WOMEN

How The Women's Game Grew Up

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Women who had played hard on their high school and college teams after 1970, at first had little or no opportunity to play professionally, so they played for AAU teams. Hall of Famer Ann Meyers played for the California AAU team, National General West, when she was still in high school, and when she left college (in between unsuccessful attempts at making a career with the WBL and the NBA's Indiana Pacers), she organized and then starred on her own AAU team: Annie's Bananas. Annie's Bananas held the AAU national tournament title between 1977 and 1979.

AAU women's basketball suffered severe setbacks in the '70s, losing authority, players, and prestige to the college game. The Amateur Basketball Association of the USA took over the authority to choose the national team which would represent the U. S. in the Pan Am games in 1975, because the AAU "had lost their status as the national governing body for basketball." Representatives from the colleges controlled the ABAUSA, and they selected college players to be America's team. The winner of the AAU title was no longer automatically considered the best in the country.

The AAU still did draw some great teams and star players in the '70s, though. The Midwestern/Southern Traveling League contained the still highly competitive Wayland Baptist and Nashville Business Colleges, along with the Raytown (MO) Piperettes, Milwaukee's Real Refrigerator team, a good Look magazine team, and Omaha's Commercial Extension Comets -- all independent AAU teams.

Carol Blazejowski put in some AAU time in 1973. Prior to her college years, she played for the AAU's New Jersey Saints of the Metropolitan Women's Basketball League, and then for the Allentown "Crestettes," in the summer, while she was at Montclair State. She told me it was "another way to play competitive basketball." Always a trailblazer, Nancy Lieberman played with the Harlem-based male AAU team, the New York Chuckles, when she was 14 years old! Once the good players had other places to play competitively, however, AAU's women's basketball would suffer even more.

By the 1980s and '90s, the WBL had been formed, and women could play professional basketball overseas. And by the late '90s, there would be two more professional leagues. Even more problematic for AAU basketball though, was the incredible rise in popularity of women's college basketball.

In 1978, an Amateur Sports Act was passed by Congress which called for the provision of sports to all who wanted to participate, at any age, beginning at the grass-roots level. The AAU would focus its efforts in the 1980s and '90s on providing that kind of amateur sports availability in a wide variety of sports, but especially for participants who 18 and under. As of 2000, the AAU still has a national tournament for (nonprofessional) college-age-and-over women, but they can't be in NCAA Division I or II programs to enter AAU tournaments. The AAU is in transition on this, planning regional qualifying tournaments for the next few years' national championships. The majority of basketball tournaments which the AAU sponsors on the state, regional, and national level, are for youth of specific ages: 10, 11, 12 years old, etc., up to 18-year-olds.

Next page: Title IX

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