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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2011 > January > 15
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Ann Meyers: Dayton Flyers’ greatest two-sport athlete
You could hear them whooping and screeching and chanting before they ever got near.
It was an hour before the University of Dayton basketball team would play New Mexico and the over-stoked Flyers players — sounding like a band of ravaging Huns on their way to sack some defenseless village — were making their way down the long UD Arena tunnel from their Donoher Center dressing room to the waiting Blackburn Court.
Ann Meyers was in the UD media room talking hoops long past with Karen McTaggart when the high-decibel hoopsters rumbled past.
“Is that how your team took the court?” Meyers was asked.
“We were fired up — we were totally on task — but no, we didn’t sound like that,” she said with a smile.
“But you were so good,” offered McTaggart, who has long been a part of the UD stats crew.
Meyer shrugged, but didn’t shed the humility she wears as faithfully as she does her UD red and blue: “I think we were good. Did you really think we were good?”
McTaggart just looked at her and shook her head in disbelief. A question like that didn’t really need an answer.
The Flyers team Meyers was a part of wasn’t just “good,” it was a national champion.
The 1979-1980 UD women’s basketball team — of which Meyers was the high-scoring, big-rebounding star — finished 36-2 and won the small division national crown of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (AIAW), the percussor of the NCAA in women’s college sports.
In a time when there was neither a shot clock to speed up tempo and assure more offense, nor a three-point shot to inflate scoring, the UD women averaged 83.4 points per game. Ten times they scored more than 90, five times they cracked the century mark and once they scored 121. They beat teams like Michigan, Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State, Illinois, Cincinnati, Louisville, DePaul and West Virginia.
They out-scored their opposition by an average of 24.7 p.p.g..
The team had four players who would score more than 1,300 career points and two who would have more than 1,000 career rebounds.
One of the team’s two losses — an early two-point loss to Edinboro State — came when the Flyers were without the 6-foot-1 Meyers and Julie Johnson, both of whom who were on the UD volleyball team that was playing in the national tournament.
Meyers was the star of that team, too. In fact, for two years in a row she was the National Player of the Year for all divisions of college volleyball.
UD has never had a two-sport star like her.
Three decades after her playing days she still holds 25 of the women’s basketball records at UD.
And she’s the school’s all-time leading scorer for both men’s and women’s basketball with 2,672 points. That’s 439 more than Roosevelt Chapman’s, the men’s all time scorer.
On the combined men’s and women’s lists she’s third in rebounds — just behind John Horan and Don May — with 1,293 boards. She’s fifth in field goal percentage and seventh in free throw accuracy.
That’s the foundation of her Hall of Fame career at UD and yet when you ask her about it, she’s quick to bend the conversation to make her teammates the focal point:
“People like Beverly Crusoe, Julie Johnson Carol, Lammers and Tammy Stritenberger did a really good job of getting me the ball. The thing I remember most about our team was people being truly selfless….We had a lot of good players.”
Together they made a great team, one that is being honored at half-time of the Flyers women’s game against Duquesne this afternoon. In May the entire team will be inducted in the Ohio Sports Hall of Fame.
TIMES WERE DIFFERENT THEN
Growing up in Harrison Township — one of a family of nine kids, seven of them girls — Meyers said she had no basketball or home hoop until they moved in the summer before her eighth grade year.
“We used to ride our bikes to St. Rita’s and play there,” she said. “When we moved, Dad put a hoop on the garage. He had to put up two backboards, one below the other to protect the spouting.”
She started out high school at Julienne and it merged with Chaminade when she was a sophomore. “We didn’t have girls basketball at CJ until my junior year and the Ohio high school association didn’t start a state tournament for girls until I was a senior.”
She said nobody but UD really recruited her.
“I remember my dad calling up Ohio State and even though they did have some scholarships, they said they didn’t have any to give out.”
With a smile, she added: “That’s why my senior year (at UD) when we beat Ohio State something like 80 to 50 (actually it was 89-53) I was sort of thinking: ‘Hey, you really should have considered giving me a scholarship.’”
UD — thanks to Dr. Elaine Dreidame, then the coach and the guiding force of women’s sports at the school — was different, Meyers said:
“The money and opportunities from Title IX weren’t all in place yet, but UD was smart. They tried to get double athletes. They’d look for someone to play like field hockey and softball or basketball and volleyball.”
Times were different then. When the volleyball team went to the national tournament, it first passed the hat at UD men’s basketball games to help fund the trip.
She said the women didn’t have a strength and conditioning coach:
“I remember taking out a membership to a gym — Suburban Nautilus next to Marion’s Pizza on Shroyer — my junior year…But I’m not complaining. If it weren’t for UD, I wouldn’t have gone to college, With nine kids, we couldn’t afford it.”
Four of her sisters also played college sports — Jane played volleyball and softball at UD, Becky played volleyball at Mount St. Joseph, Margie was an Ohio State volleyball player and Karen played the same sport at Oklahoma — and now several nieces and nephews are college athletes.
STILL A FAMILAR FACE AT UD
After college, Meyers had invitations to try out for both the US Olympic volleyball and basketball teams. But the nation was boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games, so she didn’t see the point.
She signed to play professionally, went to St. Louis, got hurt, was traded to Minneapolis and eventually returned home to substitute teach and coach the UD women’s volleyball team for three seasons.
During that time she became a math teacher at CJ, a position she still has today. She also mentors young teachers. She was a prep coach for several years and now runs the clock at all UD men’s and women’s basketball games.
As the clock operator she must focus solely on the ball and can’t watch the game as a fan — or even a coach — would. Still she’s around the game enough to see teams come together and chemistry develop.
“It’s always enjoyable watching a team play well and win,” she said. “You always like watching a team that is good.”
A team like the one she was a part of back in 1980.
“Yes, you were good,” McTaggart finally said. “You guys were great.”
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