Bruno and Chicago Hustle Blazed the Trail for WNBA Champion Sky
11/5/2021 3:06:00 PM | WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
DePaul coach is Sky-high while also paying tribute to women's pro hoops pioneers
CHICAGO – Long before Allie Quigley bucked tremendous odds to become practically a household name in this town, before Courtney Vandersloot channeled her inner Magic Johnson, before Candace Parker came home---there was a women's pro basketball team in town that paved the way for Chicago's first WNBA title.
Yes, the Sky's the limit nowadays thanks to an enterprising, innovative group of hoops enthusiasts four decades ago who were overflowing with a pioneer spirit and a gambler's hunch that women's sports could succeed just a few years after the enactment of Title IX.
The Chicago Hustle hit the local sports scene in 1978 led by team president John Geraty, major investors attorney Larry Cooper and personnel firm owner Sherwin Fischer and local marketing guru Chuck Shriver who had worked his magic in both the Cubs and White Sox front offices.
It was Shriver who negotiated the all-important TV contract with superstation WGN with Johnny "Red" Kerr as color commentator and also brought WLS-AM radio on board with Les Grobstein handling play-by-play.
A popular Shriver promotion was handing out free Dr. Peppers to several thousand fans at DePaul's Alumni Hall whenever the Hustle scored over 110 points on their home court. The Hustle triggered the promotion nearly a dozen times that first season.
Not wanting to be left behind in the gathering wave of mainstream media coverage, the Chicago Tribune assigned the well-known Bill Jauss as the Hustle's beat writer and the Sun-Times followed suit with Lacy Banks who would go on to cover the Bulls and Michael Jordan in the 1980s.
And the Hustle brain trust made the perfect choice for its first head coach---a young guy just starting to make waves of his own in the college basketball ranks---Richard Douglas Bruno.
*****
Bits and pieces of his unpredictable, roller-coaster ride with the Hustle and the WBL filtered through his conscious mind as the iconic 36-year DePaul women's basketball coach and longtime Sky season ticketholder was glued to his courtside seat during the Sky's fabulous run to the ring.
No doubt he fired a few fist pumps each time his former star guard Allie Quigley made another long-distance connection in the Oct. 17 WNBA title clincher. He cheered on Candace Parker while perhaps wondering what might have been had the three-time Illinois Ms. Basketball winner from Naperville Central chose to stay home instead of venturing out to Tennessee.
But overlapping all of those thoughts and more was the feeling he was witnessing the dawn of a new sensation.
Fans in Chicago were actually going gaga over women's basketball. More than 10,000 sports fanatics and hoops junkies were jamming into Wintrust Arena and would later turn out in force for the championship parade and rally just like they did for the Cubs in 2016, the White Sox in 2005 and the Bulls in the 1990s when Michael Jordan was their NBA ringmaster.
For the ultimate crusader who has fought against formidable odds for the better part of three decades for media coverage, what was happening right before his eyes filled him with a sense of wonderment and emotion.
For most of his basketball life, he has waged a personal crusade for gender equity in mainstream media sports coverage. Bruno is like a modern-day Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.
"Watching the Sky win, I was just so thrilled for the sport of women's basketball," Bruno said. "What I watched on that Sunday, what has been my passion ever since my first DePaul women's game made me realize women's basketball is for real.
"Looking up at Wintrust Arena filled to the rafters with fans cheering on a champion even though the Bears were playing just a few miles away---that was such a glorious moment for women's basketball. It's what I envision how the sport should be.
"That moment filled me with pride and joy---I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. It's what you've been fighting for your whole life.
"It doesn't matter who it is---whether it's the Sky, the Chicago Red Stars pro soccer team, a local college team---as long as it's a women's team being celebrated. The Sky's championship was a victory for all of women's sports."
*****
Little did Liz Galloway realize when she made the Hustle's final cut that she was about to encounter a deeply passionate, caring and hyper-focused individual who would teach her things as a coach and inspire her as a friend in reaching her human potential.
So moved was Galloway---now Liz Galloway-McQuitter---by the Sky's championship and all the repercussions connected to the Hustle that the former DePaul assistant coach and ex-head coach at Lamar and Northern Illinois made it her mission to remind the world where it all began.
"As the WNBA marks their 25th Anniversary with a Chicago Sky championship, as Title IX approaches 50 and as female athletes soar in popularity, the changes in the social landscape for women in professional sports including women's basketball harken a look back farther to its origin," Galloway-McQuitter said.
