Interview: Andrew Maraniss, Author of Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women's Olympic Basketball Team

In this episode, Lindsay Gibbs interviews Andrew Maraniss, special projects coordinator at Vanderbilt University and author. They discuss his latest book Inaugural Ballers, which tells the story of the 1976 Women’s Olympic Basketball team, who laid the foundation for the rise of women’s sports in the U.S.. This team included many players who would become some of the most legendary figures in the history of basketball like Pat Head Summitt, Lusia Harris, Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, coach Billie Moore and beyond.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello and welcome to Burn It All Down. This is Lindsay Gibbs here, and I am so excited to be joined by Andrew Maraniss for this week's interview. Andrew is an esteemed author and the special projects director of Vanderbilt Athletics. He is here today talk about his new book, Inaugural Ballers, which is the story of the 1976 USA women's Olympic team, but also just a great read about the history of women's basketball in general. And I'm somebody who follows women's basketball closely, but still learned so much reading it, and I'm gonna have to read through it a couple more times to make sure I got everything. [laughs] Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

Andrew: Oh, thank you, Lindsay. This is gonna be a fun interview, I know. I love your podcast so much, so this is a great opportunity. 

Lindsay: Let's just start. What drew you to this story?

Andrew: Sure. Well, there's sort of a longer answer and then a real specific answer. I'll give you both if that's okay. [laughs] 

Lindsay: Great. [laughter]

Andrew: You know, this is my fourth book, and what I try to do is write books that deal with sports and social issues for both teens and adults. My first book was called Strong Inside, it’s a biography of Perry Wallace, who was the first Black basketball player in the SEC. My second book, Games of Deception, was on the first US men's Olympic basketball team that played at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. You know, so those books were dealing with racism and antisemitism, fascism. Third book, Singled Out, is biography of Glenn Burke, who was the first openly gay Major League Baseball player. And so I was looking for another story that would allow me to write about sports, which I love, and history, which I love, but also an interesting social issue. And so this one, with the team playing at the 1976 Olympics, allowed me to set their story in the context of the women's rights movement. And at the time I got started, I knew if I finished by 2022, that it could come out in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

So, those were some of the bigger picture thoughts in my head. But specifically, I was traveling around to schools talking about the men's Olympic basketball book, Games of Deception. And I remember at a middle school in North Carolina and at a middle school in Kansas, students raised their hand and said, well, what about the first women's team? And I was really encouraged that middle school students, high school students were asking that question. And it really was obvious once they asked that question that it was a story that I'd be interested in writing. And in a way, it kind of hit home to me that, you know, I was part of the problem. Like, here I am writing about sports, but it's all been men's sports so far. And part of the equity that we still see are in terms of media coverage. And so you could include to say that includes books about women's sports. And so I was really excited try to do my part, you know, to tell a story about the history of women's basketball and this team specifically. 

Lindsay: Absolutely. And it's funny because most of what I knew about this time was from Pat Summitt's autobiography and from reading that, you know? But one of the things that really got me is like this team in particular doesn't get that much attention because it didn't win gold won. They won the silver medal, right? Which, we think of that these days as a big failure for women's basketball, right? And so I thought it was really interesting to focus in on this team of trailblazers, you know, and kind of put it into context. First I wanted to go back, because I think a lot of people – and myself included – aren't that well versed on kind of the history of women's basketball. And it's not something we've talked on the show a lot about. But your book, which…You call them young adult books, right?

Andrew: Yeah. And that's the publisher, a young adult publisher. But I sort of feel like they're books for anybody, you know? Hopefully you felt that way, that, you know, it's not dumbed down or overly simplified.

Lindsay: Yes. [laughs]

Andrew: They're just books that you're trying to get young people interested in reading through sports. But I try to write them in a way that adults will like them just as much. 

Lindsay: And that's what I was actually gonna say, like, don't be kind of scared off or anything by that kind of like young adult title or whatever, because nothing about this seemed like it was not written for me, you know? [laughter] 

Andrew: Good. Glad to hear it.

Lindsay: As someone who follows this closely. So, it was really great. But take us back to what you learned about the origins of the women's game, because I think everyone's heard of, you know, Naismith and everything. But how did women start playing basketball? 

