Last April, in Dallas, Texas, South Carolina’s women’s basketball team did something it had never done before: win a national championship.
Tens of thousands of fans watched with bated breath as the Gamecocks battled Mississippi State. Media outlets from across the country wrote thousands of words about Dawn Staley and her team. And at the end of the day, Staley and her players hoisted the trophy, cut down the nets and came home to a parade in their honor.
Forty-six years ago, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, another South Carolina women’s basketball team did something no other one had done before.