(For this year’s second installment of The Reporter’s summer mini-series “Where are they now?”, Rockdale alum Liz Galloway-McQuitter talks about what she’s been up to following her state tourney run as coach of the Lady Tigers.)
People from Rockdale know who Liz Galloway-McQuitter is. They know that she played professional basketball. People also know that she came back to her hometown and guided the Lady Tiger basketball team to a state tournament in 2015, the program’s first since 1972 when she played for her alma mater.
What many people around town don’t know is what she’s been up to since her historic run leading the Blue-and-Gold.
Initially, the Rockdale native and resident never planned on coaching again.
However, that changed
when her former player Kerrie Patterson-Brown, the Founder of Legacy School of Sport Sciences, came calling. This led to Galloway-McQuitter leading the Lady Titans to two straight Catholic League championships.
Before steering Legacy towards a pair of titles, she was inducted in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in June of 2018, which tilted her towards her latest mission: Educating the world on the impact of the Women’s Professional Basketball League (knowns as the WBL), which existed from 1978-1981.
She played for the Chicago Hustle during the league’s existence and other former notable players from the league include celebrated Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw and Nancy Lieberman, an analyst for ESPN and was an assistant for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings for three seasons. She sees the league as a primary building block to the modern era of women’s basketball.
Looking back at the organization’s significance and realizing many people didn’t even know her former league ever existed, she foun started Legends of the Ball Inc., a dation devoted to promoting the historic and social relevance of the WBL.
“A lot of people didn’t know about the impact of the Women’s Basketball League and what all came from it,” she said. “All of the great history and it contributed to much of women’s basketball history now.”
“Out of that historic league came two-thousand years worth of coaching,” she added. “Our era changed the trajectory of women’s basketball. It’s not known.”
In her time with her foundation, she has tracked down all sorts of information to indicate the social relevance the league has in modern basketball.
For example, the 28.5-inch basketball that is used in the WNBA and women’s basketball leagues around the world made it’s debut in the WBL.
Galloway-McQuitter said Wilson, the company that was the first to make the ball, didn’t believe them when she contacted them for the original blueprints.
Similar to her time coaching in Rockdale, she started to see an impact with the work her foundation has done.
After putting together fundraisers to help raise awareness of the league’s significance and gaining enough traction to get an exhibit at the same Hall of Fame she was inducted in four summers ago, organizations now come to her to find information about the past. Recently, ESPN was one of the big names that reached out for help on a project.
For 37 Words, a docu-series about the significance of Title IX, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which prohibits gender-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government, producers from the Disney-owned company went to Galloway-McQuitter while doing research for their film.
“The reason they came to us, is because we bared the history,” Galloway-McQuitter, who appears in three episodes, said. “We were the ones that went through it.”
“And me, from little old Rockdale, and a lot of other girls from places like Rockdale, we were what came from Title IX,” she added.
Through fundraising, Legend of the Ball Inc. also rewards scholarships around the country. This past school year, Rockdale High School graduates Kyra Miles and Karli Marburger were recipients.
ROCKDALE—Even with all of her accomplishments, she still sees herself as any other ordinary Rockdalian, and takes a lot of pride in that. The former Lady Tiger also speaks highly of her years coaching the Blue and-Gold.
“One of the greatest memories, and I’ve had some great memories, is going to state,” she said. “And what keeps my heart full, is hearing from my former players. Especially from my first few years when we were rebuilding the program. Those first years were so rewarding because everyone worked so hard. It was a pleasure to see the improvement over time.”
She is a 1972 graduate of Rockdale High School.
“What keeps my heart full, is hearing from my “ former players.”
Liz Galloway-McQuitter
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