Women & Sport: Can you name the last Rutgers national champions? This doc rediscovers them

It’s been five years in the making, but the sports documentary “Forgotten Champions” is finally here.

The film, which premiered last week, features the story of the Rutgers women’s basketball team that won the coveted 1982 AIAW National Championship — the precursor to today's NCAA women's basketball tournament. The Rutgers team, led by legendary head coach and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Theresa Grentz, upset the powerhouse Texas Longhorns to win a rare national title for the university.

The documentary delves into a key moment in collegiate sports history: when the National Collegiate Athletic Association took over women’s sports. Prior to this, the national women’s basketball tournament had been run for a decade by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. In 1982, the NCAA began sponsoring its own women's tournament — leading to the demise of the AIAW. Rutgers’ championship title would mark the final year of the AIAW tourney.

“This is really a pivot point in women's basketball and women's collegiate sports history — that pivot from the AIAW to the NCAA,” Jon Newman, the film’s co-executive producer, said Thursday. “The fact that the NCAA took over women's sports, and you then had the Connecticuts, the Tennessees, the Louisiana Techs all sort of emerge out of that, and women's basketball became what is today. [It] really started at that point.”

The film premiered at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center last weekend after panel discussions exploring the history of Rutgers women’s basketball and the 50th anniversary of Title IX. The film is slated to premier on the Big Ten Network later this fall or by the end of the year, Newman said. No date has been announced.

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In many ways, the film was a labor of love by the Rutgers community. Though it was written and co-directed by Sue Hovey, the former executive editor of ESPN The Magazine, it was co-executive produced by Newman and Geoff Sadow, both Rutgers and WRSU-FM alums. WRSU is the university’s student and faculty-run radio station, which played a key role in the film's production. The film is also narrated by Carli Lloyd, another Rutgers alum and U.S. women’s soccer legend.

The film took somewhat of a half court heave to even get started. During an anniversary reunion of the radio station the station's alumni discovered the old cassette tapes for the play-by-play of the 1982 AIAW title game. To their surprise, the audio was salvageable, even after 35 years. So, members of the station digitized that audio.

Then, a setback.

“We realized that the game was not televised,” Newman said. “Because [when] the NCAA took over the original contract with NBC to televise the AIAW championship, [that] sort of transferred over to the NCAA.” Meaning that the Rutgers and Texas title game never aired.

Filmmakers started asking questions, and eventually connected with Brian Shank, a former member of the Rutgers women’s basketball staff and Grentz’s godson. He remembered Grentz kept game film — and it turned out she had copies of the film from the title game that were still in good condition.

“We were able to digitize that game film, and we married the audio from the student radio station and the game films,” Newman said, “and that's how that main piece of the documentary came together.”

Until now, the story of the 1982 Rutgers women’s team had been mostly forgotten. The team’s story became a footnote in collegiate women's sports history at a time when the sector was changing drastically. This film bridges the past to the present — allowing the athletes of today to appreciate those who came before them.

That’s what happened last week in New Brunswick. The women’s basketball team was invited to the film’s premiere, Newman said, and they were able to connect with members of the 1982 squad. The 1982 players were also invited to watch the current Rutgers team practice. All this has come together when Rutgers women’s basketball enters its next era under the program's new head coach, Coquese Washington, who is just the third full-time head coach in the team’s history.

As Newman pointed out, the 1982 women’s basketball team captured the last national championship that Rutgers has won — in any sport.

“In a lot of ways, it's one chapter ending,” he said. “The second chapter now is, ‘What are the opportunities for people to see it?’ … because it's just an important story to tell.”

Women & Sport is a NorthJersey.com column devoted to female athletes from the rec league level to those in college and the pros. If you've got a tip on an athlete from North Jersey who should be noted in the column, no matter how young they are or how old, please drop me a line at anzidei@northjersey.com.

Melanie Anzidei is a reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: New documentary rediscovers the last Rutgers national champions