Cindy Brogdon makes a point to watch Caitlin Clark play just about every time the Iowa basketball superstar is lighting it up on television. She marvels at the excellence of her game.
“She has perfect form, and her shooting technique and her range are just phenomenal,” Brogdon said.
Brogdon also feels something else as Clark and her peers shatter TV viewership and attendance records for women’s college basketball. She takes satisfaction in knowing that she had a significant hand in making it happen.
“Oh, yeah,” Brogdon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a phone call Thursday. “When I watch a game, it’s like, ‘You know what? I was there in the beginning.’”
Brogdon, a retired educator who coached and taught at Riverwood, Centennial and Northview high schools in north Fulton County, was more than just present at the start, when Title IX opened doors for girls and women to compete in sports in the 1970s.
She was a dominant figure. More knowledgeable followers of the women’s game and Georgia high-school basketball know her as a legendary player who was a three-time All-American at Tennessee and Mercer, a silver medalist for the U.S. women’s team in the 1976 Olympics (the first for which women’s basketball was a medal sport) and, before that, a three-time state champion at Greater Atlanta Christian.
In fact, you could even say Clark is a basketball descendant of Brogdon’s. When Clark broke the NCAA women’s college scoring record in February, she accepted the baton that Brogdon once held.
At Mercer, where she became the first Georgia female athlete to receive a full athletic college scholarship, and later at Tennessee, she scored 3,204 points to finish her career as the all-time leading scorer in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which preceded the NCAA’s adoption of women’s athletics in the early 1980s.
The logo 3-pointers that have become Clark’s signature? In a time before courts actually had logos (or 3-point arcs), they also were a staple of Brogdon’s game with the Lady Vols.
“She could stretch a defense almost to half-court,” the late Pat Summitt, Brogdon’s coach and Olympic teammate, once said of Brogdon’s range.
Brogdon, a health-minded 67, has stories to tell. Born and raised in Buford, she grew up idolizing “Pistol” Pete Maravich when he starred with the Hawks, wearing his No. 44 and taking to the court in his floppy socks. Her long-range game was honed on a hoop in her backyard that stood between two pecan trees.
(Now living in Suwanee, she still sometimes drives by and can attest that the trees are still there, though the goal is not.)
Brogdon remembers how, at Tennessee, the Lady Vols drove to road games in vans with Summitt at the wheel. Beyond her role as coach and driver, Summitt also washed the team’s uniforms.
“Kids now, they would look at you like you had three eyes” if they had to operate under those conditions, Brogdon said. But, she added, competing without amenities that college athletes now take for granted was not a hindrance.
“It didn’t matter back then because it’s like, ‘Holy moly, this is the most awesome experience I’ve ever had,’” Brogdon said.
Brogdon has been duly acknowledged. She is a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame and the National High School Hall of Fame, among others. The 1976 U.S. Olympic team (of which she was the second youngest player on the roster, having completed her freshman year at Mercer) was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in August.
But the contributions that she and fellow pioneers made are worth at least another mention, particularly as Clark lifts the game even higher. Brogdon recalled Olympic coach Billie Moore, before her death in 2022, telling her former players that whether female athletes today know their names, they laid the foundation.
“I truly feel that,” Brogdon said. “I feel very honored.”
There are elements of the game now that she isn’t crazy about, such as the increased focus on the business aspect and players being less coachable than they once were. But she is glad for the opportunities and privileges that female players now enjoy. By comparison, her last attempt at playing professionally, in 1986 at the age of 29, was in a league that folded before it played its first game.
“I see things, how they’ve progressed and it’s the most wonderful thing for athletes,” Brogdon said. “Back then, we didn’t have social media. And now, the exposure that these girls are getting — I don’t care whether it’s basketball, soccer, whatever women’s sports they’re playing — you’ve got opportunities now. Back then, we didn’t have opportunities.”
That most certainly applies to Clark, whose name, image and likeness deals include Nike, Gatorade and State Farm. News broke this week that she has been offered $5 million to play in a 3-on-3 league filled with former NBA players that was founded by hip-hop mogul Ice Cube. Her Hawkeyes will play in a Sweet 16 game against Colorado televised nationally Saturday afternoon on ABC. On online secondary ticket markets, seats were going for more than $1,100 as of Thursday.
“She’s really put women’s sports on the map on a different level,” Brogdon said. “I think she’s the real deal now. And it’s good to see that, especially for these younger players to see that, ‘You know what? I can do that.’”
For that, they have Clark to thank. And Clark, and a long line of athletes before her, can share their gratitude with a retired physical-education teacher from Buford who once could fill the basket from long range.
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