Marian Washington is in no rush to depart Atlanta. She’s quite content to bask in the golden glow of the Olympics gone by.
“I’m just trying to decide how to get a few days’ break,” Washington, Kansas University’s women’s basketball coach and an assistant on the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s basketball team, said Monday from her room at the Omni in Atlanta, her home away from home the past two weeks. “I’ll be back in a few days.”
Washington said her Olympic experience more than lived up to her expectations. Like the men’s Dream Team, the women were expected to win it all — and they did with a 111-87 victory over Brazil on Sunday.
“I don’t think you can ever really guess what it’s like until you’ve experienced it,” Washington said. “It was incredible. And I think it’s really neat that the women played as well as they did.”
The U.S. women’s basketball team carried unprecedented experience into the Atlanta Games. The members — many of whom played overseas because of the lack of professional women’s leagues in the U.S. — spent a whole year together, barnstorming across the country and playing exhibitions against international foes.
The United State compiled a 52-0 record over those months — then steamrolled to the Olympic gold.
“I think there was pressure on this team from the beginning, because of the amount of support, the kind of support, that was given,” Washington said. “We finally had the kind of visibility that we need for women’s sports to flourish the way they should. There was a very, very deliberate plan, and there was so much expected of us.
“You have a team that went 60-0, a team that played everybody they could. We went abroad and played everyone in the world that would play them. Then we came back and took on some of the world’s best teams. Someone said we didn’t have as much pressure on them as the men’s team. I disagree. The pressure might be different, but it was just as great.”
Pressured or not, both Dream Teams won the gold. And Washington tired of repeated attempts to compare the two.
“Whenever I was asked, I tried to quickly defuse that,” she said. “It’s unfair to compare the two. It’s a different game. They play above the rim. We play below the rim. We play the game the way it’s meant to be played. People were very, very consistent in letting us know how exciting our games were. Each night, we played before 30,000-plus fans. That’s what I really appreciated. But every time somebody said, ‘Your game is more exciting than the men,’ I tried not to get into that.”
Though the U.S. women won the gold, the coaching staff — with head coach Tara VanDerveer and erstwhile Colorado head coach Ceal Barry — did not. Only the athletes received medals.
“Unfortunately, we did not,” Washington said. “We got rings. And, obviously, we got experiences you just can’t match. You learn a lot. You have a chance to see what everyone else in the world is doing. It gives you a chance to keep growing. It’s been a blessing.”
