, when asked about these Olympics, and me in particular, Billie would say I had the ability to dictate the course of a game all by myself. There was no doubt I wanted to win so badly that I could taste it, but basketball is a team sport. No one person can dictate the course of a game. Billie had put together a winning team and she knew that, more than anything else, I simply wanted to be part of a winning team.
We knew our next game would prove our most daunting. The Russians stood tall when they saw us coming. We were their rivals in all things, so we always commanded their attention. But the U.S. would never come as close to beating the Russians as we did in that game at Felt Forum in 1974. Since then, that three-point loss had been squared, and even cubed, by them. And Semjonova always made sure we felt the full force of her girth and height.
Juliene was one of our strongest defenders, but she’d injured her ankle in the first half.
“Are we ever going to score?” Billie asked Sue when the Russians were up 15-0. By the end of the first quarter, Semjonova had already connected on fifteen straight lay-ups without her size-18-foot ever leaving the ground.
I wondered the same thing. I had a pretty good jump shot, and I was able to get pretty far off the ground. In fact, Dr. Gideon Ariel, director of biomechanics and computer sciences for the US Olympic Committee, would conduct a computer analysis using electrodes—very high tech at the time—and reported in the medical journal that my leaping ability was equivalent to the 1977 world high jump record. Problem was, Semjonova didn’t need to jump.
Even though the odds appeared to be against us, I never let myself think for a moment that we might lose. I knew it would be a tough battle, but I never allowed myself to envision any outcome but one: winning. If I was stubborn about most things, I was dead-stubborn about that. The worst thing that can befall athletes is letting their thoughts defeat them, so I stationed a guard-dog inside my head, ready to attack negativity. I played every minute as though it were a one-point game. When we ended up losing to the Russians 112-77 points, I was just as devastated as when we had lost to the Japanese in the first game. The mood was somber at the apartment that night. Losing hurts. Losing to your biggest rival by thirty-five points hurts worse. Semjonova ended up with thirty-two points and nineteen rebounds. We were 2-2, now playing for the Silver.
A photo of me trying to hold Semjonova off after she’d been passed the ball appeared in the papers the next day. “Maybe Ann Meyers (6) should have used an ax…” the caption read. I crumpled it up and threw it away. There was still the Silver. It wasn’t over until the fat lady sang.
After the Russians, our last game was against Czechoslovakia. We had to win that game. The score was tied at half time 37-37. We went into the second half playing pressure defense, and ultimately beat the Czechs 83-67 to take the Silver Medal.
U.S. beat Bulgaria, Canada, and Czechoslovakia.
Bulgaria beat Japan, Canada, and Czechoslovakia
Russia beat everybody.
Of course, they weren’t called Russia back then, they were the Soviet Union, and by the end of the Olympic Games, they’d totaled up 125 medals, 49 of which were Gold, including the Gold for Women’s Basketball. The United States ranked second in total medals (94) and third in Gold Medals (34), after East Germany, which garnered 40 Gold Medals, for a grand total of 90 Medals.
There’s nothing quite like that sense of patriotism you get from hearing your national anthem play as the Gold Medal is placed over your head, as I had at the Pan American Games and other competitions. But this was the Olympics, and I was happy to have done as well as we had.
The third place team went up and received the Bronze, and now it was our turn. Once we each had our Silver Medal, we all raised them toward our two coaches, Billie and Sue, as a sign of our respect and love, and then bowed. My heart swelled with pride as our flag was raised. For now, Silver was very sweet.
The U.S. Women’s Basketball team would eventually take Olympic Gold, but that would be in large part because the longstanding rivalry between the Soviet Union and the USA would not play out again in this most esteemed international platform for many years to come.
