DATE: Sunday, July 13, 1997                 TAG: 9707130225

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

FROM WEARING GOOFY TENNIS DRESSES TO BASKETBALL BIGTIME

Maura McHugh enjoyed an outstanding basketball career at Old Dominion University, though you would be hard-pressed to find any trace of it, even so much as a line of statistics or a box score, in the school's official records.

McHugh represents the hardy breed of pre-historic basketball pioneers who played for ODU in the early '70s, before it occurred to anyone to keep statistics for women's games. There are no media guides to serve as guides to those early days.

As a result, the chronicle of these athletic accomplishments is lost but for the rich oral history recounted over the years around campfires that women like McHugh have kept burning for their sport.

Last week, after she was named coach of the American Basketball League's newest team, the Long Beach (Calif.) StingRays, McHugh was asked about her days at ODU. She recalled scoring 30 points against East Carolina at Scope. Her memory may be the only lasting record.

McHugh played between 1971 and '75 with other forgotten forerunners like Juanita Etheridge and Cindy Russo. In its latest media guide, ODU offers a listing of year-by-year Lady Monarch starting lineups. But the record began two years after McHugh graduated college magna cum laude.

``Some people,'' McHugh said, ``can't believe the way it was when I was playing.''

So, then, this is the way it was:

Maura McHugh moved to Virginia Beach with her family when she was in the 10th grade. She had just made the girls varsity basketball team at her Connecticut high school, only to discover that Cox High did not offer the sport.

She played rec ball instead. At ODU, she walked on for the team. In those days, everybody walked on for the women's team.

For their trouble, those who made the squad had the privilege of paying for their own equipment - shoes, socks, even the uniforms. McHugh laughs, recalling the uniforms.

``They were like tennis dresses,'' she said. ``Goofy looking tennis dresses.''

Think women's athletics hasn't come a long way? This all took place just 25 years ago. And at ODU, which would soon be in the forefront of progress for women's sports. Between her junior and senior seasons, McHugh experienced the change; she received ODU's first women's basketball scholarship, which means one of the nation's first.

After leaving ODU with the highest grade point average of any graduating student-athlete, McHugh enrolled at Penn State for a master's degree and her first coaching experience. Then it was on to the University of Oklahoma, where she built a Top 20 program. By the time she moved to Arizona State, McHugh had earned a reputation as a keen tactician.

But, then, after six seasons in Tempe, she quit. Frustrations with what she saw as the school's lack of financial commitment to the program drove her out of the sport. For the past four years, she's served as executive director of the Business Council For Alcohol Education in Phoenix, Ariz.

``I made up my mind,'' she says, ``that if I ever got back into basketball it would have to be the right situation.''

The ABL, she believes, is that. It is the women's basketball league that plays a 44-game schedule during the actual basketball season, unlike the summertime WNBA, which sometimes appears to be the creation of the NBA and NBC publicity machines.

For McHugh, 44, the ABL is ``the thing you dreamed of when you were young and you played basketball with boys on the playground, just hoping to become a better player.''

For women, the game has always been about hope.

``There was a time,'' said McHugh, ``when I thought we'd never have pro women's basketball in time for me to be a part of it.''

Now she is. The one-time resident of Virginia Beach, where her parents still live, reports that her new home - Long Beach - ``is very psyched up about this team.''

She's come a long way from those goofy tennis dresses.

Of women's basketball, McHugh says, ``I've seen the lows and now I'm seeing the highs. It's been quite a metamorphosis.''

For herself and the game. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Maura McHugh

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