THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602090002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
Only 11 women have been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., and two of them were former Old Dominion University athletes.
The first was Anne Donovan, voted into the hall a year ago.
This week, Nancy Lieberman-Cline, 37, learned that she, too, had been so honored.
Lieberman-Cline's passing and ball-handling skills were years ahead of her time. While a 17-year-old member of the 1976 Olympic team, which won a silver medal, she was dubbed ``Lady Magic''
Like another Magic, she drew ooohs and aaahs from the stands with no-look passes and behind-the-back dribbles. Back when many women still played women's basketball, she played basketball, period.
Donovan said one of her biggest reasons for attending ODU was Lieberman-Cline.
``Her flair for the game, her pure enjoyment of it, I had never seen another player like that when I was in high school,'' Donovan said. ``She was so intense and demanding.''
Lieberman-Cline led the Lady Monarchs to consecutive national championships in 1979 and 1980, as ODU led the way to big-time women's athletics. She was a three-time All-American and won the Broderick Cup, the annual award to the top woman's collegiate athlete in the nation.
``As a player she took the game to a new level of excitement and skill that hadn't been displayed before,'' said Marianne Stanley, her ODU coach.
Lieberman-Cline made history as the first woman to play with a men's professional team, the Springfield Fame of the United States Basketball League.
She lives in Dallas, where she runs a sports marketing company. She and her husband have an 18-month-old son.
Together, Lieberman-Cline and ODU were pioneers of women's basketball. Their success is evident in the large number of nationally televised women's-basketball games today. by CNB