COLUMBIA — Finding a seat at a South Carolina home women’s basketball game isn’t easy now. In 1975, it wasn’t easy for the team to get on the court.
The team had to reserve courts at the Blatt P.E. Center for practice and sometimes they could only get half a court. Most of the games were played there at the P.E. Center, but they did have a few inside the hallowed halls of the Carolina Coliseum which was the place to be for men’s basketball at that time.
Forty years ago, Martha Suber and Denise White were excited simply to put on a jersey with the occasional chance to play a game inside the Carolina Coliseum in front of a handful of people.
“When we first went in there, they had the tartan floor which made me think I could jump higher,” White said. “I can remember Frank McGuire being at some our games and sitting on the front row.”
Suber and White (formerly Denise Nanney) were among the first 18 women to receive athletics scholarships at South Carolina in 1975, three years after the passage of Title IX.
“I remember hearing my name called out over the loud speaker when we were in here,” Suber said while visiting the Carolina Coliseum recently. “That was a pretty big deal.”
Women’s basketball didn’t have the national appeal it enjoys today, and the crowds inside the Coliseum were “intimate,” to say the least.
“We knew everybody in the stands,” White said. “Some people’s parents would come. When we got to play at the Coliseum, let’s say before the boy’s game, then towards the end of our game people started coming in and it looked like we had a big crowd. Then there would be a band, and when we finished, the fight song was played, and I guess we felt like they were there for us.”
“I have a picture of Denise and I coming off the bench, getting ready to go into the game, and it happened to catch the stands behind us,” Suber said. “They were completely empty in that shot. I saw the record breaking crowds that they had last year. We’ve come a long way.”
Despite what might seem like hardships now, Suber and White are giddy in recalling their best memories.
“I absolutely loved it here,” White said. “For me to get to wear a Gamecock uniform, I just thought I was the best person in the state, being lucky enough to be a Gamecock.”
“The times with the team were the best part,” Suber said. “We had some really close bonds and we had an awful lot of fun. Being part of the team was the most fun to me.”
Putting it all into perspective
Donning a Gamecock uniform seemed like enough to fulfill a dream 40 years ago, but now White and Suber enjoy a clearer perspective on what it meant for women’s athletics to be taken seriously and to keep dreams alive for future generations of female athletes.
“I was really a part of something that is really big now,” Suber said. “To know that I had a place in that, it makes me feel good. I enjoy telling people the stories. It’s been one of the highlights of my life.”
“I felt really honored and really blessed to get it,” White said. “I never thought about us being the first ones and that it would mean anything. When we got the scholarships, we wanted to play really hard. We all went out there and played as hard as we could every game. There were other players who were here when we first got here. I think those people should be proud too.”
A common theme in hearing from members of the First 18 is that their experience at South Carolina paved the way for their future. White coached basketball at Dorman High School for 10 years and later coached softball at Murrells Inlet.
“Coach Frankie Porter was a big influence on me,” White said. “It had a 100 percent effect on what I wanted to. What’s carried over for me was perseverance. You never give up. Give it your all with everything that you do. There are other things in life, other than sports, where I’ve been able to apply that.”
Suber became a P.E. teacher and administrator and is currently an assistant principal in her hometown of Whitmire. She was asked to speak at the last minute at a high school graduation one year, so she used her experience at South Carolina in an impromptu speech.
“My slogan for that speech was ‘suit up, show up and work hard; you never know who might be watching,’” Suber said. “One of the stories I told was that I didn’t even know how to go out for the basketball team here. I was just shooting inside and outside, and this lady came up and asked if I was going to go out for the team. It was the former coach.”
White and Suber hope the student-athletes of today will appreciate the opportunities they now have.
“I tell high school athletes to just appreciate what you do have, especially with the coaching,” White said. “The weight training and conditioning that you get good information on, and all the extras they get here now, like eating from the training table and things like that – just be grateful for all the extras you get.”
“It was really hard for me for a lot of years to even watch a basketball game on TV, because I thought, gosh, we just came along a little too early,” Suber said. “If you’re coming along now, you have to be very good and dedicated from an early age, but the opportunities that are there are just so plentiful. They just need to be grateful for those opportunities because they weren’t there when we came along. It’s hard not to be a little bit angry about that, but I think I’ve grown past it.”