Andrew: Yeah. You know, people have heard the story of James Naismith and the peach baskets at Springfield College. And what I found out is almost immediately from that very first game in December 1891, initially there were women watching those games. So there was an elementary school near Springfield College which was known as the YMCA training school at the time. And there were schoolteachers that would go for a walk at lunch and they could hear the commotion in the gym and opened the door and walked in and like, what is this? These guys shooting the soccer ball at a beach basket, you know? And they were fascinated. They were the first basketball fans, were these women teachers at a school. And they would then come every day at lunch to watch these games. And pretty quickly, within a week or two, they asked James Naismith if they could play too, you know? And he said, sure, why not?

And problem was, they were the only women in the world who had ever seen or heard of the game of basketball. [laughter] So who were they gonna play against? And so, they arranged a game against some of the staff at the school and the wives and the girlfriends of the faculty there. And so there were women playing basketball from the very beginning. And then there was a woman who, sort of the woman equivalent of Naismith named Senda Berenson, who was a physical education teacher at Smith College, and she met James Naismith at a PE conference within a year of the game being invented, said that she was looking to introduce team sports at Smith. There weren't really any team sports for women there at the time. And he said, well, there's women playing basketball in Springfield, you know, why don't you try this? 

And so, pretty quickly she became, you know, the most prominent woman advocate for basketball, was writing a set of different rules for women, books that were published introducing the game to women. So, you know, dating back to the 1800s, there were women playing basketball. And it wasn't like because the Olympics finally offered a women's basketball tournament in ’76 that basketball was any sort of recent thing for women. It had been going back all the way since the beginning. One thing that I thought was interesting was you saw ebbs and flows of the game's popularity and just the acceptance of it that mirrored pretty closely with other women's rights issues and waves of feminism in the country, you know? So, in the 1920s, women's basketball was really popular around the same time that women were, you know, gaining the right to vote.

Then things become a little bit more conservative socially in the 1930s, you had women's basketball teams shut down at colleges and high schools around the country. Then in the 1940s, you know, Rosie Riveter, building an airplane – how could you tell her she couldn't play basketball? And so you started to see the reemergence of women's programs, particularly in the AAU. And very popular, successful teams and players, sort of the first generation of women's basketball stars. People that, you know, players that people had heard of like Nera White here in Tennessee. Then in the 50s, society gets more conservative again, and you start to see women told that they shouldn't play basketball. And then finally things turn again in the 70s with fight for ERA and Title IX coming along. And that's when you see basketball introduced at the Olympics in ’76.

Lindsay: Yeah, it's really interesting, like, the ebbs and flows, and I've been thinking about it recently. There was actually a Wall Street Journal piece out just last week…I don't know if you saw this, but talking about the decline in participation in girls and women's basketball. And one of the reasons cited was like, people are worried it's not feminine enough. [laughs] And I was like, are we going back in time already? It's just like, it's been so hard, you know? Of course we're in a much better place than we were, but it is startling how these things become ingrained. And once you start to overcome them, the fear seeps like right back up to the surface. [laughs]

Andrew: Yeah. It seems like it's never just a straight line of progression, you know, steps forward and steps backward. Yeah, it's true that women's basketball and girls’ basketball participation rates have declined as other sports like soccer and volleyball have increased. And there's a lot of reasons for that that relate to race and sexism, you know, at the heart of a lot of it.

Lindsay: Yeah. So, I wanna go back, because there was always this backlash. It's not an accident that women's sports have been marginalized, right? Like, there have been conscious choices throughout history to continue to marginalize women's sports. So, you talk about like Cal and Stanford who played like one of the first intercollegiate games. And then…Tell that story. [laughter] 

Andrew: Yeah. They played a game, they played one of the first intercollegiate games, like you said, out in California. It was the late 1800s. Stanford team wins the game, I think by scoring a basket, [laughter] you know, but still, it was a highly competitive, close game. And they come back to campus and they're heroes, and they're met by the student body and escorted from the train station back to campus. Students, men and women, you know, singing songs and celebrating their success. And the response from the faculty at Stanford is to ban women's basketball. And you see this happen over and over again. You know, even Margaret Wade, who's associated with the Wade Trophy, right? The most esteemed trophy that a women's basketball player can get these days. She played basketball at Delta State in the 1930s in Mississippi. They had a really successful team, and the response from the school was to shut down the team. And it wasn't brought back until she was named the head coach in the 1970s.

