Description
An expansive and compelling chronicle tracing the rise of modern women's basketball Elvera Peps Neuman got lost in the sounds and rhythms of basketball, dribbling and shooting on a hoop affixed to her family's barn in Eden Valley, Minnesota. In the years preceding Title IX, Neuman's dreams of playing the game professionally meant a life away from home on barnstorming tours and even forming a team of her own, the Arkansas Gems. Sixty years later, she got to witnesswhat a sold-out Target Center in downtown Minneapolis looked like on the Friday night of the 2022 Women's Final Four. Neuman's cheers joined with a crowd of 18,268 to send a wall of sound toward Paige Bueckers and her Connecticut teammates.The 5'11 Bueckers may have worn her ponytail a little differently than Neuman, but Neuman certainly saw something of herself in the young superstar. This is the storyof the pioneers who shaped so much of the modern infrastructure for women's basketball, whose histories intersect and wi
