Twenty five years ago, the very first Blue Devil women's basketball team took the floor. In part one of a three part series, The Chronicle looks at the first 10 years.
Before there was a 1999 Final Four banner hanging in the Cameron rafters, there was the frustration of repeated losses to Elon College. Before there were nearly packed houses paying witness to the Duke women playing North Carolina, there were 25 friends and family lending support to a rag-tag group of walk-ons.
And before there was a Gail Goestenkors leading her team deep into the NCAA tournament, there was a twenty-something Debbie Leonard setting up the scoreboard before the game, cleaning up the gym afterward and quietly building the foundation of the program in between.
Everything has a start somewhere. For the women's basketball program, the official start of its journey began when the fledgling program on a shoestring budget began competing in the Eastern District of the NCAA's Division II in the fall of 1975.
So it was in an almost-vacant Cameron Indoor Stadium on Dec. 3, 1975 that Duke's women's basketball program took flight against St. Augustine.
But that flight nearly crashed before it even got in the air.
Having played opponents like Catawba College and St. Mary's, Duke struggled immensely against the stepped-up competition its first two years, tumbling to a 2-26 record.
Frustrated by the program's lack of success, then-Athletics Director Carl James made the decision to move the program into Division I and, more importantly, hire the first full-time coach for women's basketball in the school's history. The choice-Debbie Leonard, an unknown 24-year-old fresh out of coaching high school basketball and studying at UNC-Greensboro.
"[James] talked to me about taking over the program, and things looked really good," Leonard said. "There were going to be more scholarships and he told me that every year, it's going to get better, and we were going to move up in the world.
"But we knew it was going to be an uphill battle simply because we were starting later than everyone else. I took the job knowing it was going to be hard work, but it was my dream come true."
Unfortunately for Leonard, that uphill battle quickly turned into a hike up the Himalayas when James resigned as athletic director to take a position as the executive director of the Sugar Bowl. When he left, he took the scholarship promises he had made to Leonard with him.
"In my first meeting with [new athletic director] Tom Butters, I was basically told, 'No, I did not have any scholarship money to recruit,'" Leonard said. "The three ladies that got the scholarships could stay pat, but I did not have any scholarships, and that the budget was going to become somewhat different."
Butters' line became a familiar refrain for Leonard during her long tenure at Duke. In her 15 years at the helm, Leonard waged as many battles with the administration as she did on the court.
"Probably the biggest challenge I faced, not only in those first couple of years, but throughout my entire career, was the failure in the administration of Duke to understand what was needed to play Division I women's basketball," she said.
But despite the inadequate support, Leonard managed to get the program off the ground. After a difficult 1-19 start in that initial '77-'78 season, Leonard guided the team to a .500 record the following season. Relying on the play of Duke's first star player, Tara McCarthy, and transfer Barb Krause, who still holds the school's single-game record for rebounds, the Blue Devils suddenly became competitive in the ACC.
"[Leonard] was in the grassroot years, and she got it off its feet," said longtime assistant coach Jacki Silar, now senior women's athletics administrator. "She got it recognized nationally, and she did that with minimal support, with great people and with student-athletes. You need to crawl before you can walk."
The walk sped up to a slight jog when Leonard finally began recruiting with full scholarships at her disposal in 1981. And one of the recruits in that first scholarship class of '85 was an athletic, but raw kid from Pittsburgh, Joanne Boyle.
Does the name sound familiar? Boyle is now in her seventh season as an assistant to Gail Goestenkors and sees first-hand the drastic changes in the women's basketball landscape.
"I paid for my recruiting trip, and I had to try out when I visited," Boyle said. "Now, we're allowed 40 days to go away from campus to recruit. And we use pretty much every one of those days to go to camps, and AAU and high school games. We know about a kid when she's in seventh grade. Back then, the budgets didn't allow programs to do that."
But Leonard kept chugging along, eventually guiding the team to a program-best 19-8 record in the '84-'85 season.
"When you started looking around in '82 and '83, people started taking a little more pride in the program," Leonard said. "We started getting those kids we talked about and that really made a difference.
"All the kids that are playing now have to go back to the Connie Goins and the Joanne Boyles and the Sarah Sullivans. Those are the kids who really did it for them and made things better for them."
But even considering the initial success, Duke still had yet to make a postseason appearance.
All that would change, however, when a freshman from Alexandria, Va., by the name of Chris Moreland arrived on campus in 1985.
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