What's The Racquet?

Note: The following is a chapter from the 2017 book Unknown, Untold, and Unbelievable Stories About IU Sports from Indiana University Press. For more information about the book, please visit here.

***

Indiana University Athletics' Henke Hall of Champions houses relics from some of the most memorable accomplishments in Hoosier sports.

Many NCAA Championship teams and individuals are commemorated, as are past Hoosier Olympians. There are uniforms, game programs, trophies and mementos that highlight the school's biggest names and teams.

Almost all of the items remind Hoosier fans about stories they either personally witnessed or heard about from previous generations.

There is, though, one exception.

There's an encasement that requires a closer look and further explanation. It holds a 1980 Wilson Ultra Graphite tennis racquet and Nike tennis shoes from the same era. The commemorative plaque notes both were used by Heather (Crowe) Conner when she won the AIAW national singles championship and led IU to the 1982 AIAW team title.

Those words illicit three questions from most visitors.

Who's Heather Conner?

What's the AIAW?

Why haven't I ever heard of her or it before?

***

While there have been many better known accomplishments by Indiana University athletes over the years, Heather Crowe's 1982 season—which included a national singles and team championship and a run at the U.S. Open—remains one of the great individual performances ever by an IU athlete.

As far as the first query, Conner is the most accomplished of a plethora of decorated protégés of legendary IU Tennis Coach Lin Loring. The winningest coach in the history of women's collegiate tennis with 846 wins over the course of 44 years, Loring recruited Conner when she was a standout junior player from Masconomet H.S. just outside of Boston in 1980.

At the time, Loring was in just his third season at IU and a long way from being able to pick and choose any player he wanted to bring to Bloomington. Conner, meanwhile, had visions of escaping the cold weather in the Northeast.

"Being from Massachusetts and having to play indoors, my goal was to go to a school I could be outdoors all year," Conner said.

But Indiana reached out, and good fortune came Loring's way. As a top-100 national recruit, Loring connected with Conner about visiting his program. While her national ranking put her on IU's radar, the fact she was ranked in the 70s, according to Loring, helped keep the Hoosiers in contention.

"Her ranking was high enough (in the 70s) that the Floridas and the Stanfords weren't going after her," said Loring, who retired in early 2017 after 40 years at the helm of the IU program. "So we didn't have to compete with them."

Loring convinced Conner to visit the Bloomington campus, and she and her mother made the trip to Bloomington. It was a trip, though, that nearly didn't come to fruition due to a near miss in the airport.

On the final leg of their trip from Boston, they looked at the list of departures, located one destined for Bloomington, and made their way to the gate and onto the plane. Seated and ready for take-off, the flight attendant announced they were ready to close the doors and depart . . . for Bloomington, Illinois.

"We freaked out," Conner said. "We jumped up and got out."

They got off the plane, and found the correct flight headed to the Monroe County Airport in Bloomington, Indiana. That flight had its own issues as they traveled on a small plane on a very icy night, but a safe landing and a great visit convinced Conner that Loring and IU was the right fit.

Loring knew he was getting a good player when Conner committed, but he quickly learned he was getting a great one.

The strengths on the court were quickly obvious. A left-hander, Conner had a good slice serve and was "quick as a cat" according to Loring. While she didn't overpower opponents with one big shot, she was excellent at the net and solid on both the forehand and backhand sides.

"She didn't have a weakness," Loring said. "You really had to beat her—she didn't beat herself."

Those attributes were enhanced by a work ethic that frankly can't be duplicated these days.

Today, NCAA rules permit student-athletes no more than 20 hours/week in competition or practice while they are in season. Such restrictions were non-existent in the early 1980s, and Conner made every effort to maximize her time on the court.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she scheduled her classes to start at 7:30 a.m., and on Tuesdays and Thursdays they began at 8 a.m. A Business School student, Conner managed to finish her classes before noon each day, giving her the entire afternoon to train.

A typical day would involve spending an hour working one-on-one with Loring, departing for an hour, and then returning for the team's regularly-scheduled afternoon practice.

"I knew she was going to be great because of how hard she worked," Loring said. "With that type of work ethic, I knew the sky was the limit."

She quickly emerged as the team's No. 1 player as a freshman, which was no small feat considering All-Americans Tina McCall and Bev Ramser both returned from the 1979 squad. She was a mainstay at the top of the Hoosiers' lineup for the next four years, ultimately compiling a 130–33 record in singles and a 104–23 mark in doubles. She earned All-Big Ten honors four times, All-America honors twice, and was tabbed as the Big Ten's Player of the Year three years.

While Conner's accomplishments each season were significant, it was the 1982 season that stands out.

After a dominant regular season individually and as a team, Indiana entered the national championship event in Iowa City, Iowa, as one of the team favorites. Loring's squad rolled through the team competition, ultimately knocking off second-seeded Cal-Berkeley 6–3 to claim Indiana University's first-ever—and to date only—national women's team championship.

