San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Scott Ostler: Bay Area link for female dunkers from different eras.
Timeline: History of highfliers, including Georgeann Wells, right.
Man’s first walk on the moon in 1969 was captured for posterity on video, but woman’s first dunk on Earth, nine years later, didn’t get the same kind of love.
There are no photos, videos or TV footage. It went down in a pro league in Holland in 1978, and it might as well have been on Jupiter, but that dunk is a vivid memory for one eyewitness.
“One of the girls just threw the ball up and I just took it upon myself to jump up and get it and twohand dunk it. Everybody went crazy. And I went, ‘Why are they acting this way, it’s just a dunk?’ I was doing it pretty much all my life, when I was younger and playing with the boys.” That dunk was one small basket for the OudBeijerland team, one giant leap for Cardie Hicks, a Southern Californian. Stunning footnote: Hicks was (and is) 5foot9.
Hicks recalled her historic dunk in a phone interview with The Chronicle from her home in Henderson, Nev. She mentioned that her favorite college team is Stanford, one member of which is highflying sophomore Fran Belibi, the Bay Area’s first female college dunker.
This, then, is a tale of two dunkers — the first woman to slam, and the most recent. They both challenged gravity on Bay Area courts and brought attention and excitement to their sport. But Hicks performed in relative anonymity — her dunks recalled like longago UFO sightings —
and Belibi flies through the spotlight, her dunks sending shockwaves through the game.
Hicks’ glory days, in America at least, came during a brief stint with the San Francisco Pioneers of the shortlived Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL). Belibi will be a key player for secondranked Stanford as it makes a run at the national title. The topseeded Cardinal face Utah Valley in their NCAA Tournament opener Sunday night in San Antonio.
“It’s beautiful when (Belibi) goes up to do it, because she’s so long and athletic, and so explosive off the floor, it does feel like she’s hanging in the air for a while,” said Debbie Antonelli, an ESPN commentator for men’s and women’s college basketball, and for WNBA games. “I don’t get too fired up about a 68 or 69 guy throwing down a dunk, I don’t think it’s that hard for those guys, but if you’ve got somebody like Fran, or Lisa Leslie at 65, or Candace Parker at 65, I think that’s impressive.”
Belibi, 61, is the secondshortest woman to dunk in college. Charlotte Smith (North Carolina) was 6foot, and all six other dunkers were at least 64. Belibi doesn’t like to overhype the slam, saying, “I don’t think it changes the sport all that much, it’s just another skill that we can showcase.”
But there’s no overlooking the impact of a dunk in women’s basketball, as both athletic theater and inspiration.
“Sometimes I forget how many people look up to us and care about what we do,” Belibi said. “After my Cal dunk, (teammate) Jana (Van Gytenbeek) looks me in the eye and she’s like, ‘I don’t think you understand how much you are inspiring people, how much kids look up to you, because they see what you’re doing and they believe they can do it, too.’ “I know in a way I’m an inspiration, but I’ve never had it in my face that way. It really made me cry.”
Basketballwise, Belibi is still a baby. As a kid, she played some tennis, and thought basketball looked cool, but didn’t want to wedge practices and games into her parents’ busy schedule. Both are doctors, her mother a pediatrician and her father a kidney specialist. They immigrated from Cameroon, and didn’t know much about basketball.
Belibi said her mother was concerned that basketball would distract Fran from her studies, but her father urged her to give it a try, so Fran went out for the high school team in Aurora, Colo., as a 6foot freshman.
“I just loved it,” Belibi said. “Being on a team was unlike any other feeling, and I looked forward to anything related to playing, but I didn’t really think that I’d get to play longer than freshman year, because I was terrible, so I was just enjoying every moment.”
Even the time she stole a pass at midcourt and dashed in for a layup ... without dribbling.
Belibi was coordinated, eager to learn, and oh, can she fly. Belibi first dunked that freshman year while shooting alone on a basket outside her parents’ clinic. Her first dunk in a game came as a sophomore. Belibi rotated the wrong way on a defensive assignment but stumbled into an interception, dribbled downcourt, her mind went blank, and she dunked.
“I thought I had missed it. I had to look back,” said Belibi, adding, “That first dunk is always going to be like my little baby.”
Her parents weren’t at the game. When Fran told them about the dunk, “My mom didn’t believe me. I showed her a video and she thought I had photoshopped it. The next time it happened, she was there, so she decided it wasn’t a fluke.”
Belibi dunked three more times in high school, including an alleyoop dunk off a blind, overthehead pass from a teammate leading a breakaway. Hello, “SportsCenter Top 10” and instant national fame.
As a senior, Belibi was Colorado’s girls Player of the Year. At the McDonald’s All American Game, she became the first girl to win that event’s dunk contest since Parker in 2004. Among the boys who lost to Belibi that day: James Wiseman, who now dunks for the Warriors.
VanDerveer recruited Belibi as a player, not just a dunker, but her two dunks this season have been frosting on the cake.
Belibi’s first Stanford dunk came early this season in an easy win at Cal. She intercepted a pass near the Cal baseline, eluded one defender in the backcourt with a crossover dribble, went the length of the court, palmed the ball without using her left hand, and slammed. She became the eighth woman to dunk in college basketball and the first since 2013.
“That one was definitely really dope,” Belibi said. “I got the steal, I checked over my shoulder and I only saw my teammates running next to me, and I decided to go for it. They see me dunk all the time (in practice and warmups). I think they’re getting used to it, but because of the game and everything, they were all really excited. They were ready for it to happen.”
