As we begin Women’s History Month, it’s appropriate enough that female athletes in Fort Worth, as well as across North Texas, are cementing their own places on hallowed hardwood floors, hoisting trophies and cutting nets at all levels of the sport.
Most proximally, and recently, TCU women’s basketball secured the first Big 12 regular season women’s championship in program history and the first conference title in 20 years on Sunday night in the final game of the regular season against Baylor in Waco. It was the first time ever the conference’s title has been decided in such a game, and the contest didn’t disappoint. Sedona Prince, who I’ve previously written is the difference between a good team and a title contender, added yet another double-double with 16 points and a staggering 19 rebounds. TCU shot 35% from both the field and beyond the three-point line on their way to a 51-48 victory. These Frogs have lost only three games on the season and were ranked 10th in the AP poll going into Sunday’s de facto championship game. They’ll be the top seed in the conference tournament and are a projected 3 seed as of now, which means they’ll turn their home court — which they’ve faltered on only once this season — into an opening-round host site for a group of four. An aggressive transfer acquisition strategy from Head Coach Mark Campbell has morphed these Frogs from a below-average group into a title contender in one offseason, and fans are loving it.
Northbound on I-35 is home to another group of ballers — the Pioneers from Texas Woman’s University — who are top-ranked nationally in both the media and coaches’ polls for Division II. TWU’s athletics are most commonly recognized for their outstanding gymnastics team, who have won a record 11 championships in the USA Gymnastics collegiate division since 1993. Pioneer athletics have never captured an NCAA championship (they have several from different associations before those women’s sports were incorporated into the NCAA), but their basketballers fell just short last season during their championship game against Minnesota State. Texas Woman’s won a school record 34 games during their title run last year but had lost four games by the end of their regular season. This year’s evolution is currently 28-1 as they prepare for the Lone Star Conference Championship that begins on Thursday in Frisco. The team’s only blemish came at UT-Tyler, and the squad bounced back by winning 22 consecutive games to date. As fantastically as our hometown team is playing, the Dentonites have the most legitimate chance to hoist an NCAA hoops championship of any team in DFW, women or men.
Speaking of Pioneers, the UIL girls basketball state championships concluded this past weekend in San Antonio, and another trailblazing group — the Boswell Pioneers — secured the school’s first girls basketball state championship by defeating Fort Bend Hightower 51-42. Boswell, who was second-ranked, defeated three other ranked squads during their playoff run and brought home the 6A Division II state title. W.E. Boswell opened in 1962 and is part of the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District, but the title represents the first girls hoops win at that level for a Fort Worth-based school since Dunbar captured the title in 2007.
In an even stranger sequence of events, we’re discussing Denton again, as the Raiders from Billy Ryan High School captured the 5A Division I title this past weekend as well. Denton-Ryan is accustomed to athletic accomplishments — their football team has won three state titles this century — but the weird part is that this group went from district contender all the way to state champion and never received a state ranking. The Raiders’ seven regular-season losses came either against larger 6A schools (including an 8-point loss to fellow state champion Boswell) or other squads with state rankings. The underdog Raiders dashed their playoff competition by an average margin of 16 points per game, including an 11-point championship-game win against top-ranked San Antonio Wagner.
Head Coach Monesha Allen is responsible for leading the first girls basketball squad in Denton ISD history to even win a regional championship (the ISD began in 1882, and Denton-Ryan — the second high school in the district — opened in 1998), let alone a state title. Allen was the coach of the Denton High School Broncos for six years before moving over to coach the Raiders in 2002-2003 and has led the program since.
A hotbed for, well, everything, DFW is also becoming an epicenter of women’s basketball at all levels. As the already-popular sport grows, we’ll be lucky to claim we knew them before many of these high school and collegiate players join the professional and Olympic ranks, continuing to lay claim to new firsts as they dominate on courts nation- and worldwide.
Photo courtesy of Jason Harrison
For TCU Women’s Basketball Head Coach Mark Campbell, last season probably felt like the early days of women’s intercollegiate basketball. Read more about that in Tipping Off Women’s History Month in Sports Rush.
