You Let Some Girl Beat You? (6 page)

“If you get hit in the chest you'll get breast cancer you know.” This came from a girl at Sonora.

“I've never heard that.”
A bruise, yes. Cancer? I doubt it
.

“Well, you know what they say about you, don't you?”

“No.” I was curious. She was like a human switchboard, connecting all lines of gossip from one end of the campus to the other.

“They say if you want to be on the boys' team so bad that you must be gay.” She looked at me with a strange smile then walked away.

Gay
? The term was never used in our house. I wasn't completely sure of its meaning, but I had an idea.
Why would they say that?
I didn't worry about what my parents would think. They would be fine. They never judged or criticized us for some innocuous infraction that might have reflected poorly on them the way so many other parents did. Those were invariably the parents who saw their children as nothing more than extensions of themselves. As long as we did what we knew was right, worked hard, and did nothing to hurt others, we were just fine in their eyes. But still, I wondered.
Was I gay because I wanted to play competitive basketball with the guys
?
But how could I be gay when I was attracted to boys?
I didn't know what the right thing to do was anymore. I wasn't trying to prove a point, I just wanted to play the game.

I had always just wanted to play the game.

When the names were announced for the summer team, mine was among them. The other players eventually welcomed me, though not exactly with open arms. The press had no easier time wrapping its pens around stories about a girl besting the boys. “Sonora High Boys Summer League apparently has the best prospect in attractive 5'8” Meyers,” the paper wrote.

“She went in during the second quarter and led the fast break, and she is quick, fakes, and has good footwork,” a college scout was quoted saying. “She is also cute and has a good figure.”

This last part struck me as funny. Male athletes were never described physically in the newspapers unless it had something to do with their ability to play, their height, their weight, etc. While it was flattering to be called attractive, it also felt odd. It was almost as if no matter how well I might have played before this coach, he would never think of me as a real basketball player, but rather as a
cute
basketball player.

When my senior year started there were the inevitable questions about whether or not I would go out for the boys' varsity basketball team. After all that had happened, all of the comments from the parents about letting a girl play on the team, about allowing me to take their son's place, and the idea that my classmates would question my sexuality, I ultimately declined.

It would be the last time I would let anyone's opinion dictate my decisions.

“Control your passion or it will control you.”
~ G.M. Trevelyan

Not going out for the boys' varsity team turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Had I joined, I wouldn't have been available weeks later to try out for the Women's U.S. National Team.

It was a three-day invitation-only competition in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the other contenders were seasoned USA players and three to five years older. I had some stiff competition, and the thin air didn't work to my advantage because it was hard to catch my breath. Still, in 1974, I became the first high school player to make it onto a U.S. Women's National Team.

Our first game was in New York City. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I'd never flown without my mother and siblings before. Now I was in what felt like the capital of the world and staying at a small hotel across from the famous Waldorf Astoria. And if the hotel lacked the gold leaf trim and satin sheets I'd heard were commonplace at the Waldorf, I didn't care. I still felt like I'd made it to the big time. After all, we were about to play at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden! The whole thing seemed surreal. The night before that first game, I had one thought continuously pounding in my brain:
If I'm dreaming, don't anybody pinch me
.

The next morning the alarm went off at 7:30 but it felt more like 4:30 because of the time difference. Standing in front of the mirror, I ran a comb through what was left of my blond locks.
At least I don't have to worry about my hair
. The up side was that, apparently, I no longer looked like David. Now I looked like Doris Day.
Right, Doris Day versus the Soviets.

Our rivals were the Soviet Union Women's Team, who'd dominated women's basketball for nearly two decades. Some were in their late twenties and thirties, and were mothers. A friend told me he'd heard that communist countries would inject the pregnancy hormone, HCG, into their female athletes because studies had shown that HCG helped the athletes perform better. It was whispered that many of these Soviet basketball players had become mothers for the same reason.

Whether that was true or not, there was no doubt these ladies had something extra. Their front line averaged 6'6”, and their Latvian player, Uļjana Semjonova, was 7'2”. Semjonova's upper thigh was the size of my waist. Our tallest player was 6'3”. Even so, I'd never entered any competition expecting to lose, and I wasn't about to. I reminded myself that David was 6'8”, and I'd played against him thousands of times.
Semjonova doesn't scare me
.

The game had a good crowd, and it was televised. I received some attention right off the bat because John Wooden's UCLA team had recently won the NCAA tournament, with David helping lead the way. Many speculated he would be a future NBA top pick, so the Meyers name was already out there.

