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| BREAKING THROUGH SERIES 2020
RUNNING
THE FLOOR
Women’s basketball coach Margie McDonald paved the way for Cowgirls’ success
Margie McDonald crouches on the side of the court while coaching a UW women’s basketball game. She coached the Cowgirls for nine years, posting a 122-114 record. Margie McDonald coaches the University of Wyoming women’s basketball team in this undated photo. McDonald served as the second coach in the program’s history. COURTESY PHOTOS, UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING
SALLY ANN SHURMUR
H
307-266-0520, sallyann.shurmur@trib.com
er copper hair was cut in a Dorothy Hamill before the Olympic figure skating champion became a household name in 1976. Her honey-smooth accent, honed in Camargo, Oklahoma, and Plainview, Texas, is unmistakable in a huddle or on the radio. Margie McDonald is a pioneer. Her path was not a dusty trail in her native Oklahoma or adopted Wyoming, but on a gleaming hardwood, as a player before Title IX and as a coach after the landmark decision giving women equal athletic opportunity. With three kids in school, McDonald returned to the classroom at the University of Wyoming to earn her master’s in
physical education. When Title IX was adopted as part of the Federal Education Act of 1972, one of the PE teachers at UW was charged with putting together an organized basketball team. McDonald began her successful nine-year coaching career three years later, the second coach in program history. “I am really proud that I got to give the first female an athletic scholarship to Wyoming and that was to Dale Ann Feusner of Powell,” she said recently. The state Legislature appropriated money to fund the women’s program and McDonald coached her first game for the Cowgirls on January 18, 1975. There were 15 games on the schedule that season. While playing for the nationally renowned Flying Queens at Wayland Bap-
tist University in Plainview, McDonald and her teammates flew to away games on private planes. More than a decade later, the Cowgirls began their history driving in three station wagons to away games — one driven by McDonald and two driven by student-athletes. McDonald did the team’s laundry, carried the basketballs in the back of her car and had to take a class so that she could properly tape the ankles, knees and wrists of her players. Feusner, now Dale Ann Meeker, still refers to McDonald as “Coach,” 45 years
after enrolling at UW. “I had to give a speech at Soroptimist last week, and most of it was about Coach,” Meeker said. “When she recruited me until now, what I loved about her was she was a tremendous example of combining a demanding career, marriage and motherhood.” Meeker got engaged and married while playing at UW and says she never considered what Coach would say. “She was very supportive and was super supportive of (my husband) Mike and tried to include him in any way she could,” Meeker said. “He became part of our team, he got himself a really nice camera and became the team photographer and became one of our No. 1 fans.” Meeker said her coach was a true leader and that you could tell just by being around her that she was a “take charge” type of person. “She made us feel like we were a big deal. She made us feel like what we were doing was just as important as anything the men were doing,” Meeker said. “I remember when she signed Cindy Bower from Worland and me, she made us go to these different functions. She paraded us around and made us dress up. ...
