Here’s an example from Pat Jayson, then the Flyers athletic trainer and now the academic adviser for Sinclair Community College athletes: “Before the semifinal game (a then well-known restaurant here) invited our team to come out for a pregame meal. Since it was the middle of Lent — and being good Catholics — the kids didn’t eat meat. Most had fish, but Ann Meyers and Randy Mascorella, our assistant coach, ate scallops. ... And they got food poisoning.
“I got on the phone to Dr. (Art) Bok trying to figure out what to do. He gave me an idea, and Ann, at least, got a little better.”
With that, Jayson chuckled: “Oh yeah ... she played.”
Meyers scored 35 points to lead UD to a 77-52 victory over Louisiana. In the title game two days later, she scored 40 as Dayton trounced Charleston (S.C.), 83-53.
In a time when there was neither a shot clock to speed up tempo, nor a three-point shot to inflate scoring, the Flyers — who finished 36-2 — averaged 83.4 points per game.
Five times they cracked the century mark and once they scored 121. They beat teams like Michigan, Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State, Illinois, Cincinnati, Louisville, DePaul and West Virginia and out-scored the opposition by an average of 24.7 points per game.
The team had four players who scored more than 1,300 career points, two who had more than 1,000 rebounds, another with nearly 600 assists.
Meyers is Dayton’s all-time leading scorer for both men’s and women’s basketball with 2,672 points. That’s 439 more than Roosevelt Chapman, the men’s all-time scorer. Her 1,293 career rebounds are more than any Flyers men’s player except John Horan and Don May, who has eight more boards.
Today the team — along with other former players — will be honored at UD Arena at halftime of the Flyers’ women’s game against Duquesne. In May, the entire title team will be inducted into the Ohio Sports Hall of Fame.
How to make a championship team
Dr. Elaine Dreidame — the pioneer of women’s sports at UD and the former coach — built the foundation of the championship team and then coach Maryalyce Jeremiah, who came from Cedarville University the year before and promptly led UD to a 33-3 record, took the Flyers to the next level.
Meyers, who only played two years of organized basketball at newly merged Chaminade Julienne High, came to UD as a volleyball player, too, and ended up the National Volleyball Player of the Year — for all college divisions — two years in a row.
Interestingly enough she said only UD recruited her:
“I remember my dad calling up Ohio State and even though they did have some scholarships, they said they didn’t have any to give out.”
With a smile, she added: “That’s why my senior year when we beat Ohio State something like 80 to 50 (actually it was 89-53) I was sort of thinking: ‘Hey, you really should have considered giving me a scholarship.’ ”
Tammy Stritenberger — now the principal of Five Points East Elementary and back then the Flyers point guard who ended up with 1,380 career points and 593 assists before a torn ACL ended her senior season during the title run — said her choices coming out of Colonel White had been UD and Florida State.
She chose the Flyers because “it just felt right.”
Although Jayson said the team wasn’t close off the court — “the players had their own social circles,” — on the floor “they knew each other and their roles perfectly.”
Meyers said the thing she remembers most about the team is that the players “were selfless ... I got my points because people like Tammy and Beverly Crusoe and Carol Lammers and the others fed me the ball.”
The team had just two losses, one early to Edinboro State that Meyers and Julie Johnson missed because they were playing with the UD volleyball team in the national tournament.
“That’s not the reason we lost though,” Jayson said. “When Edinboro came out, they were wearing field hockey skirts and I think our girls took them lightly.”
After that two-point loss, the only other setback was a three-point defeat at Northwestern. “I remember walking off the court thinking ‘I never want this feeling again,’ ” Meyers said.
The Flyers then won 18 straight and only two teams got within 10 points of them. “It seems like so long ago and yet it seems just like yesterday,” Stritenberger said. “The capabilities we had, the camaraderie, the whole package — it was so rewarding. It just made a lasting memory.”
It’s one that is with Jayson always. On her left hand she still wears the championship ring the team got. “I’m proud to wear that ring every day,” she said. “I’m proud the team gave Dayton a national championship banner to hang up forever.”
About the Author