Tournament is latest step for Pac-10 women.Byline: BOB CLARK For the 19th century baseball player, see Bob Clark (baseball) Benjamin "Bob" Clark (August 5 1939[] – April 4 2007) was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer best known for directing and writing the script with Jean Shepherd to the The Register-Guard `A New Era Begins,' heralds the media guide for Pac-10 women's basketball Women's basketball is one of the few games which developed in tandem with men's. It became popular, spreading from the east coast of the United States to the west coast, in large part via women's colleges. . `Herstory her·sto·ry n. pl. her·sto·ries 1. History considered from a feminist viewpoint or emphasizing the actions of women. 2. in the making,' touts the advertisements for this weekend's league tournament at McArthur Court McArthur Court is a basketball arena located on the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene. Also known as "The Pit," it is known as one of the toughest arenas in the country for opposing players to play in. The arena is named for Clifton N. . Ah, if they only knew ... A tournament is certainly a nice next step in the evolution of women's basketball on the West Coast, but compared to what has gone on in the past 25 years, that's about it. As the league's 10 teams prepare for their inaugural Pac-10 tournament - it's not as if some league schools and coaches haven't played in a league tournament before - it's maybe time to remember where women's basketball came from for these conference members and how far it has come regardless of adding this event. Only 25 years ago, Arizona didn't travel beyond an adjoining state for a game. Stanford didn't even go outside of the Bay Area to play an opponent. In Washington's first listed season of basketball, the Huskies of 1974-75 recorded an 11-11 record, and 11 of those games were against other schools in the state of Washington. Forgotten now is the fact that the Pac-10 wasn't a women's basketball league until the 1986-87 season, or five years after the NCAA NCAA abbr. National Collegiate Athletic Association took over women's sports from the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. `The Pac-10 is a really good thing, to have the structure that the league offers and to have the rivalries that were already built in for the men's programs,' Stanford's Tara VanDerveer Tara VanDerveer is the Stanford University women's basketball coach for most of the past two decades. She has led her Stanford team, known as The Cardinal, to two NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championships in 1990 and 1992. said. It only made sense that the Pac-10 be an organization for men and women, just as the evolution of sports programs eventually brought the women's teams into the same department as the men's programs at virtually every college in the country. But it wasn't always that way. Women's intercollegiate basketball has been played for over a century. Generally credited as the first game played was Stanford's 2-1 victory over California on April 4, 1896, and a couple of weeks later Washington played Ellensburg State. But for another 75 years, women's basketball was generally played as a club-type sport, unsponsored by athletic departments or the colleges. The genesis for what are now the women's programs came from the 1972 enactment of Title IX, which mandated gender equity in college athletics College athletics refers primarily to sports and games organized and sanctioned by institutions of tertiary education (colleges or universities in American English). In the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Intercollegiate . Over the next three or four years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time schools which now make up the Pac-10 moved forward in women's basketball, though there wasn't a full scholarship for a player at a West Coast school until USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. awarded one for the 1976-77 season. Arizona State's first coach was borrowed from the volleyball team, and after one year Mary Littlewood switched to softball. All the schools were soon in leagues, just nothing quite like the Pac-10. Arizona and Arizona State played in the Intermountain Conference, with teams in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico New Mexico, state in the SW United States. At its northwestern corner are the so-called Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet at right angles; New Mexico is also bordered by Oklahoma (NE), Texas (E, S), and Mexico (S). . Washington was first in the Northwest Women's Basketball League. Stanford started off in the Nor-Cal Conference, and UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX was in the SCWIAC, which, if you've forgotten, stood for the Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Conference An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the collegiate or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller and smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. . Eventually, the Northwest schools were playing in the Northern Pacific Athletic Conference, or the NorPac as it was known, and the Arizona schools, USC, UCLA and Stanford would go from first the Western Collegiate Athletic Association to the Pacific West Conference, the latter for only one season before the Pac-10 swallowed up women's sports. Bev Smith Bev Smith (born April 4 1960) is the head women's basketball coach at the University of Oregon. She has held that position since 2001, replacing controversial coach Jody Runge, and has posted an 83-69 record. , who played at Oregon two decades ago when the Ducks weren't in the Pac-10, said her first tour with the Ducks as a coach has pointed out some differences in the stature of the respective leagues. `If you look at those other leagues, they certainly garnered a lot of attention, and (the Oregon) program has drawn very well regardless of the league it's been in,' Smith said. `Being in the Pac-10 has helped in getting more regional exposure, and certainly in terms of national exposure, it's probably upped the ante for the league as compared to if we'd stayed in the NorPac.' Over all those original leagues nationally was the AIAW AIAW Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women , which sponsored its first national tournament in 1972. Six seasons later, UCLA won the the AIAW title. The NCAA first sponsored a women's national tournament in 1982 - and ASU ASU Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) ASU Appalachian State University ASU Arkansas State University ASU Angelo State University ASU Alabama State University ASU Australian Services Union , Oregon, Stanford and USC played in it as representatives of different leagues - and in both 1983 and '84 it was USC winning NCAA titles. As VanDerveer said, `some things don't change. There were great players then, too.' That UCLA title team of 1978 included Ann Meyers Ann Elizabeth Meyers (born March 26, 1955 in San Diego, California) is a distinguished figure in the history of women's basketball and sports journalism. A standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional levels, she is one and Denise Curry, among the 13 women in the Naismith Hall of Fame for basketball. A third enshrinee is Cheryl Miller, who led the Trojans to their consecutive national titles with the help of the McGee twins, Pam and Paula. Stanford became the league's premier team after VanDerveer was hired in 1985. The Cardinal won national titles in 1990 and '92 and reached the national semifinals in 1991, '95, '96 and '97. Not that it has been an exclusive one-team show in the league, however. The Pac-10 has put five teams into the NCAA Tournament in five of the past 11 years and had at least four representatives in 11 of the past 12 years. It's that depth that makes the league what it is, said Chris Gobrecht, the USC coach who has also previously coached at Washington. `The biggest difference now is how good seven or eight teams have become as opposed to a time when there were two or three good teams in the conference,' Gobrecht said. `There was a time when you could go through the conference knowing you'd get 12 or 14 wins, and it was a matter of how you did in the other four or five that determined whether you won the title. Now, there's not an eyelash eyelash /eye·lash/ (-lash) cilium; one of the hairs growing on the edge of an eyelid. eye·lash n. 1. Any of the short hairs fringing the edge of the eyelid. Also called cilium. difference between No. 2 and No. 7, and that's a testament to how strong our sport has become.' It is, though, Stanford still on top and, this year, unbeaten in conference games. But no matter that seeming dominance or the likelihood that the Cardinal would be successful on a national level no matter what league they had been in, VanDerveer salutes the value of being in the Pac-10. `There's no question, not even a debate about it,' the Stanford coach said. `This is what people on the West Coast identify with, the Pac-10. It's a measuring stick for you. How did you do in the Pac-10?' This week only adds to that, with the league tournament. At McArthur Court FRIDAY'S GAMES First Round GAME 1: No. 10 Washington State (2-26) v No. 7 Oregon (15-12), 6:30 p.m. GAME 2: No. 9 California (7-20) v No. 8 UCLA (8-19), 8:45 p.m. SATURDAY'S GAMES Quarterfinals GAME 3: Game 1 winner v No. 2 Washington (17-10), noon GAME 4: No. 6 Arizona (14-13) v No. 3 Arizona State (21-8), 2:15 p.m. GAME 5: Game 2 winner v No. 1 Stanford (28-1), 6 p.m. GAME 6: No. 5 Oregon State (15-13) v No. 4 USC (15-12), 8:15 p.m. SUNDAY'S GAMES Semifinals GAME 7: Game 3 winner v Game 4 winner, 12:30 p.m. GAME 8: Game 5 winner v Game 6 winner, 3 p.m. MONDAY'S GAME Championship GAME 9: Game 7 winner v Game 8 winner, 7:30 p.m. CAPTION(S): Naismith Hall of Fame member Cheryl Miller led Southern California to consecutive NCAA women's basketball championships in 1983 and 1984. |
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