"The Sky's title is a first for the franchise, but it is not the city's first women's pro basketball team, and the WNBA is not the first women's pro league. The WBL (Women's Basketball League) was founded in 1978 and the Chicago Hustle played in the first women's professional game in the United States on December 9, 1978, defeating the Milwaukee Does in Milwaukee 92-87 in front of a crowd of almost 8,000 fans."
None other than the esteemed and legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite noted the history-making event on his national TV newscast.
Five days later in its home opener on December 14, the Hustle defeated the New York Stars in front of a packed crowd at DePaul's Alumni Hall marking the first women's professional basketball game in Chicago.
Galloway fondly recalls how Chicago's other pro sports teams were quick to embrace the Hustle as players from the Cubs like Ernie Banks, the Bears including Walter Payton, Jerry Sloan from the Bulls and the Blackhawks cheered them on from DePaul's Alumni Hall bleachers.
The Hall of Fame running back known as "Sweetness" headlined a Bears offseason basketball team that played the Hustle in exhibition games benefitting charities.
With the Bulls and their opponents conducting practices and shoot-arounds at Alumni Hall, Hustle players such as Debra Waddy Rossow and fellow starters Janie Fincher, WBL MVP and WBL All-Star Game MVP Rita Easterling, Sue Digitale and Galloway would come to practice early and watch the NBA guys.
Galloway recalls the time a heralded LA Lakers rookie who would soon evolve into the face of the league received an unorthodox challenge.
The story goes that Bruno walked up to Magic Johnson and expressed his admiration.
"I think you're one of the greatest," Bruno started out, "but I know someone who can beat you in HORSE."
Magic's face lit up with that incandescent million-dollar smile and replied: "Bring it on."
Waddy Rossow proceeded to outshoot Johnson H to HORS when the Magic Man went down into the blocks and connected on one hook shot after another to win.
"We had WGN television coverage," Galloway remembers. "My family was able to watch all the way back in Texas. Great local coverage in the Sun-Times and Tribune. We were treated like the other male sports teams. I met Ernie Banks and Walter Payton. Iowa had a great following too, but we had the best fans hands down! They gave us nicknames and wore shirts to support us, traveled to games all over the league."
As our city celebrates the growing appeal of the WNBA and embraces the Sky, let's also pay tribute to a league and a team whose trailblazers were once the darlings of the city and led the WBL in attendance. The Hustle helped move the needle forward in acceptance of women in sports and for a while gave the city a different reference for a pro athlete.
"We had a vision that we might be able to lay a template for future generations to have women's professional basketball," Galloway said. "We were conscious of what we were trying to do, not just for ourselves, but for the future. That was part of our agenda."
The past, the present and the future of women's pro basketball in Chicago has one incredible link---a coach who is absolutely relentless in his calling to promote and grow the game.
He is the same guy who allegedly "kidnapped" a star from the Milwaukee Does and brought her to the Hustle. In reality, the team up north had stopped paying their players so WBL standout forward Charlene McWhorter (Jackson) was technically more of a free agent. She was a much needed post player who helped the Hustle win a Midwest Division title, and it was the beginning of a lasting friendship to this day.
"My greatest tribute to Doug is that his humility is always present when he speaks of his coaching or when he is honored or praised for his outstanding career, "Galloway said. "The answer is always the same---'it's all about the players.' His impact on the game continues to manifest in all the lives he has touched on and off the court.Â
"When we first met Doug, he was young and exuberant, and we quickly got used to his passion for the game. I always appreciated his consistency every day in practice as a player and while working with him as his assistant coach at DePaul.
"I do believe it was with the Hustle that he coined the phrase 'I love it, I love it, I love it.' He would gather us at midcourt in a circle every practice and ask us if we loved it (the game). That phrase became the mantra for his successful basketball camps, and all of us carried that to the teams we went on to coach. They just don't get any better than Doug."
Charlene McWhorter Jackson, Adrian Mitchell Newell and Galloway-McQuitter have maintained a close relationship with Bruno over the last 40 years, always meeting up at the NCAA Final Four and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
"He fought for us to get into the Hall of Fame as a league, and in 2018 we were inducted as Trailblazers of the Game," Galloway said. "It is beyond time for him to take his place individually in the Hall of Fame.
