When Iowa’s Caitlin Clark broke Kelsey Plum’s NCAA women’s points record, she was inaccurately named the highest scoring player in the history of women’s collegiate basketball. But another player, Kansas legend Lynette Woodard, had actually scored more points in her career as part of the pre-NCAA Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Clark eventually broke Woodard’s record as well, but the confusion about Clark’s place in the history books shows that today’s players, fans, and commentators have much to learn from the hidden early history of women’s collegiate basketball. Professor Diane Williams of McDaniel College joins Edge of Sports to discuss this little-known early chapter of the sport.
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:
(singing)
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to Edge of Sports, the TV show only on The Real News Network. Right now in our Ask a Sports Scholar segment, we are talking to Professor Diane Williams from McDaniel College about Caitlin Clark and the incredible hidden history of women’s hoops. And yes, we do have her in studio. Let’s talk to the professor now.
Professor Williams, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Diane Williams:
Thank you for having me.
Dave Zirin:
Well, there’s so much I want to speak with you about, but first and foremost, let’s have Caitlin Clark be the starting point, the biggest attraction I think generationally in NCAA sports. Just some thoughts on who Caitlin Clark is and what she means to the game of hoops.
Diane Williams:
Well, I think… So I’ve been a fan of the Iowa women’s team since I was a grad student there. I got to know a little bit about the coaching staff, been watching those teams for the last 10 plus years, and Caitlin Clark is an individual who is incredible, obviously ridiculously talented. I’m thrilled she went to Iowa. She was an Iowa kid, and she really is an interesting figure in that she’s really taking seriously the idea of being a role model and the idea of being a star I think in an interesting way. She’s balancing those pretty well, and thinking about both her own success, her team’s success, and the broader picture of women’s basketball, of women’s sports, and of just celebrating the potential that is there. And she’s showing us some of that potential in her play and in the way she’s navigating all the different pressures and excitement of this moment.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. I think she’s really interesting too. I’ve felt like there’ve been times where the media has tried to play her against other players, particularly Angel Reese, Kelsey Plum, who we’re going to talk about a little bit more, and she doesn’t take that bait. I feel like she’s really sort of mature and intentional about being a white superstar, and that’s certainly unique for somebody that age.
Diane Williams:
It’s also such a reminder to me of all those top players on those teams have played together. They know each other. They go way back. And I think sometimes that’s one of those things that when media wants to jump in and divide, we forget that there’s relationships already existing there. And depending on how the players want to relate to each other, Caitlin Clark seems to be dedicated to the kind of lifting up and supporting across the board, and let’s go, let’s all get better together. I mean, and relishing the competitiveness and the like, she’ll trash talk. She’s dedicated to her team. She’s going to defend what she thinks is right, and she always has, and she wants everybody else to too. Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Now, when she hit that 30-footer to set the NCAA women’s scoring record, breaking Kelsey Plum’s mark, the announcers were really big on saying that Caitlin Clark has now scored the most points in college women’s history. Now, that’s not quite correct, is it?
Diane Williams:
No, it is not. So before the NCAA offered women’s intercollegiate sport, period, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics, the AIAW, they had, for 10 years, been hosting women’s intercollegiate sport. It was led by women. The entire athletic governance organization was founded by women who were physical educators, and who were really dedicated to creating a different kind of sport culture and one that was for women, and it was educationally rooted. The organization was focused on student athletes’ rights, their well-being, sport being a part of their educational experience, something that the NCAA sort of has a different take on, a little bit more of a commercial view on that side. And so the scoring record, actually, Kelsey Plum’s record was from the NCAA years, which started in ’82, but there’s 10 years of history before that that there was another important record that Caitlin Clark broke a few games later.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, speak about that. Who was the AIAW all-time scoring leader?
Diane Williams:
Yeah, so there’s two. So the big college scoring leader was Lynette Woodard from Kansas, and she set that record right at the end of the AIAW’s time, even leading intercollegiate athletics for women. And actually, if you watched the game when Clark broke that record, Lynette Woodard was there. She was at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City. They interviewed her before the game. They gave her a standing ovation, and both her and Clark have talked about the significance of both of them being there, and the idea that partly Woodard said, Clark is helping to bring attention to this history that has been really ignored, some would argue buried, that there’s so many women in intercollegiate basketball we don’t even know about. We don’t know their stories, we don’t know their glories, and yet, this history is just, it was 10 years before the NCAA offered sport, and it was big.
