Mechelle: Anne Donovan played essential role in growth of women’s basketball
It was Dec. 14, 1979, and Scope arena in Norfolk, Virginia, was packed to the rafters with patriotic fever. The Soviet women’s basketball team, on a tour of the United States, was meeting defending national champion Old Dominion in an exhibition.
American hostages had been taken in Iran in November. The Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan in late December would lead to the United States’ boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The Cold War was still red-hot.
On the floor was a very tall, thin, 18-year-old center. A Catholic-school girl from New Jersey whose gentle nature coexisted with her determined competitiveness. Anne Donovan had always loved being on a team but never wanted to stand out. At 6-foot-8, she didn’t have a choice.
Yet somehow, her Old Dominion point guard, Nancy Lieberman, briefly lost sight of Donovan in that game. Crazy as it sounds, Donovan was obscured by one of the few women bigger than she was: the Soviets’ 7-foot-2, 250-pound star center, Uljana Semjonova.
AP Doug: Women’s basketball mourns death of Anne Donovan
To many in the world of women’s basketball, Anne Donovan was a giant. And not just because she stood 6-foot-8.
She won a national championship at Old Dominion, two Olympic gold medals as a player and another as a coach in her storied career.
The 56-year-old Hall of Famer died Wednesday of heart failure, her family said in a statement.
“One of the greater basketball players in her time slot,” Las Vegas Aces coach Bill Laimbeer said. “She stood out for her height, but also her playing ability and continued that throughout her whole life, coaching, her ambassadorship. You name it, she did it.”
Mechelle: Anne Donovan, Hall of Famer and Olympic gold medalist, dies at 56
Out of Paramus (N.J.) Catholic, Donovan was one of the most highly recruited female basketball players in the country in the late 1970s. She picked Old Dominion, in part, because of the success the program had with stars such as Nancy Lieberman, who was a senior when Donovan was a freshman.
“I know that when we were recruiting her, the coaches were saying, ‘You’ve got to see this kid. She’s amazing,'” Lieberman said by phone Wednesday night. “She and I talked a lot about the experience she’d have. We talked about building a legacy, even though we were so young. I don’t think we really knew what a legacy was at that point.
NorthJersey.com: Anne Donovan, a one-of-a-kind athlete in Bergen County
As an eighth-grader playing basketball for Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Ridgewood, Anne Donovan towered over her teammates and the competition.
“It must have been challenging for the other teams to show up and play us,” her coach back then, Maureen Monroe of Glen Rock, said. “Anne was so considerably taller than the other players. She was leagues above the other players in terms of height.”
Donovan, the Basketball Hall of Famer from Ridgewood who won a national championship at Old Dominion and two Olympic gold medals in the 1980s, and coached the U.S. to gold in 2008, died Wednesday of heart failure. She was 56.
NorthJersey.com: Anne Donovan: Rose Battaglia, North Jersey athletics world on the basketball legend
Seems only fitting that Anne Donovan spent some of her final hours socializing with the people she knew best — other greats in women’s basketball.
The much decorated player and coach from Ridgewood attended the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Knoxville, Tenn., last weekend, at which Dr. Rose Battaglia, her coach at Paramus Catholic High School, was inducted.
The news of Donovan’s passing Wednesday at age 56 of heart failure hit her high school coach and longtime friend Battaglia particularly hard.
NorthJersey.com: What they’re saying about Anne Donovan, North Jersey sports legend
The Virginian-Pilot: Old Dominion basketball legend Anne Donovan dies at age 56
Anne Donovan, a towering figure of the glory years of Old Dominion women’s basketball and a legend in the sport as a coach and player on the professional and Olympic levels, died Wednesday of heart failure. She was 56.
The 6-foot-8 Donovan played for the Lady Monarchs from 1979 to 1983, and teamed with Nancy Lieberman to lead ODU to the AIAW national championship in 1980.
TeamUSA.org: Anne Donovan, Only Woman To Win Olympic Basketball Gold As Player And Coach, Dies At 56
At 6-foot-8, Anne Donovan towered over opponents on the court, but stood even taller off of it with her contributions to USA Basketball and the sport as a whole.
