In 1990, 34-year-old Carol Stiff, a basketball junkie who spent years coaching small college ball in the Northeast, packed away her clipboard and took an entry-level programmer position at what she considered a “little company” in Bristol, Conn.
Basketball had long been a part of Stiff’s life. Her uncle Don Donoher was one of Bobby Knight’s assistant coaches on the 1984 Olympic gold medal-winning team led by Michael Jordan. By middle school, she was playing youth basketball in Bernardsville, N.J., and one of her fondest memories was going to Madison Square Garden as a teenager with her mom in 1977 to watch Montclair State star Carol “Blaze” Blazejowski as part of a doubleheader called the Hanover Classic. It was the rare opportunity to see the top competitors play the game Stiff loved.
Despite an 11 a.m. tip-off, there was a crowd of over 10,000 people in MSG to see Blaze, whose scoring prowess and all-around game drew comparisons to Pete Maravich. Blaze could shoot. She could pass. She played with flair. Even without a three-point line, she scored 52 points.
“All of a sudden a light bulb went off,” Stiff said of the game. It showed her that the women’s game could thrive under the right circumstances. At her high school, after the boys’ team received Converse…