When the Olympics ended, I flew back home with Mom. When the flight attendants announced my name as an Olympian, the whole plane cheered. As usual, I was both proud and embarrassed to be singled out. There were so many small gestures of acknowledgment that followed the Olympics, and each was moving. But when all of the U.S. Olympians were invited to the White House to meet President Ford (introduction compliments of none other than famed Olympian, Jesse Owens), I was overwhelmed. I had no idea it would be the first of four such visits with four different presidents, or that years later when Donnie and I were married and living in the desert, President Ford would come over to play golf at Morningside and invite me to play nine holes with him.
It was still July when I got back to California, and with all the notoriety from the Olympics, I was invited to compete in the annual Dewer’s Sports Celebrity Tennis Tournament in Las Vegas with players from the NBA and the NFL. There were a handful of women invited: skier Suzy Chaffee, Diana Nyad, swimmer Donna De Varona, and Wilma Rudolph. I had long admired Wilma for what she had to overcome to be a top athlete. As a young girl, Wilma had polio. She was put in leg braces and told she’d never walk. Wilma not only proved them wrong, but she became an Olympic Gold Medal sprinter. I had always been inspired by her story of courage as a young girl myself, and I was glad now for the chance to become friends.
I also became good friends with some of the guys, such as Joe Washington, Walter Payton, Calvin Murphy, John Havlicek, Franco Harris, Rick Barry, Paul Westphal, John Naber, Julius Erving, and Hank “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg. Hank was in his late sixties while the rest of us were in our twenties. In comparison, he seemed ancient at the time. But older or not, he was one terrific tennis player. His placement was superb, and he could return anything you shot over the net. We played hard, but there were some nice benefits. After the tennis, we’d lay out by the pool with the families and take in dinner and a show, while others would gamble.
Since I was still just a kid in college, I’d suck in my breath watching some of these guys throw away a fair amount of money in those casinos. Then again, as older, more established athletes who were men, they were also earning a whole lot more money than I was, so it was a matter of perspective, I guess.
“Here’s a fifty, see if you can parlay it into a grand,” Hank said to me more than once. I’d take the $50, then promptly lose it at the roulette table. But each time he gave me the money, he always made it clear that if I did win, I was to keep it. Hank was wonderful to me.
However, it was during the afternoons that I had the most fun. Following the tennis exhibitions, before the casinos and shows, a bunch of us would high-tail it to the local gym to play basketball. The football players stormed the hard court no differently than they did the football field, so you had to get out of their way on a drive or you could easily end up a mangled human doormat. But even if you couldn’t stop Franco Harris, you could block his shots. I remember 5’9” Calvin blocking one of Harris’s shot off the backboard. There must have been four feet between his soles and the ground, he got so high.
Julius Erving brought his family, and we all hit it off. It’s funny, we can never know who we’ll click with in life, but Julius and his wife, Turquoise, became like a brother and sister to me from the very start. Later, if I happened to be back East, sometimes I would stay at Turq and Julius’s home in
Philadelphia when Julius was playing for the 76’ers. I always missed family when I was on the road, but not when I was with Turq and Julius. They were family.
A couple of afternoons, Turq and Franco’s wife, Dana, took me through the Las Vegas boutiques to try on clothes and pick out purses, which has its own irony since I seldom used a purse, and rarely do today. But they were great, and I loved them for that.
“Annie, I bet this lipstick would look great on you,” or “You’d look so good in that dress, Annie.”
They were very sweet. They loved to shop, and they wanted me to enjoy it, too. And I did enjoy it, but only because it was time spent with them. As for pastimes, I’d much have preferred being on the court competing. That’s where my pulse quickened. I wasn’t used to Saks. I was more of a Sears girl.
As wonderful as Turq and Dana were, I was afraid to say anything about where I’d rather be. It brought back too many memories of elementary school and being told that I wasn’t behaving “lady-like.” When I finally explained that as much as I enjoyed their company, shopping really wasn’t my thing, they were terrific.
Nonetheless, I would be invited to several more Dewer’s events in Vegas, and each time I’d end up bringing home another purse.
10
The Championship, At Last
“Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.”
