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Moore inducted into Hall of Fame

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Posted: Saturday October 02, 1999 05:58 PM

In 24 seasons of coaching, Moore (center) compiled a 436-196 record. AP

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) -- First is an adjective that naturally tags along with Billie Moore's name: The first woman's coach to win national championships at two schools, Cal State-Fullerton and UCLA. The coach of the first U.S. Olympic women's basketball team.

But first there was a small town in Kansas in the 1950s and a father who tripled as high school principal and coach of the boys and girls basketball teams.

"I was very fortunate. It was such a small town that I didn't know girls weren't supposed to compete," said Moore, recalling her path from Westmoreland, Kan., to Friday's induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But when the family moved to Topeka, there were no sports for girls in the high school.

"Girls were supposed to play for social purposes," the 56-year-old Moore said. "But, by that time the idea of playing to win was too ingrained in me for any of that to take."

She has done her share of winning.

In 24 seasons of coaching, Moore compiled a 436-196 record. She led Cal State-Fullerton to the AIAW national title in 1970, and then won the 1978 title with a UCLA team that included Hall of Famers Ann Meyers and Denise Curry.

As a rookie college coach, she already was giving coaching clinics, because that was also the first year colleges abandoned the half-court women's game, and Moore had grown up playing boys' rules.

"One woman actually asked me how you get the ball from one end of the court to the other," she said. "It gave me a bit of an edge."

While she revels in the growth of the game and the attention the WNBA has brought to it, Moore also has some cautions.

"The women's collegiate game has to be careful with all the recruiting and attention paid to the athletes that they do not end up spoiled and pampered," she said. "Sometimes people think they are on third base when they are only on first."

Her own barometer of the growth of the game is the contrast between the millions of dollars and attention devoted to the 1996 Olympic team, and her unheralded 1976 squad, which first turned the national television spotlight on women's basketball with its silver medal.

The team, including Meyers, fellow Hall of Famers Anne Donovan and Nancy Lieberman and Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, had six weeks to train, often playing high school boys teams.

And when the women left for Montreal, Moore had $500 in cash and the personal credit card of Bill Wall, the head of the organization running the national team, to cover the team's expenses.

 

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