There's always been this misconception – perpetuated by men – that, you know, we're shutting down women's sports to “protect” the women, you know for either for health reasons, or that it's immoral for fans to be watching women sweat, you know, on the basketball court. And this is in the women's best interest. And really, what's it’s been covering up is it's covered up men's own frailty, you know? [Lindsay laughs] And insecurities, you know? If this women's basketball becomes too popular, like, what does that mean for our men's program? Or what does that mean for our football program? Or what does this mean for our budget, you know? And so it's really been, I think, more a case of a little bit of protecting turf that men wanted to claim for themselves and felt threatened by success of women's teams. You see that throughout history. 

Lindsay: 100%. And then there was another one where like the administrator shut it down because there were double headers between the men's and women's teams and they said they were “sexual in nature.” [laughter] What was that about? 

Andrew: I think they thought that men would show up for these games with prurient interest, you know, in watching the women on the court. You know, at a time when like women sweating, using their bodies, being physical, maybe seeing part of their ankle, you know, or their leg, that was considered almost immoral that there would be men watching this game and that women would be performing for the entertainment of men in that way. Yeah. And so it was actually the First Lady Hoover who led a commission that recommended that women's basketball be banned around the country for that very reason, you know, the morality or the immorality of women playing basketball, particularly in these double header games where there were men there to see the end of the women's game before the men played.

Lindsay: [laughs] It’s just wild. It’s wild.

Andrew: It's ridiculous. Yeah.

Lindsay: And then the one other thing…I actually didn't really know much about this at all, but it seemed so important, which was the Fort Shaw girls and the Fair games, and I think it was 1904. Can you…Don’t give away your whole book, but you know, [laughter] just give away some nuggets. What was that?

Andrew: Sure. You know, and since this book is about the first US women's Olympic team in 1976, I wanted to tell an anecdote in the book that there actually were women who played basketball at an Olympic venue way before this. So, 1904, St. Louis World's Fair also doubled as the Olympics that year. And there was a really gross racist exhibition at those Olympics, at the World's Fair, where Indigenous people from around the world were assembled as essentially a zoo for Fair-goers to watch men and women from Africa or from South America or Native Americans in their quote unquote “natural habitat.” And they also had sporting events associated with that. And the whole purpose of this was called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. So it was about manifest destiny and the white man's burden. You know, all the racist tropes of that time. And so they had sporting events to show the superiority of white athletes against these athletes of color from around the world who often were put into competitions in sports that they had never even heard of before. So, of course they were not gonna do well.

But you know, this was a time of Native American boarding schools around the country, which we've heard so much about the horrors at those schools over the last couple of years. But Fort Shaw school had a girl's basketball team, and they were a good team. And there's, you know, different feelings about these teams. On the one hand, they were established really to show the success of the assimilation efforts that were happening at these schools. They could say, look, we've taken these Native American girls and we've taught them this game of basketball and cut their hair and put on the clothes of the white girls at that time. You know, at the same time though, the Indigenous women on these teams saw basketball as a chance to show their own excellence, you know, and to succeed at something despite whatever the reasons the white people had for putting them on these teams. You know, they could show they were great athletes and they could compete and they could beat anybody.

And so they're brought to the World's Fair to demonstrate basketball, playing against a team of white students from St. Louis, and expected to lose. Geronimo is there, you know, as a captive of the US government, watching these Native American women play basketball, and they wanna play well in front of Geronimo. And they crushed the St. Louis All Stars – twice! And so you could say that the first American women ever to play basketball at the Olympics was a team from Fort Shaw. It wasn't a medal sport, it was a demonstration sport at those games. So, it's not official, but really they were the first to play basketball at an Olympics. And so I thought that was a fascinating story and wanted share that history in the book.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And like I said, I'd never heard that story, and it's so important. And another one of those moments where you just laugh at anyone who tries to separate politics and sports, like, [laughter] just tell that story right there. So, we're kind of gonna skip forward a while. You know, there's all these years of AAU teams, the barnstorming Red Heads, you know. The sport doesn't die down completely, but it's not organized at the upper levels, I think we could say. And then things start moving, and internationally it's really the Soviets who push women's basketball forward, and some Cold War politics. So, how did they help get women's basketball into the Olympics? They were kinda the driving force, right?

