The recent success of the women’s basketball team solidifies the role of women’s sports at Elon.

By Tommy Hamzik ’17
Charlotte smith was in an arts and crafts store when a pair of scissors caught her eye. The golden scissors, as she calls them, reminded her of her time as a player and a coach under Sylvia Hatchell at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And in that moment, the scissors were the perfect symbol of the Elon University women’s basketball team’s own vision.
Smith, the head coach, purchased the scissors, which have a special meaning in the sport. Teams use them every year to cut down the nets after winning a championship, or advancing to the game’s grandest stage, the NCAA Tournament. That’s where she wanted to take Elon. The Phoenix hadn’t been there, and in 18 years as a Division I program had never won a conference title nor been to the NCAA Tournament. She wanted her players to be thinking about that, to be thirsting for that in each minute of practice and every second during games. So Smith went the extra mile, creating a shadow box that included the golden scissors and a photo of this year’s team. She placed it inside the film room, where she’d nitpick the details of each game with her players, where everyone could see.

The success was a culmination of Smith’s vision for the program since she arrived from Chapel Hill six years ago and, in particular, the work of this experienced, driven team that bought into all of what Smith said, right down to her philosophy of focusing on defense and rebounding. On a grander scale, the team’s success was also the result of the great lengths pioneers of the sport went through decades ago to bring women’s athletics to Elon. “There’s a saying, ‘Without a vision, the people perish,’” Smith says. “You have to have a vision. You have to have goals. You have to constantly remind yourself of those. It was really cool to see it all come to fruition.”
Humble beginnings
Janie P. Brown, professor emerita of physical education, understands that all too well. She was the director of intramurals when she first arrived at Elon in the 1960s, when there weren’t very many women on the faculty and no opportunities for women’s athletics at the varsity level. She remembers Elon and other schools in the area hosting “Sport Days” and “Play Days,” where they’d either divide all the women up into different teams and compete in sports like volleyball, basketball or tennis, or compete interscholastically.

The early teams faced their share of struggles. They didn’t have uniforms, but, according to Brown, one of the players had a sewing machine in her room, so they sewed numbers on the back of T-shirts for uniforms. The track team loaned them their warm-up shirts. The team drove their own cars to games, and packed their own bagged lunches. One year, when the team desperately needed leather basketballs, Yow told her players to ask for leather basketballs for Christmas. They did, and all returned to Elon with a new collection of basketballs. “When I think about how far we have come since that time, it’s amazing,” Brown says. “I’m grateful that I’ve gotten to see that process.”

Brown received the Daniels-Danieley Award in 1995, and the Elon Medallion in 2006 while also endowing the Dr. Janie P. Brown Women’s Athletic Scholarship. She serves on the board of directors of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and is a staple at athletic events on campus to this day. Each year, before the season, she invites the women’s basketball team to her home for dinner. She gets teary-eyed thinking about the success this year’s team had. She says the teams that helped create women’s athletics at Elon dreamt big, but never could have imagined this day. “We were just happy to have teams, a conference to play in, uniforms to play in and to be recognized on campus,” she says. “To think that we have been able to succeed in all of these sports ever since then, it’s very exciting for me to see that. It makes me smile.”
Laying the foundation

Elon was impressive in the early going, playing Wake Forest, UNC and Duke tight while beating Rutgers and Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer at home in November. The Phoenix played a competitive schedule with those teams and a season opener against perennial mid-major power Green Bay. When CAA play began, the Phoenix was regularly appearing in national mid-major polls and rising up in the Ratings Percentage Index, one of the tools used by the NCAA Selection Committee to evaluate teams. Elon was excelling particularly both on defense and on the boards, Smith’s two areas of emphasis. Since she arrived at Elon, she’s been preaching that defense and rebounding are the two keys to the game that a team can control. This group bought in, and the results showed.

Elon won the CAA title at home, sending its seniors off from Alumni Gym in ideal fashion, but had one last hurdle to clear—one it had never conquered before.
Claiming a title
Since Elon joined the CAA, James Madison has been the crown jewel of the league. It has had multiple CAA Players of the Year, and had won the league title and advanced to the NCAA Tournament each of the past three years. And before the teams’ match-up in the CAA Championship, Elon had never beaten the Dukes.

Because the CAA moved its championship back to pre-determined campus sites, Elon, despite being the No. 1 seed, was playing a road game against No. 2 James Madison in the CAA Championship game. That didn’t matter. Elon fittingly produced its best defensive performance of the season, building up a 22-point lead en route to a commanding 78–60 win, solidifying its first trip to the NCAA Tournament and a spot in Elon history. They broke out the golden scissors, cut down the nets and launched into a celebration that included dozens of hugs, a dogpile of the team and Smith making confetti angels on the court. “It’s one of those situations where you’re kind of pinching yourself,” Smith says. “Even though you know you could be a championship team, when it finally hits home, ‘We really did this. We’re really champions,’ I was literally pinching myself. It’s so surreal.”
Elon returned home to be greeted by the band, cheerleaders and fans. The next night, hundreds gathered in Alumni Gym to watch the Selection Show, when it was announced on ESPN Elon was a No. 11 seed and set to play No. 6 West Virginia in the first round in College Park, Maryland. And, of course, there was a team ceremony to rip down the picture of James Madison from the locker room door. “This was the first time I’ve been a part of a team in my career where people really did buy in,” Brown says. “It was a different level of focus this year.”
Lasting impact
Though Elon lost that game to West Virginia 75–62 after trailing by just one in the fourth quarter, the impact of the team’s success is wide-ranging. For one, the support the team drummed up during the course of its season was unprecedented. Three home games were attended by more than 1,000 people, including the 1,412 that watched Elon’s loss to James Madison and set an Alumni Gym record for a women’s basketball game. Blank says the team’s success will rub off on other sports.

For her part, the successful season led Smith to be named the 2016–17 CAA women’s basketball Coach of the Year and the Eastern College Athletic Conference Coach of the Year, becoming the first Elon head coach to earn the honor. The impact for the university cannot be understated, either. Blank acknowledges Elon is building itself into a national university with national recognition, and the exposure that comes with a championship in athletics can help with that. All week leading up to the NCAA game, Elon’s logo and name were on ESPN. In addition, Inside Higher Ed, the leading media company serving the higher education space, named the team a Final Four All-Academic team for its academic prowess. “The marketing value, I don’t know how you put a price tag on it,” he says. “It’s very valuable in the eyes of the institution.”