Conner remembers the team celebration at the hotel lounge that evening.

"This is 1982, so they had a juke box, and we all went down and were dancing to (Kool and the Gang's) Celebration," Conner said. "We were all going crazy. But I'm also thinking we're starting the individual competition the next morning."

Conner had visions of adding an individual singles championship to the team title, and was considered one of the top contenders. But the pre-tourney favorite for the title was top-seeded Vickie Nelson from Rollins College. Ultimately, Conner and Nelson met in the final, with Conner winning, 7–5, 6–2.

Now 35 years removed from that victory, Conner still remembers many of the match's details. She says Nelson wore down opponents with her consistency from the baseline, and Conner knew she had to do something other than try to match her from the baseline.

"I came to the net a lot, tried to rush her," Conner recalls. "I kept the ball low, used a lot of slice, used my left (handed) angles. That was huge."

It was a gameplan that was put together in large part by Loring, whom Conner credits a great deal for helping her win that match and the title.

"I learned this a lot when I was playing professionally—a coach really can make a big difference," Conner said. "I had some talent and ability, and I was driven and motivated and all of that is great, but you need all the pieces to come together. He really added that piece, especially in that match. He probably played a bigger role in that match than any match I ever played."

When the match ended, Conner can still remember Loring running out and giving her a hug as they celebrated the individual title to go along with the team crown.

"It was awesome and there was definitely some (feelings of) I can't believe it," Conner said.

But it was true—she'd won the national championship. The AIAW national championship.

But what was the AIAW?

***

AIAW is an acronym for Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which was founded in 1971 and was the primary governing body for intercollegiate women's athletics during the 1970s and early 1980s. While the NCAA oversaw men's sports on college campuses, it showed very little interest in being involved with women's sports during that era.

That created an opportunity, one that the AIAW seized for the better part of a decade.

"(The AIAW) was all about opportunity for women," said Mary Ann Rohleder, who served as IU Athletics' Senior Women Administrator before retiring in 2010. "It was big schools, small schools, it was a come one, come all type of organization."

During the 1970s, women's intercollegiate athletics was in the initial stages of gaining widespread acceptance. Previously, athletic opportunities for females was negligible if not non-existent on most college campuses. The only avenue was generally via club sports under schools' Departments of Physical Education. At the time, women's teams were very rarely part of the intercollegiate athletic departments.

That began to change in the 1970s, and happened in conjunction with the passage of a critical piece of legislation—the Education Amendments Act of 1972. That federal law included a component that would ultimately have an immeasurable impact on women's athletics—Title IX.

Title IX stated that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis in sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." While the law didn't specifically address the disparity in opportunities in collegiate athletics based on gender, public universities realized it could—and most likely would—be interpreted to do so.

As a result, athletic departments slowly began fielding women's sports teams as part of their intercollegiate athletic programs. While there remained a large disparity in terms of scholarships and overall funding for the women's sports relative to the men, it was a significant step in the growth of women's athletics.

The next big change happened in 1979. The Federal Government's Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was fielding a host of complaints alleging gender discrimination by public university's athletic departments across the country. That prompted the department to release an interpretation of Title IX in regards to how it related to intercollegiate athletics. The interpretation was designed to provide guidance to intercollegiate athletic programs in what they needed to do to be compliant with the law.

That interpretation, according to Rohleder, is "what really got the ball rolling" for women's sports.

Among the noteworthy items were that athletic departments needed to offer scholarships in a way that was commensurate with the proportion of student-athletes by gender. Equal treatment was also required in areas such as equipment, travel, staff salaries, facilities and support services.

HEW's interpretation made it clear that the days of women's intercollegiate athletics being an afterthought relative to the men were coming to an end.

The impact of that statement would also have consequences for the AIAW.

***

Before HEW's interpretation, athletic departments were doing little to provide significant financial support to women's sports and the NCAA had little interest in having any involvement. But as the tide began to turn, the NCAA started showing interest in offering women's sports championships.

While the NCAA might have expected women's programs to welcome the opportunity to make the switch from the AIAW, that wasn't the case. There were a series of contentious debates on the subject. Often times athletic directors and university presidents faced stiff resistance from within their own institutions, as women's coaches and newly-added women's administrators questioned the motivations and sincerity of the NCAA's new-found interest in women's athletics.

"For the women, it wasn't all about money," Rohleder said. "It was about opportunity. With the NCAA, I think the women were skeptical that now (the NCAA) saw some money in it, wanted that, and also wanted control."

Rohleder and Loring also knew that if the NCAA did begin offering women's championships they would be in direct competition with the AIAW's tournaments, and the consequences for the AIAW would most likely be dire.

