University of Georgia Athletics
‘We Played Because We Loved It’
February 10, 2019 | Women's Basketball, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
During a break in the action in the second quarter Sunday at Stegeman Coliseum, a group of important women took the court to be recognized. All they saw before them — the fans, the facilities, the Final Four banners — follows a through line back to what they did 50 years before.
Lined up in a row, their names were called and the Georgia women's basketball crowd, already energized by a dominating performance against Florida, robustly cheered for the ladies and their accomplishments.
Fifty years before the Lady Bulldogs smashed the Gators, 93-58, the Georgia women's basketball program didn't officially exist. The group of women recognized Sunday, they gave the game a pulse in Athens. And the passion and joy today's players exhibited on the court, that was there 50 years ago, too.
"Playing basketball is playing basketball —we played because we loved it and the team here plays because they love it," Rachel Benator, now an ophthalmologist in Salt Lake City, said Saturday when the 1969 team attended Georgia's practice.
Georgia's first official season of women's basketball came in 1973-74: coached by Flossie M. Love and playing nothing but in-state teams like Mercer and Berry and North Georgia, that team went 3-13. But that wasn't really the beginning.
In 1969, Jean Dowell coached a group of young women at Georgia to a 2-2 record. The squad of 13 players was formed via a tryout at the old women's P.E. building. Signs were taped up advertising the tryout and about 50 Georgia students, Gail Johnson said, showed up to try to make what was described as an intercollegiate women's basketball team.
Johnson grew up near Atlanta, in East Point, and had started playing basketball when she was 12. She said she went on to score more than 2,000 points in her prep career, including one 67-point game.
"I went to college and had no intentions of playing," Johnson said Saturday, "but you played that much and I missed it. So when I saw the sign for the tryouts, I went."
She went, made the team and was the only player, according to the records she's found, to participate in all four seasons of that original iteration of the team.
That was 50 years ago, and 11 of the women that played on that first team reunited in Athens this weekend, along with their coach, Dowell. On Saturday morning they gathered in the Lady Bulldogs' practice gym, most not having seen each other since they were teammates, and hugged and laughed and watched with interest as Georgia worked for more than 90 minutes.
"This is awesome," Benator said.
Looking around Georgia's beautiful and modern practice facility, Dowell was very impressed.
"You can be in awe, actually," she said. "I keep thinking how far women's athletics has progressed."
Dowell grew up in North Carolina, like so many before and after her, loving the game of basketball. When she got to Western Carolina as an undergraduate student, she found it had no women's basketball team. She began asking anyone who would listen, why not? By the time she was a senior, a team had been formed.
"I had a good year, but it was the only year I had," she said.
Dowell then coached at a high school in North Carolina before deciding to come to Georgia for graduate school. Again, she asked why there wasn't a team. Again she was persistent. Again, a team was formed — only this time she was asked to be the coach.
"It took a lot of talking and persuasion to do it, and once we had the team we only had four games that first year," Dowell said, adding that it was hard to find opponents to play against because so few schools in the region had teams.
Dowell only coached the Georgia team one season before going on to a very successful coaching career at Mount St. Joseph's in Ohio, leading the team to the 1992 NAIA Final Four and ending her career with a record of 342-164. The gym where her teams at Mount St. Joseph's played now bears her name.
"The game has gotten faster, more entertaining, I guess you would say, but I always preferred a fast-paced game," she said Saturday as the Lady Bulldogs went up and down the court in the fast pace that coach Joni Taylor likes.
"My teams never were allowed to walk the ball up the court. I told them to push the ball up the court. If you walk the ball up the court, the other team is resting while you are, too."
After Georgia's win Sunday, Taylor said she was thankful that the 1969 team came back to Athens for its reunion and that her players were able to meet and interact with their predecessors.
"They were telling our ladies yesterday how they went and bought shirts and ironed on numbers, I mean things that are unheard of," Taylor said. "Our kids don't even know what iron-on numbers were. Just the things that we can sometimes forget and take for granted and just, really, you talk about someone just paving the way for you to be sitting in the seat that you're in now, and they were so excited to be around us and to be around our girls, and I was so excited to be in their presence because we can just learn so much."
The reunion came about because Johnson, a very proud Georgia graduate (wearing a Terry College of Business button), is "a bulldog" when she sets her mind to something. After helping put together a high school reunion last year, it occurred to her that maybe a 50th reunion for that 1969 basketball team at Georgia might be a good idea.
What followed, she said, was an almost endless stream of emails and phone calls. A woman who helped her track down fellow high school classmates, Johnson's "super sleuth," managed to find a few of her former teammates that she hadn't located, but three more remained missing.
"Then, my ace in the hole was a retired FBI investigator, and he came up with two more.," Johnson said, laughing.
In the end, all but one of the players were found and contacted, and 11 were able to come back to Athens for the reunion.
"The enthusiasm from the group motivated me so well because they really embraced it and they wanted to be a part of it," Johnson said.
Dowell was persistent in getting a women's basketball team at Georgia. Johnson was persistent in trying to find her former teammates and getting everyone together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that 1969 team.
"I didn't think anyone remembered that we had a team, I thought it was lost to history," Benator said. "So the fact that we're being recognized, it's just really fun."
For Taylor, what Dowell did offers a valuable lesson for her Lady Bulldogs.
"When Jean got here and there was no team and she was told no, she could've just stopped, but no," Taylor said. "She just kept knocking on doors until somebody finally said yes, and you've got to be persistent in the pursuit of what it is you want to do when it's the right thing, and what better lesson and role model than that 1969 team?"
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.