"He was the first to step up and support us as we negotiated a permanent display for the WBL, and our organization Legends of the Ball, Inc. Doug was on hand to support us in the debut this past August. He is in the display because after all, he coached and won the first women's professional basketball game in the United States.
"Doug really is the best---and so humble."
Â
Yes, the Sky's the limit nowadays thanks to an enterprising, innovative group of hoops enthusiasts four decades ago who were overflowing with a pioneer spirit and a gambler's hunch that women's sports could succeed just a few years after the enactment of Title IX.
The Chicago Hustle hit the local sports scene in 1978 led by team president John Geraty, major investors attorney Larry Cooper and personnel firm owner Sherwin Fischer and local marketing guru Chuck Shriver who had worked his magic in both the Cubs and White Sox front offices.
It was Shriver who negotiated the all-important TV contract with superstation WGN with Johnny "Red" Kerr as color commentator and also brought WLS-AM radio on board with Les Grobstein handling play-by-play.
A popular Shriver promotion was handing out free Dr. Peppers to several thousand fans at DePaul's Alumni Hall whenever the Hustle scored over 110 points on their home court. The Hustle triggered the promotion nearly a dozen times that first season.
Not wanting to be left behind in the gathering wave of mainstream media coverage, the Chicago Tribune assigned the well-known Bill Jauss as the Hustle's beat writer and the Sun-Times followed suit with Lacy Banks who would go on to cover the Bulls and Michael Jordan in the 1980s.
And the Hustle brain trust made the perfect choice for its first head coach---a young guy just starting to make waves of his own in the college basketball ranks---Richard Douglas Bruno.
*****
Bits and pieces of his unpredictable, roller-coaster ride with the Hustle and the WBL filtered through his conscious mind as the iconic 36-year DePaul women's basketball coach and longtime Sky season ticketholder was glued to his courtside seat during the Sky's fabulous run to the ring.
No doubt he fired a few fist pumps each time his former star guard Allie Quigley made another long-distance connection in the Oct. 17 WNBA title clincher. He cheered on Candace Parker while perhaps wondering what might have been had the three-time Illinois Ms. Basketball winner from Naperville Central chose to stay home instead of venturing out to Tennessee.
But overlapping all of those thoughts and more was the feeling he was witnessing the dawn of a new sensation.
Fans in Chicago were actually going gaga over women's basketball. More than 10,000 sports fanatics and hoops junkies were jamming into Wintrust Arena and would later turn out in force for the championship parade and rally just like they did for the Cubs in 2016, the White Sox in 2005 and the Bulls in the 1990s when Michael Jordan was their NBA ringmaster.
For the ultimate crusader who has fought against formidable odds for the better part of three decades for media coverage, what was happening right before his eyes filled him with a sense of wonderment and emotion.
For most of his basketball life, he has waged a personal crusade for gender equity in mainstream media sports coverage. Bruno is like a modern-day Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.
"Watching the Sky win, I was just so thrilled for the sport of women's basketball," Bruno said. "What I watched on that Sunday, what has been my passion ever since my first DePaul women's game made me realize women's basketball is for real.
"Looking up at Wintrust Arena filled to the rafters with fans cheering on a champion even though the Bears were playing just a few miles away---that was such a glorious moment for women's basketball. It's what I envision how the sport should be.
"That moment filled me with pride and joy---I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. It's what you've been fighting for your whole life.
"It doesn't matter who it is---whether it's the Sky, the Chicago Red Stars pro soccer team, a local college team---as long as it's a women's team being celebrated. The Sky's championship was a victory for all of women's sports."
*****
Little did Liz Galloway realize when she made the Hustle's final cut that she was about to encounter a deeply passionate, caring and hyper-focused individual who would teach her things as a coach and inspire her as a friend in reaching her human potential.
So moved was Galloway---now Liz Galloway-McQuitter---by the Sky's championship and all the repercussions connected to the Hustle that the former DePaul assistant coach and ex-head coach at Lamar and Northern Illinois made it her mission to remind the world where it all began.
"As the WNBA marks their 25th Anniversary with a Chicago Sky championship, as Title IX approaches 50 and as female athletes soar in popularity, the changes in the social landscape for women in professional sports including women's basketball harken a look back farther to its origin," Galloway-McQuitter said.
