From Topeka to the Olympics, Billie Jean Moore was a women's basketball pioneer
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Kansas native and Topeka sports star Billie Jean Moore — a trailblazer in women's basketball — will be memorialized and buried February in Holton. Moore, 79, died Dec. 14.
“Billie Moore was a trailblazer as a head coach and among a very small group of individuals that laid the foundation for where women’s basketball is today,” said John L. Doleva, president and CEO of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Moore was born May 5, 1943, in Humansville, Missouri, but grew up in Kansas, first in Westmoreland then Topeka, where she graduated from Highland Park High School in 1962. In her youth, she was better known for her softball prowess, which landed her on The Capital-Journal's list of top 100 athletes in Shawnee County history.
Billie Jean Moore attended Washburn University in 1960s
Moore then attended Washburn University, where she graduated from in 1966 — six years before Congress passed Title IX to prohibit sex discrimination by colleges that receive federal funds.
"Moore was an early leader and a pioneer of Title IX," said Washburn athletic director Loren Ferré. "While she was not a student-athlete at Washburn since women's sports had not started yet, her love for sports and her pushing for changes helped pave the way for countless women's student-athletes at Washburn and around the nation."
Moore was the head coach of the first-ever U.S. women's basketball team in the Olympics. The team won the silver medal in the sport's inaugural appearance at the 1976 games in Montreal, Canada. The Soviet Union won the gold.
On the international stage, she also directed the 1973 and 1975 U.S. teams in the World University Games and the 1975 Pan-American team.
More:What happens if a school doesn’t comply with Title IX? Not a whole lot.
Moore began her coaching career as an assistant at Southern Illinois University, but left for California State-Fullerton through a connection she built while playing softball. In her first year at Cal-State Fullerton, Moore led the team to the 1970 national championship. When she took the UCLA job for the 1977-78 season, she led that team to a national championship in her first year, becoming the first women's coach to win championships at two schools.
Those championship were through the AIAW, a league that existed before the NCAA added women's sports in 1982. Moore retired from UCLA in 1993.
"It is hard to put into the words the depth of Billie Moore's impact," said Cori Close, the head women's basketball coach at UCLA.
Kansas native inducted into multiple sports halls of fame
Moore was inducted into the Washburn Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999, the UCLA Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Topeka and Shawnee County Sports Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 2006.
"When I received the call, what was foremost in my mind, was that I was being inducted as a coach in a team sport," Moore said in a 1999 speech. “When you are in a team sport, you are not here because of something you did yourself. It is obvious, that this award is shared with a lot of people that have played a very important part down through the years."
Moore will be buried in Holton after a Feb. 4 memorial service at Mercer Funeral Home.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Pioneering women's basketball coach Billie Jean Moore from Kansas dies
