By Dylan Butler
Gail Marquis was once again the center of attention as she held court at Fitzgerald Gymnasium Saturday night.
But the former Queens College standout traded in her high tops for high heels to emcee a reunion of the women’s basketball teams from 1968-81 when the Lady Knights enjoyed unprecedented success.
The St. Albans native who went on to win an Olympic silver medal in 1976 was one of several former players to join their coach, Lucille Kyvallos, to celebrate a groundbreaking era of women’s basketball, dubbed the “Era of Excellence.”
“I knew I was going to emcee,” said Marquis, who had her jersey retired at Queens College. “Unless you got (former lead singer of the Band) Robbie Robertson here I was going to emcee it, just to make sure they got their acknowledgment, the players and the coaches.”
The ceremony, which took place at halftime of the current women’s basketball team’s game against C.W. Post, involved two years of planning, according to Barbara Riccardi, who played for Queens from 1970-74.
The wheels began moving when Riccardi, Marquis and several other players were there to see Kyvallos get inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000.
“Today I put in some old music from my college days and I felt overwhelmed,” said Maggie Hilgenberg, who helped organize the event with Marquis and Riccardi. “It’s been like a nostalgia trip for the last year.”
Before the dominance of Connecticut or Tennessee, there was Queens College, which consistently ranked in the nation’s top 10 from 1972-78, including a second-place finish in 1973.
In front of a packed house at Fitzgerald Gymnasium Queens beat top-ranked Immaculata College in 1974 and a year later the Lady Knights became the first women’s team to play at Madison Square Garden.
“We drew thousands of people to the college, which, in the history of women’s basketball, was unheard of,” Riccardi said. “We were extremely successful, and the media, including television and radio, were just starting to pay attention.”
According to Richard “Doc” Wettan, who has been the athletic director at Queens College since 1977, those women’s basketball teams not only paved the way for future women’s basketball teams but also helped shape the athletic department to this day.
“By being such a great team it helped us push the whole program to a different level,” Wettan said. “It just brings back memories.”
While it was especially thrilling to see many of her former players, Kyvallos also said she enjoyed watching the current crop of women’s basketball players during the first half of their New York Collegiate Athletic Conference game against C.W. Post.
“They’re playing some good defense and they have a lot of good offensive moves, and I remember spending a lot of time trying to teach these moves,” said Kyvallos, a hard-nosed Astoria native who attended Bryant High School. “We still have a way to go on the college level, but I’m very happy with the way they’re handling themselves.”
Women’s basketball has come a long way from her first few years as a coach, when the uniform consisted of dresses and the players were expected to play with femininity.
“We started in an era where girls and women were non-athletes when people would say, ‘Oh, you throw just like a girl,” Kyvallos said. “I grew up on a street with all boys and I learned the skills and I knew if I learned them I could teach them and that’s what we did.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by email at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