Being the only player still in high school and the youngest on the team, I was a substitute guard and didn't start. But I did play, and well enough to be named Player of the Game. I brought the same energy and passion to the court that David did and played every point like it was our last. As hard as we played, we lost by three points. But in coming so close, we caused the Soviet Union's national pride to suffer a terrible beating. After the game, Brent Musburger interviewed me, and all I remember saying was, “Yep.”

All I remember
thinking
was,
The Russians aren't all that great
.

The following games in California, Iowa, and New Mexico would prove otherwise. We were in California, about to play a game at Cal State Fullerton and sharing a pre-game meal with the Soviet Ladies at a small restaurant on campus. I was seated across from the towering Semjonova. To my right was my roommate and team captain, Juliene Brazinski Simpson. Jules was from Jersey and an outgoing point guard in her early twenties, with a big personality who was as quick with a clever reply as she was with a bounce pass. Across from Jules, was Tatyana Ovechkin, the captain of the Russian team (her son, Alexander Ovechkin, is #8 on the NHL's Washington Capitals).

Semjonova was so tall that her knees wouldn't fit under the table, and her hands were so large and her arms so long that I imagined she could easily wrap them around a thick oak. With mitts larger than any man's I'd ever seen, I figured a basketball must have felt to her like a soccer ball felt to me. It was our understanding they spoke no English, so I exposed the palm of my hand and motioned for her to do the same.

“Your hands are very large,” I said slowly, to which Semjonova just nodded. I may have been the youngest one there by several years, but I sensed right away that our Russian dinner partners knew more English than they let on.

“You're married?” Jules asked the team captain, pointing to her wedding band. Ovechkin looked at her hand and nodded. Semjonova was also wearing a ring.

“I'm married too.” Jules held up her ring finger, then took off her band and motioned for the other two women to do the same so they could compare sizes. Semjonova's ring was large enough to fit a fifty cent piece inside and still have room around the edges.

The captain said something in Russian and both women laughed.

“That's what I'm saying!” Juliene joked loudly. “You've got really huge hands! I'll bet you have big Bozo feet too.” Juliene snickered at the thought that she could be so rude and get away with it. I wasn't so sure.

Juliene had played on several USA Teams and was more often than not the captain. At 5'6 she was one of our shorter players, and we called her The Tank for her impenetrable blocking. Her commanding presence and confident strut were partly because she'd grown up in Jersey. She was the perfect counterbalance to my introversion and loved nothing more than letting off a little steam to get us relaxed. So in typical Jules fashion, she continued making outrageous comments, forcing giggles between us two, until it was time to leave.

“Well adios, ladies,” Jules finally said in her unmistakable Jersey accent. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Semjonova replied quite clearly.

Juliene's face blanched as she spoke to the interpreter while shuffling out of the restaurant. “I thought they didn't speak any English.”

“Not much. But they
understand
everything.”

That evening the Soviets defeated us in a crushing 30+ point loss. With such a tight finish in the first game, we'd shamed them. Then Jules and I added fuel to the fire by insulting their team's best players, thus igniting their desire to pulverize us.

For me it was another life lesson, courtesy of basketball. Though we'd nearly tied them in the first game, it was no indication of what might follow. And so it always was: You could win a game, but you still had to start all over with the next one. Every day you had to get up and try your best. When you failed, it didn't kill you. It hurt, and you hated it, but it also drove you to be better next time. That first game had motivated the Soviet players to bury us, and Jules and my behavior during the pre-game meal put the nail in the coffin.

When the games against the Soviets were finished, I returned to high school and continued to play AAU basketball with my sister Patty.

Today when you think of AAU, you think of kids trying to earn college scholarships. Back then it was another outlet for women who played in and out of college to compete long before there was a woman's league. The team was called Anamill after the sponsoring company. We'd travel to Gallup, New Mexico for tournaments, but the team ended up disbanding when the sponsor went belly up. Rather than throw in the towel, Patty found a new sponsor in National General West, who paid for the girls to travel and compete. So I was back to high school and back to playing on the National General West team with the sister I looked up to.

Patty had played as starting center, captain, and leading scorer and rebounder on Billie Moore's 1970 AIAW championship women's basketball team at Cal State Fullerton. Together, they put the Titans on the map before Immaculata and Delta State became known for their women's basketball programs. Wayland Baptist was another college that won a lot of AAU Championships. They had invited me to play for them, but I hadn't given much thought to college yet. Heck, I wasn't even sure I wanted to continue playing basketball in college, since I still dreamed of making the Olympics as a high jumper. I figured when the time came, I'd probably attend the same college Patty had. But fate stepped in when I was offered a full athletic scholarship to play basketball at UCLA.

