46 ■ THE WOLFPACKER
PACK PAST
BY TIM PEELER
T
he 50th NC State women's basketball
season won't be at all like the first,
which opened near the end of 1974, at
the peak of the school's Golden Age of
athletics.
That long-ago inaugural year had an
interim coach, no scholarship players, a
bare-bones budget, a mandate against
recruiting off campus and no chance at
a conference championship back when
the Association for Intercollegiate Ath-
letics for Women regulated women's
sports.
It was always part of the dream,
though, in the aftermath of the passage
of Title IX of the 1972 Education Act,
the landmark legislation that mandates
equal access for women in all facets of
educational institutions receiving fed-
eral funds, to see those things change.
When Robert Renfrow "Peanut" Doak
was hired as a one-year interim coach
in the summer of 1974, he knew it was
a short-term position to get the women
from a two-year club schedule to var-
sity status. He enlisted former Wolfpack
men's player Greg Hawkins, still fresh
off his part in helping State win its first
NCAA championship, to serve as his
24-year-old assistant.
And they had goals.
"I can envision an ACC Tournament
Hired in 1975, Kay Yow built NC State into a national powerhouse in women's basketball, compiling a 680-325 career record in 35 years with the Pack.
PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS
Golden Anniversary Season Offers Chance To Reflect
On Growth Of Wolfpack Women's Basketball
