Forgotten Pioneers
If it were a movie script, it would be rejected for being outlandishly hokey. But it really happened.
Imagine a small university deep in the Mississippi Delta deciding to field a women's basketball team for the first time in 42 years. In its second year on the court, the team, whose starters are all Mississippi natives, wins a national championship. Then it wins two more in a row.
For three years running in the mid-70's, Delta State was the best women's basketball team in the country. In 1974, Delta, located in Cleveland, Mississippi, a small town of 15,000, decided to bring back women's basketball. The sport had been dropped in 1932 because it was considered not fit for ladies.
Out Of Nowhere
A Delta State physical education teacher named Margaret Wade was persuaded to be the coach. Wade, who had been a member of the 1932 Delta State women's team, had been a successful high school coach in Cleveland, but had never coached at the college level. Her first year, the team went 16-2. The next year, 1975, the Lady Statesmen didn't lose a game, beating three-time defending champion Immaculata in the championship. Although they didn't go undefeated the following two years, they won two more championships.
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Darlings Of The Delta
Brock, who was under five feet tall, was an archetypal point guard. The daughter of a high school boys coach, she had grown up around the game, and could bring the ball up court with aplomb or play withering defense, whatever her team needed.
Van Boeckman, now known by her married name, Smith, was a sharpshooter. "There were no three pointers then," says Smith. "I wish there had been. That would have been my range."
When they began to win, the Lady Statesmen became the "darlings of the Delta," says Don Skelton, who was assistant athletic director at the time. "It just sort of happened," said Skelton, who is now Delta Stat's director of alumni affairs. "We had no idea it would end up where it did. Women's basketball became the social event. They would fill the Coliseum up, four and five thousand people."
Normally, the women's home games were played at 6 PM, with the men's following at 9 PM. When fans began to leave after the first game, the school switched the order, having the men play first.
They did all this in the mid-1970s, before Title IX increased funding for women's sports, in a state that is famous for being football-crazy. "When you're number 1, people are gonna back you," Skelton says.
When the run was over, the five went on with their lives. Several tried to play in the fledgling Women's Basketball League, but it was too early, and nothing came of it. Smith and Harris are teachers. Brock helps her father on his farm outside Jackson, Mississippi.
They are happy to see the strides the women's game has taken. "We helped pave the way," says Brock. "It should have been that way all along."
Brock has a message to pass along too: "If you talk to Wanda," she says with a laugh, "remind her that the point guard is the most important player on the team."
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