Tara Heiss, 66; ‘pioneer of Maryland women’s basketball’

Tara Heiss, the lightningquick point guard and Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer who in 1978 led Maryland to within a win of a national title, died Friday at 66, her sister, Mary Heiss, confirmed. No cause of death was given.

Ms. Heiss was 5-foot-6 and a multisport star at Bethesda’s Walter Johnson High, where she averaged 28 points as a senior on the basketball team before continuing her career at Maryland. Over her four years in College Park, Ms. Heiss became the first Terrapin to score 1,000 points and developed into a dazzling passer, establishing a school record for assists (504) that still ranks third in program history.

‘‘I was mostly a shooter when I came to Maryland,’’ Ms. Heiss told The Washington Post in 1977. ‘‘Then I started working on my passing. I’d just try things out and if they worked, I’d keep doing them.’’

As a senior in 1978, Ms. Heiss was named MVP of the first ACC women’s basketball tournament before leading Maryland to the AIAW women’s basketball tournament championship game against UCLA. (The NCAA didn’t stage its first women’s basketball championship until 1982.) In front of a partisan crowd of 9,351 at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion and without one of their best defenders, Jane Zivalich, who was injured in the team’s previous game, coach Chris Weller’s Terrapins lost, 90-74. Ms. Heiss, who had scored 20 points in Maryland’s 92-88 win over the Bruins in College Park during the regular season, finished with 12 points and nine assists.

Maryland’s run to the title game helped put the program on the map and attracted a wave of recruits to the school over the next decade.

‘‘She brought a lot of joy to everyone that played with her, and to me, she is the pioneer of Maryland women’s basketball,’’ said former Terps guard Martha Hastings, who shared a backcourt with Ms. Heiss at Walter Johnson and Maryland. ‘‘People wanted to come play at Maryland because of Tara. She was a great teammate, and I just feel so lucky to have known her.’’

Beginning in high school, Ms. Heiss and Hastings honed their skills playing pickup basketball against boys on outdoor courts across Montgomery County. At Maryland, Ms. Heiss’s flashy playmaking ability drew comparisons to Terps men’s point guard Brad Davis, a first-round pick of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1977.

Ms. Heiss played for the New Jersey Gems of the Women’s Professional Basketball League and the Virginia Wave of the shortlived Women’s American Basketball Association in the early 1980s, and had brief stints as an assistant coach at Maryland and Towson. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003, and her No. 44, the same digits worn by her idol, Paul Westphal, hangs in the rafters of Maryland’s Xfinity Center.