At 65, Atlanta coach oversees another project

ATLANTA — As a girl, Marynell Meadors honed her shooting by aiming her basketball at a net her dad fixed to a Tennessee weeping willow. If she missed, the ball would bounce into her mom's flower garden, and someone would get in big trouble.

She got good at nailing her target then and over the decades as she helped raise her sport to a national profile.

Today at 65, she could retire, but instead will coach her WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream, in its first regular season home game at Philips Arena. She's leading an expansion team in a young league during a tough economy, a pinnacle that just feels right.

In the long, ongoing struggle to get respect for her sport, then keep it for herself as she aged, Meadors relies on grit and tenderness. She won 363 games at Tennessee Tech, where she started women's teams with no money before Title IX. She fought for funding, and raised it herself behind a mean pound cake recipe that went fast at bake sales.

Her dream has been to make it easier for young women to follow her, a path tread by so many she can no longer know them all.

Daisy Dodd, 22, is one.

Growing up homeless in Atlanta, she had no dreams. She bounced among three high schools, and didn't graduate until age 20. She did have a 28-inch vertical leap and could grab a basketball rim with two hands.

Title IX — which in 1972 mandated equal access to college sports for women — has produced an eager market for young women like Dodd. She got a full ride to Tennessee Tech, the program Meadors built.

Dodd has a dream now: to be a probation officer, or someone who can help "kids who are off track get back on track."

This is the way pioneers of the sport hoped opportunity would work: Basketball would make stars of a few, and for many others, it would improve their lives and give them a chance to see dreams come true.

First came Marynell ...

"Don't let anything get in your way," Meadors has preached in her self-described hillbilly twang, across Atlanta in a series of public appearances since joining the Dream in November.

She was born into a blue-collar Nashville family during World War II, and watched every female relative work outside the home. The Meadors women also passed down their secrets of Southern cooking.

Outdoors, she grew up an only girl toughened by her brother and three boy cousins, all older.

"We were painting, and put some turpentine in a 7-Up bottle, and she drank some," recalled Dan Elder, 74, her oldest cousin. "We thought we had killed her."

She became a 5-foot-5 point guard and infielder who demanded respect, with the savvy to get it. When her city high school offered no girls teams, she "got real ornery" until her family moved to a county school that did.

At 21, she got her master's degree in teaching. Tennessee Tech offered her a $6,300 annual contract. Not wanting to jeopardize the job, she signed the contract before asking about women's sports. The college said she could coach "extramural" teams that would play other schools, but no funds were available. That's where the old family recipes paid off.

"We had three sports [basketball, volleyball and softball] and we were so proud," she says of the Golden Eagles, the seventh most-winning women's sports program in Division I. "We had bake sales and stitched the numbers to T-shirts, and look where it is today."

The push for Title IX, which in turn birthed today's WNBA players, came from believers like her.

"It took a lot of inner invincibility and volition," says Beth Bass, CEO of the Atlanta-based Women's Basketball Coaches Association. "Fame and fortune was nil, but they loved and believed what sports could do for young people, and young women especially."

Her midsize college's biggest rival became Tennessee, a powerhouse where janitors had to clean up players' vomit because coach Pat Summitt ran them so hard. Meadors, meanwhile, was low-key and nurturing.

"One of the most important things on my plate all the time is that they can be with me and I listen," she says of her players. "I told [Dream owner] Ron Terwilliger that this is not going to be like other WNBA teams. It will be close-knit and we will provide for them, first class for everything."

The growth claimed sacrifices, including a five-year marriage that broke up when she was 35 ("before there were stay-at-home husbands," she says).

Her players and staff became her family, and she raised them into coaches (Andy Landers at Georgia served as her graduate assistant), athletics directors and others who pushed women's sports into the spotlight.

Meadors left to coach at Florida State, where she notched her 500th win. While watching the U.S. women win Olympic gold in 1996 at the Georgia Dome, she overheard NBA commissioner David Stern talk of the WNBA.

I want in, she piped up, and ended up being one of the league's eight original coaches. Her reputation as a start-up strategist grew in Charlotte, Miami and Washington. She beat out younger coaches for the Atlanta job.

"I feel like I was put here on a mission," she says of creating opportunities in sports for the next generation of women.

That purpose is moving, fast now, into postscript. She says Atlanta will be her last career stop.

... And in her footsteps

Meadors' legacy of dedication thrives on the Tennessee Tech campus in Crossville, about three hours north of Atlanta.

She "got the most out of her players, even with a low budget," says Ed Jared, 73, who has followed the team since 1973. "She would have had a lot of wins even without Title IX."

As he spoke during a home game in February, Daisy Dodd stood near the home bench, passing out water and cheering on her team.

The seed that Meadors planted — that a woman's life could be radically improved by a chance in sports — is blossoming in Dodd.

Dodd's parents couldn't afford day care, so they dropped her off at a community center where the guys' pickup games welcomed girls if they could keep up. Dodd became a 5-foot-9 forward who could soar.

The family lived for a while, six of them, in a rent-by-the-week motel room. Then there were shelters. Dodd ran away, stowing her belongings in her school locker and rooming with basketball friends.

"I played to get away from home," Dodd says. "I didn't have any goals other than to just play. I didn't know what [NCAA] Division I, II, III meant. College was not a goal."

Dodd missed so much high school that her athletic eligibility ran out as a sophomore.

She joined the Georgia Metros, an elite team of teenagers who compete nationally. In the past 25 years, 350 Metros players have gone to college on scholarships.

"Like Daisy, the only way many of them had was through a basketball scholarship, and many of those will become the first in the families to earn a college degree," says Metros coach Charles Huddleston.

"This opportunity not only brightens our players' futures significantly, it also shines a beacon of hope for their younger siblings, nieces and nephews, showing them real proof that, despite the many obstacles they may face, if they work hard, they can achieve their dream of bettering their lives."

Dodd's performance in a national tournament and personal story impressed the Tennessee Tech recruiter, Stacie Childress.

"She's been through the most of any player I've seen," says Childress. "We know that backbone and heart go a long way."

Dodd's struggle continued in Tennessee, though, with injuries to her shoulder and knees that were so severe she could no longer play.

But because this sport for so long lacked any hope for homegrown pro careers, coaches tend to focus more on the reward of a college degree. Dodd is on track to get hers, her scholarship intact while she serves as the team manager. School officials helped her find a part-time job to cover other expenses.

"Marynell set the tone here," Childress says. "The biggest thing is to take care of these young ladies."

Tonight, Meadors puts herself on the line once again. All 10,039 seats at Philips are sold out, and her Dream will take aim at their hearts.

Michelle Hiskey writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.