Former Wayland Baptist University basketball coach Harley Redin, pictured in 2001 at Hutcherson's Air Service in Plainview, holds a photograph from the 1956-57 undefeated AAU national championship. The Flying Queens chartered twin-engine airplanes, flown by Redin and team sponsor Claude Hutcherson, during their run to six national championships.
Women’s college basketball has never been more exciting than it is now.
Sold-out arenas, record television ratings, Q Scores for superstars that dwarf those of any men’s players in the NCAA.
This is their time. And oh, what a time it is.
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There was another time when the women’s game wasn’t so celebrated. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t popular.
One of the most heralded teams in women’s college history was the Flying Queens of Wayland Baptist, a small school in West Texas that helped put the sport on the map in the 1950s.
On Saturday, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced the Class of 2024. Among the inductees will be Harley Redin, one of the greatest coaches of all time.
Sadly, Redin will enter the Hall posthumously. He passed away in 2020 at the age of 100.
I got to know him when he was a spry 90-year-old, a “young fella” as my grandmother called anyone younger than her.
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As one who played such a significant role in laying the foundation for what we now see, Redin would love the current excitement about the women’s game.
He would certainly tell us not to compare the women’s game to the men’s game, as so many are wont to do. That’s what he told me in 2010, when UConn was riding what would become a triple-digit winning streak.
We first talked when Geno Auriemma’s squad got its 88th win in a row, matching the men’s record set by John Wooden’s UCLA squad in the early 1970s. UConn would go on to win 111 straight games before a loss.
“I don’t see the connection and why you would compare them,” Redin said at the time. “What those women are doing is great, and what coach Wooden’s teams did is great, too. You don’t have to compare them.
“Compare their great teamwork, their fighting to win every game and overcoming to do so. That’s all you need to compare.”
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Following his lead, I won’t compare Redin’s coaching to the top coaches in today’s women’s game. He came from a different world and was so good in it.
Plus, no one will ever come close to the 131 straight wins Wayland Baptist had from 1953-58. Redin, who coached the men’s team, didn’t take over the women’s squad until they had won two national titles and 52 straight games.
He entered under a lot of pressure and was still the men’s coach at the time.
A stern taskmaster who demanded perfection with an emphasis on the fundamentals, Redin flew more than 50 bomber missions during World War II, and he piloted one of the private jets that took his team to games around the country.
Yes, the Flying Queens flew everywhere, while Wayland Baptist’s men’s team traveled by bus.
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Wayland Baptist, in Plainview, about 45 miles north of Lubbock, might have been the first college to offer full scholarships to female athletes. The women’s team became such a huge draw that tryouts would bring some 60 players vying for a few open spots each year.
From the fancy outfits — matching traveling blouses and skirts, as well as satin uniforms — to the pregame routine they learned from the Harlem Globetrotters, the Flying Queens were a huge attraction.
The Sweet Georgia Brown warmup came about after a chance meeting at a Nashville hotel where the two teams were staying, albeit in on separate, segregated floors. Redin talked Globetrotters legends Marques Haynes and Goose Tatum into coming to a ballroom to give his women lessons in fancy ball-handling skills.
In the 1950s, AAU women’s basketball was much bigger than the American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was saluted in the movie “A League of Their Own.” Teams were sponsored by businesses as a marketing tool.
“It was big-time,” Redin said.
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Wayland Baptist, with all college students, competed against these semi-professional teams, which often had star players who were in their 30s. Early on, Redin had a policy that no woman could play on the team if she were married.
The Flying Queens won back-to-back national championships with two unbeaten seasons before Redin took over. He continued the run with two more unbeaten title runs, playing a fast-paced style that was unusual in those days, for men or women.
In total, he posted a 431-66 record in 18 seasons, including a 110-2 record in his first four years, and won six AAU national championships. Redin, who retired in 1973, also coached the U.S. Women’s National Team in 1959 and ’63 and the 1971 Pan-American Games.
He pushed for the game to change from the six-man competition to a full-court five-on-five, as was the men’s standard, and his teams kept winning, claiming championships in 1970 and '71. He offered a Black woman a scholarship almost 10 years before the University of Texas even had a women’s team.
Today’s game is drastically different than the one played then, but Redin’s teams played a futuristic game.
The game wouldn’t be what it is without coaches like him.
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