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Janice Dziuk looks for an open teammate.
Deana Giles-Sullivan’s days as a TCU women’s basketball player were the best of times and, yes, the worst of times.
It’s funny how those two things often coincide.
But the pickin’s were slim for the program in those early days.
Fran Garmon
The coach, Fran Garmon, shared an office with the men’s basketball program. She had essentially no budget to recruit and even less to feed the troops on road trips.
“After Baylor [driving back from Waco], she would say, ‘OK, we’re going to stop by McDonald's, and you get a cheeseburger, but you can't get a Quarter Pounder with cheese,’” Giles-Sullivan recalled during a phone conversation. “It was a very tight budget because it was her money.”
Her money?
“Yes, she was spending her own money. She seriously probably had a per diem for of maybe a $100 for all of us on an overnight road trip.”
Clearly, there was not a nutritionist on staff, with all due respect to the heirs of Ray Kroc.
Can you imagine a college athlete — any college athlete — tolerating such austerity and simplicity in this day? What are we — monks? Pfft.
The soldiers on the socials can swing their swords over whether yesteryear was a better day, but, for TCU women’s basketball, today is clearly a better day.
The TCU women’s basketball team is in Birmingham, Alabama, for a Sweet 16 showdown against No. 8 Notre Dame in a Sweet 16 showdown in the NCAA Tournament.
The No. 6 Horned Frogs (33-3) — led by coach Mark Campbell and a really nice team built around the nucleus of Hailey Van Lith, Sedona Prince, and Madison Conner — and Irish (28-5) meet in a rematch at noon on Saturday. Earlier this season, the Frogs defeated Notre Dame at the Cayman Islands Classic.
The game will be televised on WFAA/Ch. 8 locally. Both are vying for a spot among the women’s Final Four April 4 in Tampa, Florida.
No team in TCU history — men or women — has advanced this far in the NCAA Tournament.
You would certainly grant a pardon to Giles-Sullivan if she expressed a little emotion. Or a lot.
“On Sunday, I cried like a baby,” Giles-Sullivan said of TCU’s victory over Louisville to advance to the Sweet 16. “I mean the whole Kim Kardashian ugly cry, all of it. I have cried every day since Sunday, and I thought, ‘OK, I can maybe make it through today.’”
She didn’t make it. More tears of joy.
Fran Garmon took over a TCU women’s program coming out of an NICU unit. The Frogs had just completed their first year in Division I when Garmon came in, in 1983.
Garmon was already quickly climbing the ladder as hall-of-fame caliber coach.
She had built a nationally recognized program at Temple Junior College, where she won 400 games and a national championship in 16 seasons. At Delta State, she won 75 games in four seasons and guided her team to the quarterfinals of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the highest national women’s tournament in those days.
Moreover, she won silver and gold as the head coach of the national team at the World University Games in 1979 and the Pan American Games in 1983.
Garmon’s pedigree and background in the game were unimpeachable. However, she was starting with nothing and had very little help adding to it as those first years passed by.
In TCU’s inaugural season at Division I, the women went 5-23 under coach Kenneth Davis. (Not that K.D. This was the non-Temple Tornado.)
“We’ve got a long way to go to get this program off the floor mat,” she said at the time. “I can’t imagine how it feels to lose 23 games in a season.”
Over the next 10 seasons, Garmon’s TCU teams lost more than 20 games six times, including 24 in 1991-92. The Frogs finished higher than eighth in the Southwest Conference only twice — a tie for seventh in 1987-88 and a tie for fifth in 1989-90.
“Kudos for her for sticking it out as long as she did," said Janice Dziuk (that’s “Juke” for all you non-Polish speakers), a TCU and Southwest Conference Hall of Famer from Poth, Texas, who was Garmon’s best player during her tenure at TCU from 1986-90.
Yes, those Frogs teams took their lumps, but they also set the foundation for today, right?
“It’s funny that you asked that,” Dzuik said. “I was watching the game [Sunday] and [Garmon] calls me around halftime. She's says, ‘Your teams laid the foundation for this.’ I said, ‘Yes, I kind of get that feeling,’ but it's hard to put yourself in that position because it was so long ago. But, yes, we started something way back when we first got this thing rolling.
“They didn't have the financial backing that they do now, but eventually it got there and as long as they kept getting better every year. But it was kind of a surreal thing just to share that with my coach who was there from those years I played. That's always special.”
Texas, then a women’s basketball powerhouse, had unlimited resources compared to TCU. The Lady Longhorns won eight consecutive SWC championships between 1983-90 and made seven Elite Eight appearances during that same span, and advanced to the Final Four in 1986 and 1987. They won the national championship in 1986.
“We just didn't have the things that the men had and much more than anybody else in the league,” said Dziuk. “And it was frustrating at times, but we stuck it out. We knew we were going to get a great education from a fantastic school, so we just hoped that we started something that maybe down the road could reap the benefits.”
The Longhorns had All-Americans dotting the roster. They also had three assistants, Dziuk remembered.
At TCU, Fran had one assistant and that person was a volunteer. Dziuk said during her time there, the program had one volunteer and a graduate assistant. After finishing her eligibility, Dziuk, too, was a graduate assistant.
“This is a true statement: There were just two of us, and she's says to me [one day] ‘I’ve got to go out and recruit.’ I'm a G.A. wet behind the ears and having to run practice with the kids because that's all we had. So, I was like, ‘Good luck [with the recruiting trip]. Give me a whistle. Let's go.’”
The women did have one advantage over the men: practice time. The teams shared a practice facility. The men wanted to go first, which meant the women’s practice didn’t start until around 5 each day. By the time practice ended, campus dining rooms were closed.
The women ate at Colonial Cafeteria on Berry Street.
“Coach Garmon had worked out a deal there,” Giles-Sullivan said.
Things didn’t really start to turn around for the women until the coaching regimes of Mike Petersen and Jeff Mittie, who took TCU to the first of its now 10 NCAA appearances, in 2001.
To get there and here now took some work and the patience of Jane Eyre. TCU’s administration not only stuck it out but began making investments that are paying off in success at the national level.
It’s led to exposure for the school, and immense pride in basketball alums.
And happy tears.
Said Dziuk: “I'm just so freaking excited for them. I'm beyond proud. I'm like the proud mama. It's been a long time coming for this level that we've all wanted for TCU.”
