Margie McDonald

RUNNING THE FLOOR

Women’s basketball coach Margie McDonald paved the way for Cowgirls’ success

SALLY ANN SHURMUR

307-266-0520, sallyann.shurmur@trib.com

Her 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 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

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 Baptist 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 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.

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 di erent functions. She paraded us around and made us dress up. ...

There were bankers and lots of important people there, people I suppose you would call boosters today.”

Meeker followed in her coach’s footsteps, graduating from UW with an elementary education degree in 1979. After a year in Canada where her husband was a geologist, they returned to Powell, where she taught middle school PE for 33 years — same job, same office she laughs. She coached basketball for 21 years, 15 of those at her alma mater, Powell High.

“Even after I retired, I continued coaching middle school track,” she said. “This is my 38th year. I’m old school and I can’t believe those kids keep coming back because I believe in accountability. Coach was certainly a blessing in my life, definitely a great example in all the things she’s done and she’s just a humble person.”

McDonald scoffed when asked if she realized that she was making history when the Cowgirls first took the court.

“Of course not, you just live one day at a time and take care of everything that comes up,” she said. “It really felt good to have all of these young women who were athletes and had a passion for the sport. Some of them had played a little bit in high school and almost all were in PE and education and it was a pleasure just to be able to coach them.”

McDonald posted a record of 122-114 in her nine years coaching the Cowgirls. The 1978-79 squad, with Meeker and three other starters from Wyoming, went 25-7, still the second-most wins ever in a single season at Wyoming.

After her coaching career, McDonald became the first executive director of the High Country Athletic Conference, which later merged with the Western Athletic Conference. She then served as deputy commissioner of the WAC and closed out her administrative career as coordinator of women’s basketball officiating for the Mountain West Conference.

“That was the hardest job I ever did,” she said. “You have to evaluate, talk to the coaches about referees, it was very difficult.”

After six years, then-Wyoming head women’s coach Joe Legerski thought McDonald should give color commentary a try on Cowgirl radio broadcasts. She served in that capacity for 15 years, retiring Jan. 1 of this year.

The early years

McDonald has received honors throughout her playing, coaching and administrative days, but the one that means the most to her is the newest Margie McDonald coaches the Cowgirls in this undated photo. She began her time as coach in 1975.

UW women’s basketball coach Margie McDonald calls a game with UW broadcaster Reece Monaco. McDonald was a pioneer in women’s sports in Wyoming.

and oldest at the same time. She is a member of the University of Wyoming Athletics Hall of Fame, inducted individually in 2002 and with her 1978-79 team in 2008. She is also a member of the now-defunct Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame, based in Casper.

In September 2019, she and other former players representing the Wayland Baptist University women’s basketball teams of 1948-82 were inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

“Coach (Harley J.) Redin turned 100 in August and oh, we worked on getting in there a long time for him,” she said.

McDonald, then Margie Hunt, played 3-on-3 basketball in Camargo, and Redin wasn’t so sure she’d fit with his Flying Queens program. WBU won 131 consecutive games from 1953-58 and 10 AAU national championships from 1954 to 1975. McDonald graduated from WBU in 1964.

“My mom and daddy took me in the car to Plainview for a tryout and to meet him, and he said he really couldn’t give me a scholarship because I didn’t know how to shoot, but he said he could tell I had a sense for the game. And he said if I could pay for one semester, he’d see how I might improve,” McDonald said.

Hunt’s dad had to get a bank loan to pay for her first semester, which McDonald remembers as “not cheap at a private religious school.”

But “Coach Redin really pushed me,” she recalled, and she did indeed earn a scholarship.

While working in a cafe in Vici, Oklahoma, the summer after her sophomore year at WBU, Hunt met Lyman McDonald, who was working at his uncle’s grain elevator on summer break from Oklahoma State University.

The two married after college and after she returned from the women’s world basketball tournament in Lima, Peru. After several stops while they began their family and Lyman earned his doctorate at CSU, the family moved for the first time to Laramie, and would return again after a brief stint at Kansas State, returning “for good” when McDonald’s time as deputy commissioner of the WAC ended.

The future

Her husband left academia after decades in professorships in statistics and zoology at UW to begin Western Ecosystems Technology, which is a research firm dealing mostly with fish and wildlife and has offices all over the country. When Lyman decided to retire from the business world in December 2019, McDonald knew that was her signal to step away from the headset.

“We have three children (all of whom are UW graduates) and nine grandchildren and I can’t tell you how proud I am of them all,” she said. “It’s time to spend time with them, travel, and stand up and cheer for the Cowgirls from the stands. It’s been a long time, but now I can cheer again for them instead of just talk about them.”

Women’s and girls’ athletics have come a long way in Wyoming since January 1975. The Cowgirls basketball team flies to away games, sometimes even by charter (fewer long layovers, fewer missed classes). There are managers and trainers and others to make arrangements, do the laundry and the taping. Today, women at the University of Wyoming compete in volleyball, soccer, cross country, basketball, golf, swimming and diving, tennis, and track and field.

There are still struggles. It took years to get enough local school boards to approve competitive high school softball in their districts. Finally, the sport has been sanctioned by the Wyoming High School Activities Association and girls will be allowed to play for their high schools starting in spring 2021.

“I thought Wyoming really stepped up for women’s athletics back in the day,” McDonald said. “Of course, it was hard all over the country, but the Legislature appropriated the funds and we got scholarships and travel and salaries and the whole nine yards. There are not any disadvantages to being a woman in Wyoming. Only advantages.”