Women’s basketball recognizes a pioneer who was the mother of the women’s Final Four and a former West Chester coach
Lucille Kyvallos, who coached the Rams and at Queens College, was part of a seven-member class of 2025. She was introduced by Immaculata legend Cathy Rush.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The latest inductees into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame featured the perfect touch for a class that spans the sport’s modern-day beginnings to today’s widespread popularity.
Former Immaculata coach Cathy Rush presented 93-year-old former West Chester and Queens College coach Lucille Kyvallos as part of the seven member class inducted Saturday night at the Tennessee Theater.
Others inducted include WNBA/collegiate superstars Sue Bird (UConn/Seattle Storm), Alana Beard (Duke/Washington Mystics/Los Angeles Sparks), Sylvia Fowles (LSU/Chicago Sky/Minnesota Lync), and Cappie Pondexter (Rutgers/Phoenix Mercury and others); Women’s Basketball Coaches Association executive director Danielle Donehew; and coach Mark Campbell of the NAIA’s Union University.
Immaculata in suburban Philadelphia and Queens in New York City were the first big city/national rivalry. This was the early 1970s, just before Title IX was passed by Congress and in the pre-NCAA era of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
Rush, as a West Chester student, was taught by Kyvallos, who coached the Rams to a record of 52-2 from 1962 to 1966 before moving to New York (1968-82), where she went 259-71 for an overall 311-73 (81%).
“[Mighty Mac] Tina Krah called me and told me I was getting in,” Kyvallos said when reached last winter when the class was announced. “I had just woken up. … I thought ‘Oh my God, I thought they were going to wait until I was dead.”
As a former chair of the AIAW tournament committee, Kyvallos could be called the mother of the women’s Final Four, as late NCAA executive Tom Jernstedt is so acclaimed in the men’s game.
The original AIAW national tournament structure had 16 teams at the finals with games played twice a day.
“We need to get this into a Final Four format because the public will understand the tournament competition better,” Kyvallos told a national writer back then.
Ultimately, the change occurred in 1978. UCLA hosted, and Hall of Famer Ann Meyers-Drysdale helped win that first title.
When looking at the growth of the game, Kyvallos says of the attention of Caitlin Clark has drawn and the coming of UConn under Norristown’s Geno Auriemma, who she says was a student at West Chester when she coached: “It’s now like rockets into space.”
“Today, we are in awe and euphoric in the rise of women’s basketball,” she said.
“Although as coaches and players we are competitive, today we are all on the same team and rise and be the best we can be through opportunities in our sport and in society.”
Kyvallos and her group, along with the Immaculata crowd were innovators back then, just as it has moved further today with more media involved in coverage.
Queens hosted the 1973 AIAW finals, won by Immaculata, and in her speech Saturday night, she discussed how they promoted it as a big-time equivalency to the men’s tourney.
“We asked the president of the United States to write a welcoming letter in the program,” she said. “There was attention all over the city. The New York City mayor declared women’s basketball week. The press and TV were all over the event.
“The games were competitive and covered by local and national media. In the end, Immaculata won its second AIAW national title beating Queens College before a standing-room-only crowd.
“The ascension was beginning to happen. The next year, we added Immaculata to the schedule. In a packed gym, with students cheering and nuns banging on pails, Queens [won].”
To an extent, Queens was the forerunner of the WNBA New York Liberty in terms of drawing packed venues — though the school’s campus gym, like most of that era’s women’s venues, obviously was much smaller.
Kyvallos was a hard-driving proponent of her players executing the fundamentals of the game, running many suicide drills at practice.
In shouting out her crowd during the speech, she quipped, “I’d like them all to rise, run a fastbreak, and sit down.”
A slew of former players came down here to support Kyvallos’ induction. Among them Cathy Andruzzi, who was the executive director of the local organizing committee in 2000, when Philadelphia hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four; Donna Orender, the second president of the WNBA, and now-Big East commissioner Val Ackerman, who played collegiately at Virginia, was the WNBA’s first president, and is a Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee herself.
One of Kyvallos’ former players here was Patricia Ferguson, who was on the West Chester team that won the first college-only women’s tournament in 1969 organized by the late Carol Eckman.
» READ MORE: West Chester and pioneering basketball coach Carol Eckman led the way in women’s sports before Title IX | from 2022
Ferguson remembered telling Kyvallos that she wanted to touch the backboard.
Kyvallos was incredulous because of Ferguson’s small stature.
Ultimately, though, it happened.
Kyvallos drew laughs at the start of her acceptance speech.
“Well, back when newspapers were two cents … and gasoline was two cents a gallon, I played with boys in my neighborhood, learning to be athletic while girls were supposed to be playing with dolls,” she said.
“At that time, it was improper for a girl to be seen carrying a basketball around, so I stole a case to carry it in. All through high school and at Springfield College, I played in weekend leagues and regional tournaments and playing in industrial leagues, playing mostly boys’ rules.”
As her Queens team was becoming popular, she got a call about playing in Madison Square Garden, in what would be its first women’s game. She could choose her opponent.
“It was a no-brainer,” she said.
“I called Cathy and invited her to play in the world’s most famous arena — a big first for women’s college basketball. On the day of the game, we drew 12,000.”
Rush remembered the call.
“Lucille, I would love my team to play in the Garden,” Rush said. “I don’t know. Is it important to you or to us? Would it be important to women’s basketball? Let me know.
“So, we got there and go inside, and there’s 18,000 seats. It was mind-boggling. Then the lights dim and on the public address system, they started blasting [Helen Reddy’s] ‘I Am Woman.’”
Orender, who played for Queens, remembers being told about the game.
“It was the most unbelievable thing ever,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is the mecca of basketball. We play the game at the highest level.’”
Bird, the all-time WNBA assist leader who will go into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September, spoke last.
“Tonight, I honor the truth,” she said. “Greatness is never a solo performance. Behind every player is a greater support system. And behind this point guard was a chorus of people yelling at me … to shoot more.”