In the end, the NCAA decided it would offer women's championships beginning in the 1981–82 season. In an effort to try to convince schools to compete in the inaugural NCAA women's championship competitions, the governing body hired Occidental College's Ruth Berkey away from the AIAW and tabbed her to head its championships events.

In addition to that move, both Loring and Rohleder said the NCAA wasn't shy about strong-arming other important powerbrokers if necessary to enhance its chances of taking control of women's intercollegiate athletics quickly.

"The NCAA did a power move," Loring said. "Up until then, the good old boys didn't want a thing to do with women's athletics. Then it became politically correct to support women's athletics.

"My understanding at the time was the NCAA went to ABC, NBC and CBS, and said if you give (TV) contracts to the AIAW (to broadcast any of its games), you won't be broadcasting any NCAA Basketball."

NBC did cancel its exclusive deal to televise AIAW championship events in 1982, a move that came as the NCAA began offering women's championship events.

Rohleder isn't entirely sure of what tactics the NCAA used to ultimately gain control of women's athletics, but she knows it had plenty of means to influence the decision makers at the institutions.

"(The NCAA) was very powerful," Rohleder said. "The NCAA had all the power and the AIAW had none. The AIAW was formed out of a need. Then, the NCAA decided it wanted (women's athletics). I'm not sure of all the hammers it wielded, but it was strong arming the (athletic directors)."

Ultimately, both the NCAA and the AIAW offered women's championship events during the 1981–82 season, and teams could participate in one or both. While many schools did take the opportunity to compete in two national championship events, Indiana's women's tennis program only participated in the AIAW event.

That decision came as no disappointment or surprise to Loring.

Leanne Grotke, who had overseen the transition of women's sports at IU moving from the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation to the athletic department, had served as IU's Coordinator of Women's Athletics and Director of Women's Sports from 1972–79. A pioneer in the growth of women's athletics at IU and nationally, she also served as the Commissioner of Large College Championships for the AIAW.

That made it a no brainer which championship Indiana would compete in.

"It was kind of understood that we were going to play in the AIAW and not the NCAAs," Loring said.

While the label of AIAW champion might not carry the same cache that NCAA champion does in this day and age, Loring says there is no asterisk by either the Hoosiers' team championship or Conner's individual crown. In the team competition, he said approximately three-quarters of the women's tennis programs competed in both events in 1982.

In the individual competitions, Nelson was the No. 1 seed in both tournaments, and went on to earn a spot in the Wimbledon field later that summer.

"Heather had a lot of good matches at No. 1 (in the AIAW team tournament competition) going in, and there isn't a lousy No. 1 when you get to nationals," Loring said. "So she was playing some good tennis and was one of the favorites. But it was still an upset. I don't think anyone thought anybody could beat Vickie Nelson."

But Conner did just that, capping a magical season that included a program-record 39 dual match wins to go along with the AIAW individual and team championships.

Ultimately, those would prove to be the final AIAW tennis championships awarded to either a team or individual, as the governing body folded on June 30, 1982. It filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NCAA alleging the NCAA used its monopoly power in men's sports to push the AIAW out of business in women's sports, but it lost the case and ultimately any chance of staying afloat.

"The AIAW died overnight," Loring said. "The AIAW went from the only people in town who cared about women's athletics to literally out of business in six months."

Loring understood that in the long run, the move to the NCAA could create new opportunities for women's athletics. But that realization didn't completely offset the disappointment in how it unfolded.

"The NCAA was going to bring more resources to the table, but the way it happened was really bad," Loring said. "But it was the good ole boys making a power move. They had all the money, and they had the sports that TV really wanted, which was football and basketball."

***

With the death of the AIAW, Indiana began competing in the NCAA Championships in 1983. Loring's teams qualified for the NCAA Tennis Championship event 23 times, including 12 straight times from 1987–98. Making Loring's run of success even more impressive was that 10 of those trips came during the 1983–95 era when the NCAA women's tennis tournament field included only 16 teams (1983–87) or 20 teams (1988–95).

While his 40-year run at IU was littered with All-America players and magical seasons, no year would ever rival 1982, and no player would ever match Conner in terms of individual success.

Conner's success, meanwhile, didn't end with her AIAW title. First, her national title earned her a spot on the U.S. Junior Federation Cup team. A strong showing on that squad, coupled with some solid results in a handful of summer tournaments, ultimately helped her land a wild card entry into the 1982 U.S. Open.

While the trip to Flushing Meadows, N.Y., for the year's final Grand Slam event was a significant step up from the competition she'd faced at the collegiate level, Conner said she wasn't intimidated.

"There was something inside of me—I was confident," Conner said. "I didn't have any problem once I was in the tournament feeling like I could win anything."

Conner did make some significant noise at the Open. After opening with a 6–1, 6–1 win over Stacy Margolin in the first round, she ousted fellow American Barbara Hallquist 7–6, 1–6, 7–6 to advance to the Round of 32. There, she met 16th-seeded Zina Garrison on Center Court.