Dave Zirin:
So you used the word buried. Why do you think this history is so buried? Because that certainly speaks to an intentionality to use that word again about the AIAW, and honestly, I love sports history. Without your work, I never would’ve known about the AIAW. Why is this history obscured?
Diane Williams:
Well so I don’t know if I can necessarily say why, I don’t know the intentions, but I can tell you a little bit of the story. When the AIAW started, the NCAA didn’t have interest in facilitating women’s sports. And the folks, the women who went on to lead the organization said that, “Great, we’re going to go do it ourselves then.” And they created a nationwide governing organization that was, at its peak, it was 970 plus members, colleges and universities across the country hosting 19 different sports, which is more than the NCAA has ever offered for women or men in three different divisions. So in 10 years, they grew from nothing to huge, and were really proving that there was, I mean, a lot of appetite for women’s intercollegiate athletics, which was feeding down to high school and youth. There was this whole revolution happening, and they were leading it.
When Title IX was finally… So Title IX was passed in ’72. It took a number of years for it to be interpreted, and it wasn’t intended to be applied to sports. It was an educationally focused bill about academic programs, funding. But immediately, particularly on the women’s side, they realized, “Oh, this could help us get some money, and we sorely need money. We have the resources.” Were laughably small for what they were trying to build. And so during the ’70s, Title IX is being interpreted. The Congress is figuring out how do we even apply this to sport? What does it look like to have gender equity in sport? Sports are really different than who gets led into a dentist program or dental training program.
So ultimately, in ’79 some standards come out of how we’re going to actually account for gender equity in sport. They’re both clear and kind of convoluted in different ways, but it became clear that it was actually going to be enforced. Well, that was the idea. And really, I think the NCAA got nervous that while the NCAA as a governing organization and the AIAW, they weren’t subject to Title IX, but all of their member institutions were. And so if they were not in line with the law, it could be a problem. And so the NCAA had been sort of working with the AIAW a little bit on parallel tracks in the early part of the ’70s. They had verged away from that by the later part of the ’70s. And by the time that this all happened, not only was the NCAA and men’s sport organizing against Title IX being applied to athletics, against football being included, they were trying to get it exempted.
There’s all kinds of things happening, but the NCAA was working actively against Title IX, including athletics, but it decided to switch course and start offering women’s championships without discussion with the AIAW, without even recognition that there was already a massive infrastructure in place that was hosting women’s championships. And the AIAW… There was some movements to try and work together. Maybe we can come and find the best of both worlds, a highly competitive, financially sustainable model pulling from the NCAA side, but that valued the student athlete experience more, and the wellbeing of the student athletes. That quickly got dismissed by the NCAA, and instead, they chose to offer competing championships the same weekends as the AIAW championships. In some cases, they financially incentivize schools to join their championships. They had the money and resources to say, “We can pay for your travel, pay for your food, pay for your lodging if you come to our championships.”
The AIAW was just starting to generate some cash, just had some media contracts, couldn’t compete. And within a year, the AIAW had ended, had ceased operations. And so the NCAA won in some ways, and there was a pretty big loss of an emphasis on student wellbeing for women’s sport and women having women role models in leadership positions in sport, period.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Ruthless by the NCAA. Talk about intentionality.
Diane Williams:
Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Before we stay on that, the time in which the AIAW came to be feels very much in the middle of the women’s liberation movement. Were there direct connections between the broader struggle and the emergence of this organization?
Diane Williams:
So ideologically, yes, in that it was a movement to bring women into spaces that they had been told they weren’t allowed to be in, and in a very public way. The organization itself was trying to navigate bringing together women who wanted to expand women’s sport opportunities across the country from different geographic regions, different political persuasions. Some of those women would’ve been all for identifying as feminists, and plenty of them would’ve been absolutely not. Not to mention if they did, they could get fired if they were rocking the boat too much. They were all sort of navigating these expectations while trying to push forward something that was actually pretty radical, bringing women’s sport into the mainstream in this way.
And so there was a lot of negotiating happening, which I think is often the case. Behind the scenes a little bit more, the AIAW was working with some of the education and legal organizations in DC, and they were hooked in. They had convinced them that women’s sport was actually a really important part of this whole conversation around women’s liberation in society. And then the Women’s Sport Foundation started around this time. And so there’s a lot of connecting happening, often a little bit more behind the scenes from the AIAW, what they were putting out front, but the connections were happening, and it was helping when they needed to lobby Congress say that they could call in some of those networks to talk about the importance of women’s sport and young girls in sport as a part of educational equity, as a part of women having a more viable and a more vibrant role in society.