Andrew: Yeah. The Soviets were. They had been, you know, petitioning to the International Olympic Committee for decades to include women's basketball, women's volleyball, basically the sports that were played only in the Olympics by men, but that women were playing in the Soviet Union and other parts of the world. So, I found documents from FIBA of the Soviets bringing up this issue. Let's vote on women's basketball at IOC meetings, get shut down, shut down, shut down. Finally, in Munich in 1972, they vote to include it at the '76 Olympics in Montreal. One of the reasons the Soviets were interested in basketball beyond just having a lot of women playing it in their country is that they knew the United States was not taking international basketball very seriously, and so this would be an opportunity to beat the US in the Olympics. And at the Cold War, you know, in so many sports – track, basketball, other sports – this was sort of a battleground, you know, to show superiority of one system or the other through sports.

The Soviet team never lost. They were basically like the US team is now, you know? In international play, the United States never loses anymore. The Soviets were that way back in the 60s and early 70s. They actually had a 7’2” center named Uljana Semjonova that was the best, the most unstoppable player in the world. You know, they could lob the ball into her. She'd turn around and lay the ball in. They also had, for hockey fans, Alex Ovechkin’s mom was on the Soviet team at that time, and I found a scouting report from the US saying that she was…They called her “the dirtiest player in the world.” [laughs] So, maybe not too surprising that she'd have a son who would go on to play in the NHL. [Lindsay laughs] But yeah, it was Soviets who were behind pushing for basketball to be included in the Olympics. And finally it came along in ’76 in Montreal. 

Lindsay: But so, the US is behind on this. In most places in the US, it was still a six on six game, a half court game. Am I right that that was just kind of a US version? Like, internationally, people were playing five versus five, right? And not the half court game.

Andrew: That's right. Yeah. So this was part of what we were talking about earlier about this idea of protecting women. You know, so, the court divided in half and, in most high schools and colleges around the country, women either played defense or offense. You know, you were on one side of the court or the other. And so that really held back the American national team when they would go play at things like the world championships, the Pan Am Games in years prior, because all of a sudden they were playing a full court game that most of them hadn't grown up playing. It's one of the things that I think makes the players…I know we'll talk about them a little bit more specifically, but the women who were able to compete on the ’76 Olympic team had overcome so many obstacles on the way to get there, you know, told that they shouldn't sweat, they shouldn't build muscles, they shouldn't be competitive. If you're playing basketball, you should only play half court. 

You know, in many cases, it wasn't just men that were telling them this, but even women teachers and PE instructors who were teaching them the half court game and telling them you shouldn't be competitive against boys at school, they're never gonna ask you out on a date if you beat them in a foot race at recess. Ann Meyers told me that she had that happen to her in elementary school. Nancy Lieberman, who is one of the players on the '76 team, her mom really disapproved of her playing sports, wanted her to wear dresses, play with dolls, was upset when she'd see Nancy out playing football or baseball. And when Nancy would bring basketballs home, her mom punctured them with screwdrivers to keep her from dribbling, you know? So many obstacles that they had to overcome. Not just the opponents on the court, but you know, society and very specific individuals trying to prevent them from playing.

Lindsay: It’s just wild to me. This history sounds like it should be so far gone, [laughs] like, so far in the past, but the names you're mentioning…I mean, Ann Meyers, Nancy Lieberman, Marianne Crawford Stanley, who a couple years ago, the head coach of the Indiana Fever, right? And Muffet McGraw was playing during this time. Like, very much this is recent history that things were this limited. And when you put it in that context, it's just astounding how far the game has come because these women weren't willing to just settle for, you know, what they were told they should settle for. 

Andrew: Yeah. I really feel like this generation, like you say, they're still with us and they're some of the most esteemed names in women's basketball. Whether they're still with us, like the women you mentioned, or Pat Head Summitt, who was the co-captain of this team in 1976. So, this isn't ancient history. You know, and that gets to…I was at a panel at Springfield College a couple weeks ago, you know, birthplace of basketball, and they were celebrating Title IX. And I was there with Ann Meyers and Juliene Simpson, who were players on the ’76 team. And then the panel right after us was Tamika Catchings and Tina Thompson. And so we were talking about inequities that still remain, but Tamika Catchings made the point: let’s not just get bogged down in the inequities, but let's also talk about the great place that we are. When you think about how new this all is, you know, this Olympic team only played in ’76.

The WNBA has only been around for 25 years. If you go back 25 years from the founding of the NBA, it wasn't nearly as popular as the WNBA is now 25 years after it was founded. You know, yes, there are inequities in terms of media coverage and salaries, but we're way ahead of the progress that men's sports had made at a similar point in their development. And I think a lot of that is because of the strength and the will of these women that were these pioneers in the 1970s who still remain some of the biggest names in the sport. Even people who were cut from the team, like, Marianne Crawford Stanley's in the Hall of Fame. WNBA coach. She didn't make the '76 Olympic team. There's two or two or three women who didn't make the team that are Hall of Famers. I mean, so this was an incredible collection of people.