No woman had ever been offered a full ride to a Division One school before, so this was huge. UCLA was also close to home, which meant I would have David and my sister, Cathy, who'd just graduated from UCLA, in Westwood with me. I would also be in the presence of the greatest mentor that basketball has ever known.

John Wooden had already won nine national titles and been named college basketball's Coach of the Year seven times when I started UCLA. My freshman year, David was a senior, so I arranged to be out of class every day early enough to watch him during his practices with Coach Wooden. I loved sitting in Pauley Pavilion watching David, listening to Coach Wooden, absorbing the smells and sounds of Men's Division I basketball. Coach kept practice closed, but since he knew the Meyers, he'd let me hang out in the rafters.

It may as well have been Heaven.

In the late 60s and early 70s, UCLA owned men's basketball and Pauley Pavilion was one of the most exciting places to be in all of Southern California. John Wooden had created a dynasty unrivaled in the world of men's basketball. The Jackson Five, Lee Majors, Farah Fawcett, you name it, all the coolest celebrities and sports stars of the day came to those games. My family and I had been coming for the last several years to watch David play, and afterward Coach Wooden would come out to say hi to everyone. By the time I got to UCLA, his family and mine had become particularly close.

I also got to know plenty of the other coaches. While it was certain I would play four years of basketball at UCLA, I had no intention of competing in just one sport in college any more than I had in high school. I played volleyball, I ran track, and I also played intramural rugby my freshman year until some of the coaches got wind of it.

Someone in administration called me in to let me know that there would be no more rugby. “You realize you're here on a basketball scholarship, Miss Meyers? That means you're here to play
basketball
.”

I understood. Few cared if I scuffed my knees in the high jump pit or bruised my hand playing volleyball. With rugby, I could really get hurt and nobody wanted that—especially the women's basketball coach, Kenny Washington.

Coach Washington was a tall black man from Buford, South Carolina, with a deep, elegant voice and a passion for the game. He taught us the fundamentals of basketball, which he felt mirrored the fundamentals of life. It was exactly what he'd learned from Coach Wooden. In Coach Wooden's eyes, the basketball player had thirty lives a year, one for each game. Every game had its ups and downs, thrills, joys, pain, and challenges, and each ultimately ended in victory or defeat. But it was always
how
you played the game, the character you showed, that mattered to both men.

Kenny had played for Coach Wooden as a sixth player on his first two championship teams in '64 and '65, so he knew how to come off the bench and still play with heart. He learned that you could want something with every fiber of your being without allowing that desire to consume you and affect your better judgment.

But just as Kenny Washington wasn't a starter for Papa Wooden, he wasn't about to let me, a freshman, start for him now. “I'm thinking of bringing you off the bench as a sixth player, Annie,” Coach Kenny said at the start of the season.

“What? Why?” I was shocked. He knew I'd played on the USA Team, that I was the first woman to ever get a full ride to UCLA, and that I was his best player by a mile. But that didn't matter to Coach Kenny. As frustrated as he knew I was, there was no way I'd get special treatment. I'd have to earn it.

The first big game was at Long Beach. I was #15. I hated coming off the bench, but I was still playing my heart out. I was pretty fast and an aggressive defender, good at positioning. I saw myself as a smaller version of David, capable of playing with great intensity on both ends of the floor. That night, however, the official kept calling fouls on me for reaching. They were phantom calls, in my opinion, but it didn't matter. She was calling what she thought she saw.

The official's name was Rosie Adams, and I knew her very well. In fact, my whole family knew Rosie, and loved her. She'd played AAU with Patty and me, and she hadn't been long out of Cal State Fullerton herself where she had played college ball with Patty. But none of that mattered to me now.

At a pivotal point towards the end of the game, I'd collected four fouls. I was playing defense, and the offensive player with the ball beat me getting to the basket. I reached around to knock the ball away and was called for my fifth foul. Angry and frustrated, I was a pressure-cooker about to blow now that the chef had cranked the setting too high. The ball happened to come back to me. As Rosie lifted her hands to call a foul on #15, I rifled the ball at her gut, knocking the wind straight out of her. She couldn't have been more than five feet away. I was like a bull seeing red, and all I could see were black and white pinstripes, not our friend Rosie.

She doubled over and tried to say something, but couldn't.

From the stands I heard my mom's voice echoing against the one already yelling inside my head. “Annie, what did you do?”

Even though I was still incredibly angry, I looked up, searching for my mom's face, hoping I could telegraph my regret, hoping she'd let me know, instantly, that she understood, as she had so many times before when I'd broken something expensive horsing around at home or accidentally kicked someone while going for a punt. Instead what I saw was a combination of confusion and embarrassment.