I wonder how many of today's players know the name Carol Eckman. One of the reasons I wrote my autobiography (FIERCE: My Fight for Nothing Less, due out Aug. 6) is to shine a light on women's basketball's overlooked pioneers. Carol is one of them, and I talk about our relationship in my book.

Carol was my college coach at West Chester State, and yes, my team won the first-ever national collegiate tournament in 1969. Even though Carol wasn't overly athletic, she had a presence about her. Tall and slender, she wore big glasses, was almost always in a kilt and was a smoker behind the scenes, never in front of us. She had something of a nervous carriage, but all of us on the team at West Chester respected her.

More than a coach

Carol didn't just coach us. She organized the entire tournament, a 16-team invitational that had no precedent. Back then, college teams often had to compete against more experienced players on AAU teams.

Carol believed in giving female collegians opportunities at a time when that wasn't a popular idea. College women playing other college women. That probably sounds obvious today. It wasn't in the late 1960s.

Carol didn't like to lose, and in 1969, West Chester State didn’t. My Golden Rams went unbeaten for the second straight season, but this time we had a postseason. We beat Iowa in the semifinals, our own Final Four, by nearly 40 points. In the title game hosted by West Chester, we led for all but the first basket to defeat Western Carolina 56-39. We celebrated with a crowd of 2,000, a sellout at Hollinger Field House.

The tournament sponsored by the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was one of the milestones that paved the way for the formation of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women that formed in 1971.

I talk a lot about the importance of the AIAW in my book. This was a governing body founded by women to give female athletes opportunities at a time when the NCAA wanted nothing to do with women playing sports.

Slighted by the NCAA

Carol deserves recognition for being the pioneer that she was. She had a vision that almost no one else shared and was determined nobody was going to stop her from achieving it. The official record book of Pre-NCAA Basketball Records recognizes West Chester State's championship but not Carol. There is a space to list the coach of the team. That space is blank. That's outrageous. It not only disappoints me. It angers me.

The Women's Basketball Coaches Association awards a Carol Eckman Integrity Award annually. I received it in 1991; UCLA coach Cori Close was last year's winner. I'd like to see Carol recognized more publicly. I want today's young players to appreciate Carol and to understand her role in the sport's history. Keep the Past in our Present.

Carol was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999. In her five years at West Chester State, she was 68-5, but her impact exceeds her coaching statistics. When teams converge in Tampa for the Final Four next year, remember Carol as the architect behind it.

Carol is gone now; I saw her shortly before she died in 1985. Our relationship had its ups and downs, something you can learn about in my book, but it's important to me that people know her name and her contributions to our sport.