It’s pub day for Andrew Maraniss! His book, Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team released today. Congrats to Andrew!
The team played in the 1976 Olympics, only four years after the passage of Title IX. That surprised me, because for most women’s sports, it took years, and even decades, for teams to really get going. Women needed programs at all levels, college scholarships and high-level coaching, all of which didn’t exist at the time. In most cases, achievement did take a lot of time. This team was clearly an outlier.
Sports and social justice
My first question for Andrew was: How is it that a guy gets to write about a women’s team? Isn’t that a job for a female author? He didn’t back away from the question.
“Sports give me a way to write about social justice,” he says. “I write stories that expose racism, sexism and hypocrisy of all kinds. And, even today, it’s not true to say that sports have achieved a level playing field.”*
Andrew’s earlier books established his credentials in social justice issues. His first book, Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016) told the story of the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). He broke the color barrier when he began playing for the Vanderbilt Commodores in 1966.
“My book stemmed from a paper I did in college about Perry,” he said. “His story had such an impact on me that it’s one of the few things I remember doing in college!”
Perry Wallace’s story of persevering in the segregated South never left Andrew’s mind, and he decided to expand it into a book. A biographer doesn’t need the approval of his subject, but he contacted Perry anyway. His response? “Go for it!”
Andrew spent the next eight years working on the book. His respect for Wallace only grew. “It was an incredible education for me,” he says. In 2017, a new version of the book released for young readers.
Andrew’s next book, Games of Deception: The True Story of the First Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) addresses the big question of that Olympics: Should the U.S. have boycotted those Games given the dictator’s growing racial discrimination against Jewish people?
His third book concerned bias of another kind. Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) tells the story of the first openly gay player in Major League Baseball.
So there’s a theme here, right? Andrew Maraniss tells True Stories!
Inquiring minds want to know
While Andrew was giving talks about the 1936 Olympic men’s basketball team, he faced some tough student audiences.
“I went to schools in North Carolina and Kansas, and the students there asked me the same question: ‘What’s the story of the first women’s Olympic basketball team?’” Andrew says.
Well — that set the wheels turning. Andrew saw the 50th anniversary of Title IX coming up and thought, What better time?
There are some lofty names on that Olympic team, many of whom he interviewed: Nancy Dunkle, Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, Lusia Harris, coach Billie Moore and coach Pat Head (Summitt), who went on to become the winningest coach in women’s college basketball (only recently surpassed by Tara VanDerveer). Last week, he met another player from the team — Juliene Simpson — and she draped her silver medal around his neck!
Yes, that underfunded, unappreciated upstart team that no one thought had a chance of succeeding went on to take a silver medal at the Montreal Olympics. The U.S. boycotted the Olympics in 1980 but the team won gold in 1984 and again in 1988. At the 1992 Games, the U.S. took home a bronze, but since that year has won gold at every Olympics, not even dropping a single game — a gold-medal winning streak of seven straight Olympics.
Andrew hopes that by sharing the story of these pioneering women, he’ll not only inspire new generations, but also focus attention on the work yet to be done.
“Title IX needs to be protected and expanded,” he says. “It’s important for both men and women to take an interest in women’s sports. We need to offer equal scholarships and pay equal attention. We’re not done, but this generation of women paved the way.”
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* All of Andrew Maraniss’s quotes come from our interview on September 6, 2022. One last bit of information: Andrew was a baseball player in high school and was offered a scholarship to play at a D3 school (Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.). But he was also offered a sports writing scholarship at Vanderbilt, which he accepted. He continues to work for his alma mater as special projects director for the athletic department. Visit Andrew’s website at http://andrewmaraniss.com/