~ Amelia Earhart
When the tennis tournament in Las Vegas ended, I returned to California and continued to play USA basketball (taking Silver at the World University Games after racking up Gold at the Jones Cup) through the rest of the summer until school started back up. As a junior at UCLA, I was now competing on the women’s volleyball team (which would make it to the Final Four), as well as our basketball team where Mosher was still coaching.
As before, we were expected to win, probably more so now that I’d come off the Olympic team. In a 98-45 win at San Diego State, I had one of three triple-doubles in Bruin women’s basketball history, with fourteen points, ten rebounds, and twelve steals (No. 2 in single-game history). Overall, we were 20-3 and West Coast Athletic conference champions. However, we again lost to Coach Moore’s Fullerton Titans 91-87. At the end of the season, I had led the team in scoring (18.3) and rebounding (7.3), and for the third consecutive year, I earned All-Tournament honors and was again named Kodak All American. Ironically enough, the first-ever three-time All American basketball player had been John Wooden. I couldn’t ask to be in better company, but it still wasn’t enough.
As honored as I was to receive the prestigious awards for a third year in a row, we still hadn’t taken the championship. Instead we were relegated to runner-up for a third time by losing to that other monkey on our back, Wayland Baptist, at the NWIT. The personal accolades felt like consolation prizes. What I needed was for the Bruin women’s team to win a national title. Under Coach Wooden, my brother had won two for the men’s team—one his sophomore season and one his senior year. I wanted to be part of a championship team. Now, going into my senior year, I knew this would be our last chance. The thought of falling short was unacceptable, and I remained concerned as to whether we could do it under Coach Mosher. Apparently, the UCLA athletic department had the same concerns, and I started my senior season with my third coach. It would be the same woman who’d helped Team USA medal in Montreal.
With Billie Moore at the helm, I had no doubt we could win the AIAW National Championship for UCLA—just as she and my sister Patty had done for Cal State Fullerton in 1970. Billie would later say she liked coaching me a lot more than she liked coaching against me.
Our starting lineup for the ’77-’78 season consisted of 6’1” freshman, Denise Curry (who went on to be a three-time All American and win Gold at the ’84 Olympic games), 6’1” senior center Heidi Nestor, 5’6” sophomore guard, Dianne Frierson, and a 5’8” junior named Anita Ortega, who we nicknamed ‘Juice’ because she had as many moves as O.J. Simpson. She would both go on to play in the WBL with the San Francisco Pioneers and eventually become a police sergeant and the first Afro-Puerto Rican female to supervise an Area command after being assigned to the police station of L.A.’s crime-ridden Hollenbeck precinct in 2009.
Denise Corlett and Beth Moore were the sixth and seventh players on the team. Denise became a three-time champ at UCLA in volleyball, basketball, and badminton (beating me by a championship). Beth was a smart player and good friend, and our resident cheerleader before each game. “Annie will have your backs. Annie won’t let the team lose.”
What she failed to mention was that I wouldn’t be diplomatic about it. “Come on! What were you thinking? Son of a biscuit-eater, get your head in the game!” were my standard lines. When I’d get all Mr. Hyde on my teammates on the courts, they’d scratch their heads, confused. “Was that Annie?”
That I was quiet and demure off the courts and loud and aggressive on them was nothing new. I’d always been that way. “An animal on the courts, and a perfect lady off,” is how Coach Kenny described me. I wish I could say it was something deliberate, but I had as much control over it as Dr. Jekyll had over his transformation once he’d swallowed the potion. Once I hit the hardwood, some sort of chemical response in me kicked into high gear and I became another person.
My split-personality reputation had travelled throughout the national collegiate women’s basketball circuit, but up until my senior season, our UCLA Women’s team hadn’t been further than San Louis Obispo. And we travelled by van because, back then, most colleges didn’t have the money to travel out of state like they do today. (Thank you Title IX.)
Now, in my senior year, we were flying back to New York to play in a tournament at Madison Square Garden, which brought back memories of that first game against the Russians back in ’74. Our first opponent was the defending three-time AIAW Champs, Delta State, who had just graduated Lucia Harris, their Player of the Year. We lost in the first game to Delta State, but beat Rutgers (who had lost to Carol ‘Blaze’ Blazejowski’s Montclair State) in the consolation game.
