When you think about basketball-obsessed regions of the United States, the Midwest is either at the top of the list or close to it. The climate in the states like Indiana, Iowa and Kansas, and to a lesser extent Illinois and Michigan, with harsh winters, forced youth to spend long months in gyms and, due to a lack of other forms of entertainment, play basketball. A lot. And then practice shots in the driveways, regardless of the amount of snow that needed to be shoveled to free up some space to plant one’s feet.
One of those Midwestern states whose basketball culture remains somewhat unexplored and neglected is Minnesota.
While the 2023-24 iteration of the Minnesota Timberwolves is highly entertaining, fun and simply good at basketball, they have made the NBA Playoffs four times in the last 20 years. The University of Minnesota’s men’s basketball team’s only Final Four appearance, in 1997, was vacated by the NCAA after it was revealed that head coach Clem Haskins paid a staff worker to write papers for his students.
Luckily for the state though, they have women’s basketball to rely on when in need of witnessing sports excellence and inspiring a healthy dose of local pride. And now there’s a book telling the stories of individuals who have put the state on the map, Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Helped Pave the Way for the WNBA, authored by Howard Megdal and published by Triumph Books.
The heart and soul of the book is the story of Elvera “Peps” Neuman, a true basketball pioneer in the state. She learned to play on a family farm thanks to her dad, who built a hoop for her attached to a barn. What follows is a 70-something-year love affair with basketball that is still going strong, with Peps attending Gophers’ home games and rallying the crowd by waiving the team towel during intermissions even now.
Neuman knows that the privilege of playing basketball should never be taken for granted. Megdal describes the lengths that Neuman went to in order to just play, along with the sacrifices made by younger players. Intertwining her path with the four generations of Minnesota-born and/or Minnesota-based players and coaches, Megdal tells the story of one state’s involvement in building women’s basketball into what it is today.
As noted by the author:
Four generations of women: Peps Neuman and her closest friend and collaborator of a half century, Vicky Nelson; Cheryl Reeve and her wife, Carley Knox; Lindsay Whalen, Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, and the greatest team in WNBA history, the Minnesota Lynx; Minnesota’s own Rachel Banham establishing herself as an WNBA player; and the future of the game itself in Paige Bueckers, Mara Braun, and the Minnesota professional stars of tomorrow. They have all built this thing together.
Additional information about the book and ordering options can be found here.