The Guru’s Roundup: Long Overdue West Chester and Queens Coach Lucille Kyvallos Becomes a Member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame

Guru’s Note: This is the Guru’s unedited cut submitted but had to be trimmed for space.

By Mel Greenberg

For the Inquirer

 

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – When told in arriving here ahead of the start of Induction Weekend for the latest class in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame  that former Immaculata coach Cathy Rush would present 93-year-old former West Chester and Queens coach Lucille Kyvallos, who now lives in Florida, it was the perfect touch for a seven-member class that spans the sport’s modern day beginnings to today’s widely public acceptance.

Along with Kyvallos, six other notables were inducted Saturday night at the Tennessee Theater in four WNBA/collegiate superstars: Sue Bird (UConn), Alana Beard (Duke), Sylvia Fowles (LSU), and Cappie Pondexter (Rutgers); WBCA executive director Danielle Donehew; and NAIA Union coach Mark Campbell.

Back in the early 1970s at the start of the pre-NCAA era under the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) just before Title IX was being birthed in Congress, Immaculata in suburban Philadelphia and Queens in New York City were the first big city/national rivalry.

Rush, as a West Chester student, was taught by Kyvallos, who coached the Rams first from 1962-66 with a record of 52-2 before moving to New York (1968-82) with a record of 259-71 for an overall 311-73 (81%).

“She called and asked me do to it,” Rush said. “I was thrilled because I was so excited for her.”

While it was a long fight to finally get all the Immaculata notables into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Kyvallos being celebrated here was to be enjoyment enough for those who were part of the era and fought for her inclusion from the Women’s Hall’s very beginning in 1999.

“Tinah Krah called me and told me I was getting in,” Kyvallos said when reached last winter when the class was announced. “I had just woken up. I passed out. I thought ‘oh my God, I thought they were going to wait until I was dead.”

Krah is a member of the WBHOF board, formerly employed before her retirement in the NCAA’s championships department, and who played for the Mighty Macs back then among several other schools.

“(Former ESPN program director of women’s sports) Carol Stiff called. We had a really great conversation. I was thrilled it finally happened. I was totally surprised. Never thought that would happen.”

 As a former chair of the AIAW tournament committee, which was composed of coaches, not administrators as is done under the NCAA, Kyvallos could be called the mother of the Women’s Final Four as the late NCAA executive Tom Jernstedt is so acclaimed in the men’s game.

The original AIAW national tournament structure had 16 teams at the finals with games played twice a day.

“We need to get this into a Final Four format because the public will understand the tournament competition better,” Kyvallos told a national writer back then.

Ultimately, the change occurred in 1978 with UCLA hosting and featuring Hall of Famer Ann Meyers-Drysdale winning that first one.

When looking at the growth of the game, Kyvallos says of the attention of Caitlin Clark has drawn and the coming of UConn under Norristown’s Geno Auriemma, who she says was a student at West Chester when she coached, “It’s now like rockets into space.

“Today we are in awe and euphoric in the rise of women’s basketball.

“Although as coaches and players we are competitive, today we are all on the same team and rise and be the best we can be through opportunities in our sport and in society.”

Kyvallos and her group along with the Immaculata crowd were innovators back then in pushing the sport along just as it has moved further today with more media involved in coverage compared to the small pockets of attention back then.

Queens hosted the 1973 AIAW finals, won by Immaculata, and in her speech Saturday night, she talked about how they promoted it as a big-time equivalency to the men’s tourney.

“We asked the president of the United States to write a welcoming letter in the program,” she said. “There was attention all over the city. The New York City mayor declared women’s basketball week. The press and TV were all over the event.

“The games were competitive and covered by local and national media. In the end Immaculata won its’ second AIAW national title beating Queens College before a standing room only crowd.

“The ascension was beginning to happen. The next year we added Immaculata to the schedule. In a packed gym with students cheering and nuns banging on pails, Queens (won).”

To an extent, Queens was the forerunner of the WNBA New York Liberty in terms of drawing packed venues though the school’s campus gym was obviously much smaller as were most women’s venues in the era.

During that time there was a kid from Rockaway, who always hung out in the gym and who was said to be heading to Queens when she graduated high school.

Kyvallos rolled her eyes here when asked, “So as big as your program was, how would it have been if Nancy Lieberman had come to you instead of going to Old Dominion.”

Kyvallos was a hard-driving proponent of her players executing the fundamentals of the game, running many suicide drills at practice.

In shouting out her crowd during the speech, she quipped, “I’d like them all to rise, run a fast break, and sit down.”

A slew of former players came down here to support Kyvallos’ induction — among them Cathy Andruzzi, who was the executive director of the local organizing committee in 2000 when Philadelphia hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four.

Also here was Donna Orender, who became the second president of the WNBA, following Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, who pre-dated Dawn Staley at Virginia and who was also here as a member of the board.