After playing in front of little more than family and friends throughout her collegiate career at IU, her match against Garrison took place at 18,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium. And as the match went along, the attendance grew.

"The match didn't start with that many in the stands, but as they put the scores up, the crowd kept growing," Conner said. "It was exciting, and I was hyped up. I didn't realize I enjoyed playing in front of a lot of people, but there was an energy that I really enjoyed."

It was a closely contested, back-and-forth match. One point sticks out for Conner more than any other in the third-round match-up. Garrison hit an approach shot to Conner's backhand and followed it into the net. Conner wound up and fired a backhand passing shot for a winner.

But the ball wasn't the only thing headed to Garrison's side of the court. Conner said when she was frustrated with her play during a match, she had a tendency to hit her racket either on her foot or her leg. She had seen no signs that she had damaged her racket before the passing shot, but in the immediate aftermath of it, she realized she had.

"The ball whipped by her, and at the same time my racket split in two," said Conner. "I was still holding the handle after the shot, and the racket was flying up toward her, kind of like a baseball bat breaking.

"People were clapping and cheering, but it was so embarrassing to have to walk up there and pick up my racket."

After that point, Conner said things began to slip away, and she eventually lost the third-round match 6–2, 7–5.

A three-time All-American at IU, Crowe's professional career was cut short due to a series of injuries. She did, though, compete in all four majors, highlighted by her run to the Round 32 at the 1982 U.S. Open.

While her U.S. Open run came to an end, it was still a remarkable accomplishment for a college player to reach the final 32 at a Grand Slam event. Loring says to the best of his knowledge no active college player has equaled that feat since 1982.

After that performance, Conner said she toyed with the idea of not returning to IU, but ultimately decided to put her professional career on hold.

"During the summer, I had a lot of offers thrown at me," Conner said. "An agent wanted me to turn pro. Someone else wanted me to transfer to their school on the West Coast. I had all those thoughts in my head, along with whether or not to come back to IU.

"But I knew getting a good education was important, and I knew once you turn pro, it's not easy to go back and finish. So I thought about it, but I decided to come back and get my degree."

Conner did earn her business degree, and after an injury-riddled senior season turned professional. She climbed as high as No. 223 in the world singles rankings and 96th in doubles in 1987 before injuries forced her to retire soon afterwards.

"I feel a little bad for her because what she did in 1982 is one of the greatest accomplishments by an IU athlete ever that no one really knows about," Loring said. "No one really knew about it because there wasn't the Internet or social media. But she was really Lilly King before there was Lilly King."

King, as most sports fans know, won Olympic gold in both the 100-meter breaststroke and the 4x-100-meter medley relay at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio shortly after the conclusion of her freshman year at IU. Her performance catapulted her from a relative unknown to one of the best-known swimmers in the world.

While the Internet and social media has something to do with that, so does the fact that women's sports enjoy a much greater platform than it did in 1982 when Conner was excelling on a national level without the same fanfare.

"It's the nature of the beast—no one cared (in 1982), unfortunately," Rohleder said. "At least no one unless they were directly involved in it. That's too bad, because (Conner's success in 1982) is every bit the accomplishment of anything any other IU athlete has achieved, but no one knows about it."

***

IU Athletics took strides to be sure that people would learn about Conner's accomplishments when it completed its North End Zone Facility in 2009. That project—which involved enclosing the north end of Memorial Stadium—included the construction of the Henke Hall of Champions as a special event location. Featured in it are museum-type pieces from IU's storied past—including Conner's racket and shoes.

Conner said she was contacted by IU Athletics staff when they were assembling memorabilia, and she was flattered. That flattery, though, was off-set by a fear that she might not have any souvenirs from her 1982 season.

"I didn't have a clue if I had anything, and I'm thinking what am I going to do?" Conner said.

Fortunately, Conner said she's a bit of packrat, and she said she did a bit of digging and located the racket as well as the shoes hidden away in a cardboard box.

"I never had any intention of wearing the shoes or playing with the racket because they were so outdated," Conner said. "I was shocked when I started digging around and found them. I thought they'd be perfect."

IU agreed, and the items are prominently displayed alongside other pieces that tell stories of other great past accomplishments by Hoosier athletes and coaches. Conner returned to Bloomington for a 2016 tennis reunion and saw her items on display for the first time, which she admits was special.

While her racket and shoes are just one of a number of items on display in the museum space, that type of notoriety felt a bit unusual for an athlete who grew up in a time when there was little or no attention paid to women's athletes or athletics.

"I grew up in an environment when people only went to watch the guys," Conner said. "But that didn't faze me. I felt I was always going to go out and try to do what I was going to do.

"If no one knew about it, it didn't matter."

It does now.

Indiana University Athletics

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