Belibi, who plays wearing distinctive whiterimmed protective goggles, threw down her most impressive dunk in a team scrimmage, during a halfcourt set, cutting through traffic to launch and slam. Occasionally in practice, Belibi clangs a dunk attempt off the rim, so her second college dunk, in a close game at UCLA, caused her coach some momentary anxiety.
“The Cal dunk, I knew was coming,” VanDerveer said. “The UCLA dunk surprised me. I’m thinking, ‘This is a close game. You really don’t have a breakaway,’ that one was not a guarantee. Afterwards, she kind of looked at me and she goes, ‘Should I have done that?’ I’m like, ‘Probably not.’ I’m really excited when Fran dunks, but I like it to be when it’s not a onepoint game.”
Still, VanDerveer gives Belibi the green light. The rewards outweigh the risks.
“I think (Belibi’s dunks) are inspiring,” VanDerveer said. “I think sometimes you have to see something done to think you can do it, and Fran is a great great role model for young girls. Not just that she’s a dunker, but she’s a complete package: teammate, student, everything. I’m excited for her.”
Everyone involved in women’s basketball knows of Belibi, and everyone I talked to for this story identified Georgeann Wells as the first woman dunker in college. Cardie Hicks? Nobody had heard of her. Hicks’ highflying acrobatics have all but disappeared in the mists of time.
Hicks was a playground legend in San Pedro and around the South Bay in Los Angeles before she reached high school, drawing spectators who packed the sidelines in beach chairs to watch her dominate pickup games against boys.
Money was tight, with mom, dad and seven of the eight Hicks children living in a twobedroom home. But the kids had expensive sneakers, thanks to Cardie. Backed by her brothers, Hicks would challenge boys to play oneonone, winner takes the loser’s shoes.
“We were rockin’ it; we had the best shoes,” Hicks said. “I had no sympathy for (the losers) because they were treating me mean.”
Hicks played basketball and volleyball at Long Beach State and Cal State Northridge. In 1977, she cut short her college basketball career when her father died. To help support her family, Hicks accepted an offer to play pro ball in Holland, where she threw down that historic first dunk in ’78.
“I liked the fact that fans were bringing their kids out to see me dunk, so it was like a show,” Hicks said. “We were performers. My job was to perform, so I did what I could to bring in more fans. They said, ‘Who is this girl that can dunk? I’m going to see this.’ People were just going crazy. Even when I did a jump shot, they went crazy.
“I just loved that part of the game, because I felt like I had a blessing and I needed to show it, you know?”
Hicks lived with a Dutch family and learned the language. She even changed her name from Cardie to Cardte (cartay), because that’s how her teammates pronounced it.
After three seasons in Holland, Hicks returned to America when her mother died, and was signed by the San Francisco Pioneers, who had just joined the WBL in its second season, 197980.
During that time, Hicks also played for the U.S. women’s volleyball team, after Wilt Chamberlain, a big volleyball supporter, touted her to the coaches.
Hicks’ first season with the Pioneers was cut short by three stress fractures in her legs, but she played a second season, 198081. Her teammates called her “Magic,” and she averaged about 19 points per game, but she didn’t dunk in a game. And, she flew under the radar, playing in the shadow of marquee teammates “Machine Gun” Mollie Bolin and Anita Ortega, but her dunks in practice were awesome.
“It was like, ‘damn!’ ” Bolin (now Bolin Kazmer) told The Chronicle. “She was a great teammate. She was the small forward; I was the shooting guard. She was just an athlete that came to play every night and she played well.”
At the 1981 WBL AllStar
Game in Albuquerque, N.M., Hicks dunked in warmups.
“It just got quiet,” Hicks recalled. “People were saying, ‘She did what ?’”
Her teammates encouraged her to dunk in the game, so she tried on a breakaway, but a defender undercut her from behind, and was ejected.
“Cardie was one of the most exciting players in the league’s history,” said Karra Porter, who wrote “Mad Seasons,” a history of the WBL. “Not just with the dunk. She was an exciting player. People couldn’t believe a woman of her height was getting over the rim and dunking.”
Oh, and Hicks sang the national anthem before some of the Pioneers’ games. She later sang the anthem at a Lakers game.
When the WBL folded after the 198081 season, Hicks returned to Europe, playing until 1994 for teams in Italy and Sweden.
Back in America in 1996, Hicks formed and was playercoach of the Legends, a barnstorming team of former WBL players. They scrimmaged against teams in the newly formed WNBA.
“We wore them out,” Hicks said. The WNBA players “said, ‘Y’all should be playing with us.’ ‘Nah, we just want to let you know who we are, and who got you here.’ ”
Hicks, now 65, tried out for the WNBA Sacramento Monarchs in 1997 at age 41, but a knee problem knocked her out. She returned to school and got a master’s degree in psychology in 2012. She started and runs a nonprofit, The Legends: Kids First, providing tutoring, mentoring and lifeskills training for disadvantaged youth.
Hicks is a survivor of thyroid and breast cancer. After thyroid surgery, doctors told her she would never sing again. But in 2018, when the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame honored the WBL players as “Trailblazers of the Game,” Hicks sang “Dream” at the ceremony.
Asked if she feels overlooked in the history of the game, Hicks, like the good teammate she was, dished off, saying, “What about Molly Bolin? Why isn’t she in the Hall of Fame?” When Stanford won the Pac12 tourney in Las Vegas this month, Hicks hoped to attend a game and meet Belibi, perhaps get a photo together — the OD (Original Dunker) and the new sensation, but COVID restrictions got in the way and Hicks was denied that moment in the limelight.
Some things never change.