Dave Zirin:
So what at long last do you think is the legacy…
Diane Williams:
Oh, so many.
Dave Zirin:
… of this organization. What is their living legacy today?
Diane Williams:
I see… As you and I’ve talked about, I see some of their legacy in the movements around student athletes being active, demanding better conditions that they’re playing in, in just speaking up, in realizing that they should have a say in the organization that is leading intercollegiate athletics, and that is something that is so different than the NCAA’s norm. Some of the shifts that have happened in the interest of student athlete rights has really been a part… Often, there’s connection to people who are involved with AIAW, actually both in the leadership of the NCAA or schools. If they stuck it out, they often were there making change, people like Dr. Christine Grant and Charlotte West and plenty of others. And so I mean, I really see the positive legacy is… And this is kind of cool, because student athletes don’t necessarily know that they’re actually a part of a legacy of speaking up.
Dave Zirin:
I was thinking about Dartmouth forming the men’s team, forming the union, and about how, even if it’s not conscious, there is a thread that exists because of what you said, of demanding a voice and demanding some sense of ownership and autonomy over your life as a college athlete.
Diane Williams:
Yeah. One of the former presidents of the AIAW that I interviewed, Peg Burke at the University of Iowa, said, well, paraphrasing, she told me, “When the college athletes are 18, they’re legally adults. They should have a say in what’s happening out there in sports, out there in their sport experience.” And so that the union move is so exciting. And I’d like to imagine that a governing organization would consider how the student athletes are experiencing what they’re experiencing on teams and in the championship structure and in the schedules and all these things. And yet, the NCAA has proven that they don’t care. They haven’t. There hasn’t been nearly enough attention paid to that, and meaningful engagement of student athlete voice in governing that is so different than the model that is so top down that they have set up, and was something that was integrated in the AIAW model. Student athletes had representation on the executive board, on down to the school level, really different set up.
So I hope that that is… I see some of the legacy in there. I see the legacy for sure in some of the women coaches who are still coaching who go back to AIAW days, players who are in coaching, sport media positions. There’s an interesting spill out from people who are connected to sport through the AIAW and took those values into the jobs that they had even when it was under the NCAA.
Dave Zirin:
This history is actually getting a little bit of life with Lynette Woodard coming to the fore. It seems like this whole history is just ripe for a book. Is that something you’d be interested in pursuing?
Diane Williams:
I’m working on that. I’m working on that.
Dave Zirin:
You are working on a book?
Diane Williams:
I am.
Dave Zirin:
How about this? Terrific. Will you return to the program…
Diane Williams:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
… when the book is in print…
Diane Williams:
Always.
Dave Zirin:
… so we can go through what you learned?
Diane Williams:
Absolutely.
Dave Zirin:
That’s fantastic. And one last question, please. When you teach about this organization at McDaniel College, what is the reaction? I mean, I assume a few if none know about it, but I mean, is this something that makes the student’s eyes go wide?
Diane Williams:
I think so. And I will say one of the neatest things about this organization that makes me want to talk about it to everybody, one, is that it was visionary. It was a group of people who said, what exists in the norm isn’t good enough, and we think we can do better. And then they did. And that to me is exciting because it reminds us that it’s flexible how we manage sport, how we think about sport, what sport even looks like, who gets to be involved.
And two, every single school had people, usually women that were leading the women’s athletic department, that were coaching their teams, that are local heroes that that school may or may not even know about. And so when I teach about this at McDaniel, I get to talk about Carol Fritz, who was the women’s athletics director there. We have a beautiful display of women’s sport history, like uniforms and field hockey sticks and things that I can point them to. And we can bring this history to a very local level and learn more about someone who’s like, her name is on this beautiful display, but we don’t see her around as much anymore. But we can also learn more about the kinds of struggles that she and every other institution had, somebody there that was doing that work and encountering a whole lot of resistance and deserves their flowers, deserves their thanks and deserves some cheering on from a generation that is now learning about it again.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Well, this has been amazing and this has been an education. Is there anything else you’d like to add, Professor Williams?
Diane Williams:
I mean, keep supporting women’s sports.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, right on.
Diane Williams:
It’s where it’s at.
Dave Zirin:
That is where it’s at. I hear everyone watches women sports.
Diane Williams:
Everyone watches women’s sports.
Dave Zirin:
There it is. There it is.
Diane Williams:
Me and coach Dailey.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Professor Diane Williams, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sorts TV.
Diane Williams:
Thank you, Dave.
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