From there, we flew to College Park, MD to play ahead of the men’s game. There was a great rivalry between UCLA and Maryland men when my brother played. Now there were at least 14,000 people in the stands at Cole Field House, and we lost in front of every single one of them (88-92). Then we went to Greensboro to play North Carolina State, where David’s team had lost in ’74, so it was another great rivalry, and again we lost. So now we had lost three of our last five games, were 6-3 overall, and I was beside myself. Are we not going to make it again!?
After that game, I got in the locker-room shower and cried for a good fifteen minutes as the hot water rushed over me. I’m not sure whether I felt sorry for myself, the team, or the school, and what looked to be a repetition of the previous three strikes, but when I got dressed, Billie told me she wanted to talk back at the hotel.
We sat in the lobby after everyone had gone up to their rooms. “This team needs you, so you have to be a leader. You can’t quit because they count on you. This means you have to pull yourself together and refocus.”
She was right, but I didn’t want to hear it. Billie wouldn’t let up, though, because she knew how upset I could get, and she was concerned that my energy could spread throughout our team like a contagion. It could be deadly or euphoric, depending on how I felt, and Billie wasn’t afraid to do whatever it took to snap me out of it. Even when she got mad at me, I may have pouted inside, but I still was able to play at the higher, more controlled level she was looking for. She knew when to praise me, and when to be hard on me.
After her talk, I felt a sense of urgency, and I did everything I could to convey that same sense of urgency to my teammates. Had any psych majors played on our team, I’m sure they would have tossed me on a couch and declared that my need to go all the way was some holdover from a childhood competition with David. And I’d have said, “Fine. Call it whatever you want. Just get out there and play
to win.”
I wasn’t into psychobabble. I wasn’t into the why’s of anything. All I cared about were the how’s. The paralysis of analysis wasn’t for me. I was all about action. And I consider praying to be active.
In our next game against Long Beach State, I was in the zone, posting up, driving, getting all my free-throws, making my shots from outside, and all my teammates got me the ball. I scored a career-high thirty-nine points, tying my brother, David’s, career high. I also had eleven rebounds, four assists, and six steals. The final score was Bruins: 107; Long Beach State: 94. Next came a 99-72 win over Cal Poly Pomona at Pauley Pavilion, where I scored thirty points. In a game against Stephen F. Austin’s team, which was coached by Sue Gunter at Pauley, I remember being sick going into the game. I’d had chills and thought I might throw up, but my focus didn’t waiver. I recorded the only quadruple-double in UCLA basketball history—twenty points, fourteen rebounds, ten assists, and ten steals. A season that started out so dismally was suddenly shaping up. And we wouldn’t lose another game going into the regionals.
The first Regional game up in Palo Alto was critical. It was against Long Beach State, again. It was a close game that went back and forth. With seconds left, Beach up by two, Anita Ortega came in with the play of the game, stealing the ball to tie it up in regulation. Long Beach had a chance to win it at the buzzer, but missed a twelve foot baseline jumper. We scored five points in overtime to beat them by one point. Now we only had to beat Las Vegas to make the Final Four. We ended up beating them by 100-88, reaching 100 points for a thirteenth time that season.
At last we’d made it to the Promised Land: The Final Four to be played at Pauley Pavillion.
In the semi-final against Montclair State, we were going up against Carol Blazejowski, the nation’s leading scorer, who was averaging over thirty-three points a game. We knew we couldn’t stop her, but we would do our level best to contain her. Nobody else on her team scored in double digits, and we had the home court advantage. Still, we were lucky to hold Blaze to forty points, beating them 85-77. The L.A. Times described most of the action as “Meyers against Blazejowski.” All I could think when I saw the article was, Thank God the Bruins won.
You Let Some Girl Beat You? Page 10