Donovan died Wednesday at the age of 56 due to heart failure, leaving a lasting legacy as a decorated player, coach and pioneer of women’s basketball in the United States.
A native of Ridgewood, New Jersey, Donovan was a two-time state champion in high school before going on to play at Old Dominion. With the Lady Monarchs, she won the first-ever women’s Naismith College Player of the Year award in 1983.
With no professional league at the time in the U.S., Donovan played her pro ball overseas. But it was with Team USA where she perhaps starred the most, winning Olympic gold medals in 1984 and 1988.
High Post Hoops: Anne Donovan, Basketball Hall of Famer, dead at 56
A life that included so many successes, building women’s basketball in every way, is over much too soon.
Anne Donovan, a champion by every measure, a game-changing player and coach whose imprint on the game of basketball will continue for decades to come, has died at the age of 56, Mechelle Voepel of ESPN.com reported Wednesday night.
Donovan, a 6’8 paradigm-shifting center, grew up dominating the opposition in Paramus, NJ, before heading to Old Dominion to win the 1980 AIAW (forerunner to NCAA tournament) championship and reach the 1982 Final Four. Donovan remains the NCAA’s all-time leader in blocked shots, with 801.
Indy Star: First Indiana Fever coach dies at 56
“First and foremost, she was a personal friend of mine,” added Krauskopf. “I have lost a friend and someone who’s had an impact on the basketball world, certainly with the Fever. She’ll forever be part of our history. She’s always been a part of our family.”
“We’ve shared a lot of stories and a lot of laughs over that first season. There will never be another first year. And there will never be another Anne Donovan. She was a professional and a class act. The roots of women’s basketball are embedded with her name, and so is our franchise.”
The Day: Anne Donovan was much more than just a basketball legend
The following juxtaposition applies to all of humanity:
There’s what we do: Anne Donovan was a basketball coach who led the United States to Olympic Gold, the Seattle Storm to a WNBA championship and later walked among us, coaching the Connecticut Sun.
And then there’s who we really are: Anne Donovan was a gentle soul. Yes. This is where it begins and ends with her. A gentle soul with a puckish sense of humor, big family and many friends who were lucky enough to be in her life.
It was with unspeakable sorrow that we learned of Anne Donovan’s death during Wednesday night’s Sun-Mystics game, the most surreal night in the history of the franchise and the arena.
Anne Donovan died the night the man she replaced here in Connecticut, Mike Thibault, was coaching the other team.
She was 56.
“A great friend,” Thibault said. “I don’t know what to say. All the basketball stuff goes away when you have this kind of stuff happen.”
NH Register: Anne Donovan was towering, on and off the court
There was something surreal and undeniably sad about the moment. Pacing one bench was Mike Thibault of the Washington Mystics, the man who was replaced by Anne Donovan as coach of the Connecticut Sun. Pacing the other was Curt Miller, the man who replaced Donovan.
And now, squeezed between the two, as two WNBA teams raced the floor at Mohegan Sun Arena Wednesday night, was this horrible news that Anne Donovan was dead of heart failure at age 56.
Seattle Times: Hall of Famer and Olympic gold medalist Anne Donovan, who led Storm to a championship, dies
USAToday: Anne Donovan through the years
Washington Post: Death of Anne Donovan, legendary women’s basketball star and coach, stuns sports world
Washington Post: How Anne Donovan was a trailblazer in women’s basketball
USAToday: Anne Donovan, Olympic gold medalist, basketball Hall of Famer, dies at 56
NPR: Anne Donovan, A Basketball Legend As A Player And Coach, Dies At 56
“She brought half of us here and hearing about it at halftime, it really put me in shock,” Sun guard Alex Bentley said. “That second half was for her, just to fight for her. It is crazy.
“She just got us on the court. She was really connected to how we played, our style of play. She brought me here so I had a special relationship with her because she was one of those coaches who completely put her faith in me and believed in me, pushed me, challenged me. I am definitely going to miss her.”
As small Anne story from me: When she was coach of the New York Liberty, I was hosting a group of female college students from the UAE. Took them to a game (they were ecstatic) and we met with coach Donovan after. She was shy and humble. They were shy and in awe. It was beautiful.
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