When Texas Athletics hired Jody Conradt in 1976, the headline of a Texas newspaper that announced her position read, “Woman Earns Man-Sized Salary – $19,000.” She spent over 30 years proving she was the right person for the job.
Even though the former head coach retired 18 years ago, Conradt’s distinguished legacy lingers, both at UT and throughout women’s college basketball.
Texas reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament three times in the past four years and viewership of the sport has exploded, with the most recent record-breaking TV appearance of USC versus UConn bringing in 2.3 million views, according to Fox Sports PR.
For Conradt, this kind of success and attention might be news to the public, but it is not for her.
“There were a lot of people who are still following women’s basketball at the University of Texas who were following all the way back into the 80s,” Conradt said. “I look at them and I say, ‘Isn’t it amazing that the rest of the world has just now figured out about women’s basketball?’”
The former coach’s fondest memory was not leading the 1986 team to a perfect 34-0 record, or taking home a national title that year, or being inducted into 8 separate Hall of Fames over the next 25 years. Instead, it was selling out the Frank Erwin Center in 1985, the first time the women’s Final Four game had ever reached that status.
Before the Longhorns won their title in 1986, they were ranked No. 1, three years in a row. If they advanced to that record-breaking Final Four the year before, they would have had the chance to win in front of their home crowd. The loss was devastating. It did not take much for Conradt to motivate them to buy into the program and make history, Conradt said.
Fast forward 39 years and Texas has sold out three home games this year, and is primed to make a serious run in March Madness. Led by sophomore forward and Southeastern Conference Player of the Year Madison Booker and senior guard Rori Harmon, the team possesses many of the same pieces of the 1986 squad, but the most important one is how much they care about each other.
That kind of chemistry has to come from the players, and according to Conradt, current head coach Vic Schaefer has nurtured a culture where that is possible.
“He has created an environment where they feel as if they are a team and they hold each other accountable, and they play for each other,” Conradt said. “His role in it is the role of a lot of successful coaches: create an environment where they can take ownership of the team and also instill in them that their biggest responsibility is to play hard and to give maximum effort.”
Conradt traveled with the team to the SEC Championship Tournament and watched as the Longhorns made a run to try and claim their first title in the conference. Texas fell to South Carolina in the finals, but this is not the end of the season. The team awaits Selection Sunday – the official announcement of what schools make it to the NCAA Tournament.
Schaefer is not shying away from the magnitude of this moment. He understands the legacy and he knows how integral Conradt was to building it. And he embraces it.
“When I took the job, I envisioned having coffee with her the morning after a game, going back over how it went, what she thought,” Schaefer said. “You know a lot of people, they’re intimidated by being around or taking over programs that have been coached by coaches like that, and I’m not one of them.”