And like you talked about at the very beginning, like, I agree. They're not as well known as a team because they didn't win gold, you know? And we only celebrate gold, it seems like. [laughs] But they had no chance of winning the gold compared to the Soviets that year – weren't even supposed to make the Olympics at all. They hadn't qualified at the world championships the year before. And so winning the silver medal was a great accomplishment, and it was something that they were able to celebrate at the time. The way the tournament was played in ’76 was just a round robin, where whoever had the best record won gold, second best record won silver. It wasn't that we lost the gold medal game and had to settle for the silver medal. We won a game that gave us the silver medal. So it was a real celebration.

Lindsay: So first of all, the first kind of USA team that was put together was, what, in '73 for the world…?

Andrew: Yeah, World University Games in Moscow. And we were so far behind at that point that I talked to Billie Moore, who was the head coach in ’76. She was an assistant coach back then. And talking about Semjonova, the Soviet center, she said their only goal when they played the Soviets was for Semjonova to be dressed out in her uniform for the second half of the game – because she was so dominant that the Soviet coach would often just tell her to put on your street clothes at halftime. Like, we don't wanna embarrass our opponents anymore. [laughs] And so when she came out against the US in ’73 and was still in uniform, the team erupted like they had won the game! You know, they were still getting killed, but at least close enough that the Soviets kept their star player in her uniform. That's how far we had to come within three years.

Lindsay: Incredible. And then the 1975 world championships, was that the first world championships for women's basketball, or the first one that USA competed in?

Andrew: It was the first that we competed in. And Cathy Rush was the head coach. She was the coach at Immaculata College at the time.

Lindsay: The nuns, yeah. [laughs]

Andrew: Yeah. Which was the premier team in the country, was winning AIAW titles. And we came in eighth place. Only the top three teams in that competition qualified for the Olympics. Canada as the host country had the fourth bid. And so there were two more spots open, and there was no guarantee that we were gonna win one of those. Had to come in a top two in a last minute tournament in Hamilton, Ontario just before the Olympics to even make it to the Olympics. And so Cathy Rush was dismissed after world championships, and then there was the Pan Am Games right after, which really was just exhibition. And Billie Moore, who was the coach at Cal State Fullerton, was elevated from assistant coach to head coach heading to the Olympics. And actually headed into that qualifying tournament in Hamilton, she said there was quite a bit of pressure on her. You've been named US national team coach and your team hasn't qualified for the Olympics yet. And so, she led the training camp at Warrensburg, Missouri, where they invited the top 30 women in the country to try out for the team. And then they competed in Hamilton and they won that tournament and qualified for the Olympics.

Lindsay: One important thing about that ’75 world championships team, you said that it was kind of the first team that had Black players playing for the United States on the world stage. First of all, am I categorizing that correctly? And then how did that come about? Like, was that a fight? 

Andrew: Right. So, I wrote that in the book and I've since learned that I may be wrong, unfortunately. [laughter] I think there was one Black woman who had played internationally prior, but this was the first world championships where we had multiple Black players on the team. There was one Black assistant associated with the team at this time named Bessie Stockard, who was the coach at Federal City College in Washington, DC, which is now University of District of Columbia. And I'd add, I talked to her extensively about issues related to racism and selection of national teams prior to this. And she told me she felt like once it got down to the actual level of trying out for the team that she felt like the process was fair. 

But what was significant was sort of the institutional or structural racism prior to that. Like, how did you learn that there were tryouts? Who nominated you to be at the tryouts? You know she felt like that affected the ability of Black women to have that opportunity before they got to the literal tryouts themselves. And so I think that's a significant insight to make. You know, there may have been individuals involved in Warrensburg, Missouri, including Bessie herself selecting the team, and there were four Black players named to the Olympic team in ’76. But there just weren't that many opportunities for Black women to even have that chance to try out.

HBCUs went through the same or experienced the same social pressures as predominantly white schools in terms of dropping basketball during these ebbs and flows of history. And predominantly white schools weren't recruiting Black players for their basketball teams because this was an era before scholarships, you know? And so there wasn't really an intentional effort to bring Black women to campus for athletic opportunities at that point. And these schools weren't admitting many, many Black students, period, otherwise. And so those are the factors that kind of limited the funnel of Black women who would even have a chance to try out for the team.

