It’s gone time for the 1982 Cheney State College Woman Wolves to get their due

On the Girls’s Basketball Corridor of Fame ceremony in Knoxville, TN final weekend, the 1982 Cheney State College Woman Wolves had been honored with the “Trailblazers of the Recreation” award, celebrated for his or her 42-year-old accomplishment alongside inductees Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Rita Gail Easterling, Violet Palmer, Sue Phillips and Roonie Scovel.

The ladies’s basketball staff from the nation’s oldest HBCU defied all the chances and made all of it the best way to the inaugural NCAA girls’s nationwide title sport in 1982. Although they misplaced to Louisiana Tech 76-62, they solidified a spot in historical past, though, since then, that place in historical past too lengthy has been uncared for.

The staff, comprised of eight highschool All-Individuals and led by legendary head coach C. Vivian Stringer, epitomized the position of the underdog. They had been a small Division II faculty that performed in a small fitness center with only a few sources. Stringer additionally wasn’t in a position to present her gamers with scholarship cash. They could not have been wealthy, however they had been wealthy with expertise. Led by the exploits of Valerie Walker, Yolanda Laney, Religion Wilds and Debra Walker, the Woman Wolves went 28-3 whereas taking part in in opposition to Division I groups. They’d go on to beat their opponents at dwelling by a median margin of 40 factors. All of the whereas, Stringer often was tending to her 14-month-old daughter Nina, who has hospitalized with spinal meningitis.

Cheyney State was driving excessive on a 19-game profitable streak when the first-ever NCAA girls’s event started. Within the event, they finally defeated Auburn, NC State and Kansas State. They then bested Maryland within the Last 4 earlier than their nationwide championship sport matchup with Louisiana Tech. Though defeated, the Woman Wolves made historical past by turning into the primary and solely HBCU to succeed in the ladies’s Last 4 and nationwide title sport.

In an ideal world, this story could be frequent data amongst sports activities fanatics and historians, however, sadly, like a lot of Black historical past and ladies’s basketball historical past, it has largely been erased. However as Debra Walker instructed Swish Attraction in a telephone interview, she and her teammates, who had been reunited in Knoxville for the ceremony, will look to go even greater to make sure that their story isn’t once more missed.

“We wish to get in Naismith (Basketball Corridor of Fame),” she stated. “We are attempting to get the story pushed out. It gave us a way that we have now to get the story out.” She cites the latest surge in recognition of girls’s basketball as the right time to reap the benefits of all obtainable alternatives to share their journey.

The story of the Cheney State College Woman Wolves of 1982 is the sort that many sports activities followers declare to like: an epic story of the underdog. It’s one thing that Walker needs to see as a catalyst for an appreciation of the ladies’s sport—previous, current and future.

“I need everyone to recollect we will carry one another up,” she stated. “For the sport to have grown the best way it has grown, if you happen to come to observe the video games keep some time. Everyone has a narrative and everyone’s story must be elevated to ensure that the sport to develop. You bought to carry up the little woman who can’t dribble the ball, however likes to play.”