"The Sky's title is a first for the franchise, but it is not the city's first women's pro basketball team, and the WNBA is not the first women's pro league. The WBL (Women's Basketball League) was founded in 1978 and the Chicago Hustle played in the first women's professional game in the United States on December 9, 1978, defeating the Milwaukee Does in Milwaukee 92-87 in front of a crowd of almost 8,000 fans."
None other than the esteemed and legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite noted the history-making event on his national TV newscast.
Five days later in its home opener on December 14, the Hustle defeated the New York Stars in front of a packed crowd at DePaul's Alumni Hall marking the first women's professional basketball game in Chicago.
Galloway fondly recalls how Chicago's other pro sports teams were quick to embrace the Hustle as players from the Cubs like Ernie Banks, the Bears including Walter Payton, Jerry Sloan from the Bulls and the Blackhawks cheered them on from DePaul's Alumni Hall bleachers.
The Hall of Fame running back known as "Sweetness" headlined a Bears offseason basketball team that played the Hustle in exhibition games benefitting charities.
With the Bulls and their opponents conducting practices and shoot-arounds at Alumni Hall, Hustle players such as Debra Waddy Rossow and fellow starters Janie Fincher, WBL MVP and WBL All-Star Game MVP Rita Easterling, Sue Digitale and Galloway would come to practice early and watch the NBA guys.
Galloway recalls the time a heralded LA Lakers rookie who would soon evolve into the face of the league received an unorthodox challenge.
The story goes that Bruno walked up to Magic Johnson and expressed his admiration.
"I think you're one of the greatest," Bruno started out, "but I know someone who can beat you in HORSE."
Magic's face lit up with that incandescent million-dollar smile and replied: "Bring it on."
Waddy Rossow proceeded to outshoot Johnson H to HORS when the Magic Man went down into the blocks and connected on one hook shot after another to win.
"We had WGN television coverage," Galloway remembers. "My family was able to watch all the way back in Texas. Great local coverage in the Sun-Times and Tribune. We were treated like the other male sports teams. I met Ernie Banks and Walter Payton. Iowa had a great following too, but we had the best fans hands down! They gave us nicknames and wore shirts to support us, traveled to games all over the league."
As our city celebrates the growing appeal of the WNBA and embraces the Sky, let's also pay tribute to a league and a team whose trailblazers were once the darlings of the city and led the WBL in attendance. The Hustle helped move the needle forward in acceptance of women in sports and for a while gave the city a different reference for a pro athlete.
"We had a vision that we might be able to lay a template for future generations to have women's professional basketball," Galloway said. "We were conscious of what we were trying to do, not just for ourselves, but for the future. That was part of our agenda."
The past, the present and the future of women's pro basketball in Chicago has one incredible link---a coach who is absolutely relentless in his calling to promote and grow the game.
He is the same guy who allegedly "kidnapped" a star from the Milwaukee Does and brought her to the Hustle. In reality, the team up north had stopped paying their players so WBL standout forward Charlene McWhorter (Jackson) was technically more of a free agent. She was a much needed post player who helped the Hustle win a Midwest Division title, and it was the beginning of a lasting friendship to this day.
"My greatest tribute to Doug is that his humility is always present when he speaks of his coaching or when he is honored or praised for his outstanding career, "Galloway said. "The answer is always the same---'it's all about the players.' His impact on the game continues to manifest in all the lives he has touched on and off the court.Â
"When we first met Doug, he was young and exuberant, and we quickly got used to his passion for the game. I always appreciated his consistency every day in practice as a player and while working with him as his assistant coach at DePaul.
"I do believe it was with the Hustle that he coined the phrase 'I love it, I love it, I love it.' He would gather us at midcourt in a circle every practice and ask us if we loved it (the game). That phrase became the mantra for his successful basketball camps, and all of us carried that to the teams we went on to coach. They just don't get any better than Doug."
Charlene McWhorter Jackson, Adrian Mitchell Newell and Galloway-McQuitter have maintained a close relationship with Bruno over the last 40 years, always meeting up at the NCAA Final Four and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
"He fought for us to get into the Hall of Fame as a league, and in 2018 we were inducted as Trailblazers of the Game," Galloway said. "It is beyond time for him to take his place individually in the Hall of Fame.
"He was the first to step up and support us as we negotiated a permanent display for the WBL, and our organization Legends of the Ball, Inc. Doug was on hand to support us in the debut this past August. He is in the display because after all, he coached and won the first women's professional basketball game in the United States.
"Doug really is the best---and so humble."
Â
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