Lindsay: Of course, one of the most prominent basketball players, period, and particularly Black women in basketball, is Lusia Harris, who of course just recently passed away, the Queen of Basketball. There's a great documentary on her. But tell us a little bit about her role in this team and what you learned about her.

Andrew: You know, I had a chance to interview Lusia Harris before she passed away.

Lindsay: Oh, good!

Andrew: Yeah. Which was a great experience for me. Unfortunately it was just over the phone – this was during COVID, so wasn't able to visit her. And this was also before The Queen of Basketball came out. So, I'd hadn't seen that film when I interviewed her, or I wrote the book yet. But if people haven't seen it, I couldn't recommend that short documentary more highly. It's free. Just Google “Queen of Basketball,” you can watch it. It's 20 minutes.

So, she grew up in the Mississippi Delta. She was from the same part of the state where Emmett Till had been murdered when she was a little girl. She was from the same part of the state that Fannie Lou Hamer lived in. She was from the same part of Mississippi Delta where Robert F. Kennedy visited in the early 60s to, you know, witness southern poverty. And so this was a very poor part of the poorest part of the country. Her family had a basketball hoop in the backyard. She was one of I think 11 kids and played with her siblings and neighbors. Her mom, you know, didn't really want her to play. She would watch games by putting a blanket over some chairs with a TV at night and hiding the fact that she was watching NBA games on television.

And she was picked on at school for being tall. So, you know, like a boy in high school who's tall or strong or fast is gonna be celebrated for that, you know, and be a star at their school. But Lusia was picked on for being tall. Her classmates would say “Long and tall, that's all.” You know, so she was made to feel bad about the fact that she was tall and a good athlete, a good basketball player. And you know, just the way the times were when she graduated from high school, she thought, oh, that's the end of my basketball career. She was headed to Alcorn State where they did not have women's basketball. But at that same time, Delta State brought back women's basketball.

So I mentioned Margaret Wade had been a player in the 1930s when they shut women's basketball down. They finally bring it back just at the point that Lusia Harris is about to enter college. And so she accepts the assignment really to be the first Black player at Delta State when the team is reinstituted. There's not a basketball scholarship, but they're able to cobble together some other sort of financial aid, and her parents are able to chip in. And so she goes to Delta State, and is a pioneering player on the court, a pioneering student in the classroom. You know, and she talked to me about the loneliness that she experienced there. Not particularly tight with her teammates, you know, one of the few Black students in class.

And so she would ride her bicycle home more than 20 miles to tiny Minter City, Mississippi just for the comfort of being with her mom on weekends, you know? And imagine how dangerous it was for a Black woman in the late 60s, early 70s, riding her bicycle through Mississippi Delta, you know? You don't know what sort of sheriff or police officer is gonna stop you on the road. But you know, it was that important to her to just receive the comforts of home. But she was an outstanding player, leads Delta State to multiple national championships. Player of the year, high score on the '76 Olympic team. And then she also had the distinction of being the first woman ever to score a basket in Olympic basketball.

So, the US played Japan in the first game of the tournament. First tournament, nine o'clock in the morning – which the players were not happy about having to play that early, but it did guarantee that the Americans played in the first game. And I talked to Juliene Simpson, who was the co-captain with Pat Summitt on that team, and sort of the little fire plug of that team. And she said they were determined that we were gonna score the first basket in that first game. And the Japanese got the the opening tip. They had the ball first, and Juliene Simpson went flying down the lane to foul the Japanese guard as she was going in for a layup. Fouled her hard. And her teammates were like, what was that all about? And she's like, we can't let them score first. So the US got the ball, they fed it to Lusia Harris, and she scored the first basket, and she was very proud of that and said that was something that nobody could ever take from her. 

Lindsay: That's incredible. What impact do you think this team had on where women's basketball is today?

Andrew: I think it had a huge impact. In the locker room, before the silver medal game, Billie Moore sat her team down…And this is the story I told in the first chapter of the book. And she said that, you know, if they were to win this game, their performance in this game was gonna change women's athletics and women's basketball in particular in the United States for the next 25 years. And Billie told me that she said that because she had seen what happened to gymnastics after the ’72 Olympics when Olga Korbut sort of became this worldwide sensation after her performance in ’72. And of course, she didn't know yet that Nadia was gonna really blow things up in '76 with her gymnastics.