On Friday night after the ring and basketball presentations and the welcoming dinner, Kyvallos’ group, including Gail Marquis, who became a broadcaster, gathered at a nearby sports bar to celebrate.

Rush was there, as was former Mighty Mac great Marianne Stanley, both past Naismith and Women’s Hall inductees.

Dianne Nolan, a native of Gloucester City over in South Jersey, who’s brother Drew played at Temple in the late 1960s, told of her first coaching job at Saint Francis in Brooklyn.

“My first year Queens came to play us,” Nolan said. “This woman came into the gym, and she never took her coat off. I learned how revered she was. My goal the next year was going to be to get her coat off.”

Today Nolan broadcasts women’s and men’s games in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC).

One of Kyvallos’ former players here was Patricia Ferguson, who was at West Chester, both under the legendary coach after serving in the army, and on the team that won the first college-only organized women’s tournament in 1969 by the late Carol Eckman.

Ferguson related on how though she was small she had gone up to Kyvallos saying she wanted to touch the backboard.

Kyvallos was incredulous because of Ferguson’s size.

Ultimately, though, it happened.

Ferguson recalled that tournament organized by Eckman, saying, “Oh, yeah, it was very exciting and of course we won it.”

Kyvallos drew laughs at the start of her acceptance speech, given her historical timeline: “Well, back when newspapers were two cents … and gasoline was two cents a gallon, I played with boys in my neighborhood, learning to be athletic while girls were supposed to be playing with dolls.

“At that time, it was improper for a girl to be seen carrying a basketball around, so I stole a case to carry it in. All through high school and at Springfield College I played in weekend leagues and regional tournaments and playing in industrial leagues, playing mostly boys rules.”

One of the big moments as her Queens team was becoming popular was a call about playing in Madison Square Garden, in what would be the first women’s game.

“It was a no-brainer,” she said on who they wanted to play when told, “and I could choose the opponent.

“I called Cathy and invited her to play in the world’s most famous arena — a big first for women’s college basketball. On the day of the game, we drew 12,000.”

Rush remembered getting the call.

“Lucille, I would love my team to play in the Garden. I don’t know. Is it important to you or to us.? Would it be important to women’s basketball? Let me know,” Rush continued.

“None of them were New Yorkers, so, I mean I had been at the Garden because my husband (Ed) was a referee in the NBA,” she said of the team reaction.

“So, we got there and go inside, and there’s 18,000 seats. It was mind-boggling. Then the lights dim and on the public address system, they started blasting (Helen Reddy’s) ‘I Am Woman.

“Funny, though. There was a men’s game afterwards and after our game was over the women all left the arena.”

Orender, who played for Queens, remembers her reaction when told of the proposal of the game.

“I do, I do, I do. It was the most unbelievable thing ever. I thought this is the mecca of basketball. We play the game at the highest level,” she said.

“You get to the place, where you think it’s about time, but we got to make the most of this time.”

The induction this year on Saturday night fell on the late legendary Tennessee coaching legend Pat Summitt’s birthday.

On Thursday, a new exhibit at the hall as a tribute to Summitt was unveiled.

Holly Warlick, who played nearby for the Lady Vols and succeeded Summitt, was asked how she would have fared if she had played in today’s atmosphere of women now drawing NIL pay.

“I would have made a lot of money,” she quipped, “a lot of money. But I wouldn’t have made more than Pat. She would have never allowed that.”

Michelle Marcinak, a super talent in her time nicknamed Spinderella from the Allentown area, played one year at Notre Dame under Saint Joseph’s grad Muffet McGraw and then transferred to Tennessee, the draw Summitt, not an NIL bidding war.

Marciniak was recently named the University of Arizona general manager of the women’s program.

“The growth of the game is amazing,” said Marciniak, who won an NCAA title at Tennessee in 1996. “It’s phenomenal not only to see, but to be a GM and be a a part of it,” she said.

“We’ve been building basketball, thirty, forty, fifty plus years. Because now of media rights, and television rights, TV and social and media, really it’s media that’s brought it into the limelight and to where it’s actually, players are being monetized, still not quite to where they should be, but we’re starting to make some strides after a very long time.

“I think it’s phenomenal it’s happening, but I think we’re just scratching the surface.”

Sue Bird, the UConn, Olympic, and WNBA, just became USA’s first Women’s National Team Managing Director, the equivalent of Grant Hill, as the organization went from a committee to Bird being responsible for the the selection of national team players and coaches, ahead of the 2028 L.A. Olympics.

Bird, the all-time WNBA assist leader who will go into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September and who does a podcast with her fiancee, retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe, spoke last but offered memorable and entertaining comments.

In talking about her longtime recently retired UConn and Olympic teammate, Bird quipped, “you might say, I’m the Diana Taurasi of point guards.

“Tonight, I honor the truth. Greatness is never a solo performance. Behind every player is a greater support system. And behind this point guard was a chorus of people yelling at me … to shoot more.”