USA Basketball changed their site a while back (hate it) and lost some of their history pages (HATE it). Nice to see them add some historical content (h/t Steve).

Before there were T and Tree, Lisa and Dawn, Dee and Sue, there were a host of pioneers who laid the groundwork for USA Basketball in international hoops. Alberta Cox,Joan Crawford, Katherine Washington, Nera White - names few outside of the die-hard women’s basketball world would know (ahem. you mean WHB readers?). These women, along with their teammates, helped the U.S. collect the first two FIBA World Championship gold medals in history.

FIBA, which debuted the men’s World Championship in Buenos Aires in 1950, in 1952 decided to hold a women’s Worlds beginning in 1953. In the United States the AAU had been holding national championships since 1929, but the U.S. had never competed in an event such as this and was unsure as to where the national team would rate against the best in the world. The Pan American Games didn’t include women’s basketball until 1955, the Olympics until 1976, the U.S. was untested outside the country.