Lindsay: Yeah. [laughs]

Andrew: But she said after ’72, you saw girls all over the world, and especially here in the United States, take up gymnastics, and it became really popular. And she felt like they could have that same impact by putting basketball on the map as a team sport in particular here in the US. And so we talked about the decline of basketball here recently, but that wasn't the case after the ’76 Olympics. The rates of girls and women playing basketball and the opportunities thanks to Title IX, basketball really took off at the high school and college level after these Olympics. But I also think this team had a big impact on other women's team sports. At the time of the ’76 Olympics, there wasn't a US women's national soccer team that was playing in a World Cup or in the Olympics. There was no Women's World Cup. There was no women's soccer in the Olympics at that time. And so I think this ’76 basketball team really laid the foundation for those other sports that in some ways have become even more popular. So, they had a tremendous impact on women's sports in this country.

Lindsay: That's amazing. And, you know, I always like to ask authors – and this is a hard question, but is there anything kind of that…What surprised you the most in your research? Or, you know, any interview or nugget that really stood out to you that you wanna make sure to highlight?

Andrew: Oh, yeah. I'll mention two things. One, this probably shouldn't have surprised me, but in researching Title IX and the implementation period, just how strongly the NCAA fought against it, you know? Now we see the commercials where the NCAA is celebrating this 50th anniversary – you know, as it should. But at the time, hiring lobbyists, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight it. The quotes that I found from athletic directors and football coaches at the time about how providing equal or even any opportunities for women to play college sports was gonna mean the death of college football, the death of college sports. And just how openly and plainly they were saying that, and how strong the effort was to kill Title IX. It didn't necessarily surprise me, but the degree of it does surprise me.

The other thing I would say is, since the book has come out, I've been pleasantly surprised by how much it seems to mean to the women on the team and the coach. And in some ways it's gratifying, but in other ways I feel like, well, they should have felt this way a long time ago. You know, they deserved to have their story told a long time ago. I don't know if I had written about the 1976 men's Olympic basketball team, if a book about their experience would mean anything to them, you know? Billie Moore, Juliene Simpson, Ann Meyers, Marianne Stanley, players on this team have told me that it means a lot to them. You know, they're really proud that their story's been told, that it's out there for a new generation of girls and adults to read. You know, their story hasn't been lost to history. And so that was a really pleasant, poignant surprise for me.

Lindsay: That's phenomenal. I love that so much. And agreed. It's also a little sad. [laughs] 

Andrew: Yeah. 

Lindsay: And frustrating. But, well, Andrew, we've only kind of scratched the surface of all the phenomenal things in this book, so I hope that everyone does pick it up. And how can people follow you and support you?

Andrew: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So again, the title of the book is Inaugural Ballers. You can find it at your local bookstore. I always plug local bookstores first, but you know, it's also on Amazon, barnesandnoble.com. There's an e-version of the book and an audio version if you prefer those types of books. Again, I would say it's for adults and for teenagers if you have, you know, teen athletes in your family. You can find me. My website is my name, AndrewMaraniss.com. And on Twitter, I'm a Milwaukee Brewers fan, so this is a nod to the True Blue Brew Crew, but my Twitter is @trublu24. And then Instagram is @amaraniss. 

Lindsay: I never had asked what the “trublu” really meant, I never knew. [laughter] So now I do.

Andrew: Yeah. You know, when I signed up for Twitter, it was right when it started, and I didn't know if it was gonna be this legit thing or not, you know? So, I didn't wanna use my real name, and now I kind of regret that. [laughter] But anyway, I'm stuck with it.

Lindsay: I'm sure your book publisher loves that. [laughter] That you’re kind of anonymous. 

Andrew: Right. Anonymous, yeah. 

Lindsay: Anyways, thanks again, Andrew. It was a great talking to you, as always. 

Andrew: All right, well, thanks to you, Lindsay, to all your co-hosts, and to all the flamethrowers out there. I really appreciate it. 

Lindsay: All right. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. We'll be back on Thursday with our weekly roundtable episode. This was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. We are part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Subscribe, listen, rate on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, TuneIn, wherever you get your podcasts. Show links and transcript are on burnitalldownpod.com, and there you can also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And of course, patreon.com/burnitalldown is where you can become a donor of the show. Burn on, and not out.