40 years later, Cheyney pride in its historic NCAA Tournament run is strong as ever

Debra Walker said she doesn’t think about the game often, but this time of year tends to make the memories come back.

Forty years ago, Walker and her Cheyney State Lady Wolves teammates played in the first NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship game – a buzzsaw of a Louisiana Tech team the only reason there’s no championship banner hanging inside the gymnasium at Cope Hall on the tiny campus that straddles Chester and Delaware counties.

The Lady Wolves carried a 23-game winning streak into that title matchup in Norfolk, Va., where more than 9,000 fans in a sold-out arena – and a national television audience on CBS – watched a 76-62 Louisiana Tech win.

“We didn’t know we were making history,” C. Vivian Stringer said Saturday.

At the moment, how could they? There was the aspect of being first, the first time women’s basketball was sanctioned and recognized by the NCAA. But Cheyney State College – which it was called then, now Cheyney University – was having a run of success under Stringer. The Lady Wolves had already appeared in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (the previous governing body) tournament in the previous two seasons. And they would go on to make the NCAA Sweet 16 in 1983 and head back to the Final Four again in 1984, after Stringer left to coach at Iowa.

In the decades that followed, power balances shifted. Schools like Cheyney State, the oldest of the Historically Black College and Universities, and Immaculata – the private school in East Whiteland that dominated women’s hoops in the 1970s – no longer even compete in Division I basketball, and there were real concerns about the viability of Cheyney as a school as recently as 2019.

The women’s game, meanwhile, has grown in popularity. Stringer has helped that happen. But the school that gave her a coaching start in 1971 still has a record to boast about.

» READ MORE: Temple’s 2012 upset over Duke could be the final Big 5 win against Coach K

The 1982 Lady Wolves remain the only HBCU to play for a NCAA Division I basketball championship, men’s or women’s, and the ‘82 and ‘84 teams are the only HBCUs to make a Final Four.

That feat, and the players, coaches, and others that made it possible, were celebrated Saturday afternoon inside Cope Hall’s gym, where banners showcasing the basketball success of the 1970s and ‘80s under Stringer and men’s coach John Chaney hang.

A few hundred people gathered there to recognize the women. Local politicians issued proclamations, cheerleaders recalled their excitement, administrators thanked all of those who made it possible and marked March 28 Lady Wolves Day at Cheyney, players shared their favorite memories, and Stringer, now 74 and still coaching at Rutgers, got the microphone last.

“No one will ever know what it meant and what it means to be a Lady Wolf,” she said. “This team is my heart. It’s really my heart. I’m grateful to be able to celebrate this. There are no words to express what you’ve meant to me.”

“We’re finally celebrating ourselves,” Walker, who graduated in ‘83, said after the ceremony. “We never celebrated after the game.”

There was little reason for celebration at the time. Cheyney trailed the ‘82 final by 14 at the half and never recovered. Players like Yolanda Laney, an All-American who later sent her daughter -- WNBA All-Star Betnijah Laney -- to play for Stringer at Rutgers, weren’t graduating and had more memories to make on the court. The Lady Wolves went back to the Final Four in 1984, but lost to Tennessee in the semifinals, 80-71.

Years passed, the dynamics changed, and the 1982 team never got the celebration many felt it deserved. Then Kyle Adams took over the women’s program, then a Division II team, in 2013. He had watched the 1982 game as a little kid with his grandmother, a Cheyney grad in the 1940s. Adams said he wanted to figure out a way to recognize the school’s historic basketball team to the women who were at the school today.

“They needed to know they are connected to greatness,” Adams said.

Stringer is now the most recognizable image of that greatness. She won her 1,000th game in 2018 after putting three more Final Four appearances on her resume. She entered the Hall of Fame in 2009, the same year Michael Jordan did. Stringer has had just five losing seasons in 50 years of collegiate coaching.

But in the 1970s and ‘80s, it was hard to tell what would eventually follow. Back then it was Stringer leading a successful women’s team and Chaney leading the men (1972-82).

» READ MORE: Casual Jay Wright gets mixed reviews, but he loves it | Mike Jensen

“She was our leader,” Walker said of Stringer. “We had our ups and downs sometimes but we learned. We grew up under her and coach Chaney.”

At the end of the Saturday celebration, two videos played. One was a message from Dawn Staley, thanking Stringer and the Lady Wolves for “paving the way for all of us to be successful.” The other was an old video of Chaney, who died in 2021, introducing Stringer at an event. “I liken you to one of God’s greatest creations … a tree,” Chaney told her.

Stringer watched the video and mouthed along, the words coming back like a memory that will never fade.