Another Accident? In a Doctor’s Office? You kidding?

Another day, another doc.

Another accident? At the doctor's office? You kidding?

What kind of a klutz am I? Was I born accident prone? Or does it go back to bad balance at my base, from toes, so crooked I could hang by them from a tree.

Who gets taken out by a treadmill in the doc office at the hospital?

At a routine checkup, I mentioned shortness of breath. My primary doctor heard a heart murmur. She insisted I follow up with a cardiologist. Pronto. Eight months later, (you know how long it takes to get an appointment with a specialist) I finally got in with the specialist.

After an EKG and a battery of tests, the cardiologists diagnosed arrhythmia in the upper and lower chambers of the heart. Then she wanted me to take a stress test and walk on a treadmill.

“I need to measure your heart beat under exertion,” she explained as she hooked me up. “Every three minutes, I will increase the speed and incline on the treadmill.”

The first six minutes, I was fine and feeling chuffed to bits. Then at the nine minute level, she cranked up thetempo.

“You still doing okay?” she asked.

“Un huh,” I grunted, huffing and puffing like a steam engine, feeling light-headed and wobbly and cursing myself. (Ever the damn athlete still competing for a better time, I continued gasping for oxygen.)

That’s enough!” the doc exclaimed, “we’ll stop here!”

I stopped.

The treadmill did not.

Before I had time to react, my feet splayed out from under me and my body pitched forward. I hit my chin, my forearms, my elbow and my knees on the rubber mat that kept rotating.

Nooooo, I’m going to be sucked up by the roller.

“Oh no, sorry madame, sorry,” the doctor said. “I am not sure how that happened."

“I’m okay,” I gasped feeling mortified. Who the heck face plants on a treadmill at the cardiologist’s?

After profuse apologies, the doctor sat me on her exam table and told me, “calm down and raise your arm.”

As she fitted the blood pressure cuff, she explained, “I need to record one more reading”.

Of course doc, my BP is too high right now, I wanted to tell her. I just survived a near death experience.

What? Am I hearing clearly. She wants further investigation.

“I am going to set you up for a heart CAT scan to check the valves and heart function and to rule out coronary artery disease,” the cardiologist said, “Don’t worry, this is routine procedure.”

Sure for someone who flunked the treadmill test.

Now once again, I have to squeeze into a white cylinder the size of a toilet paper roll.

Necessary? Really? After a life time of X-rays from accidents and injuries, I am pretty sure, I glow in dark.

“Seriously, doc, “ I lament. “I don’t need more tests. I know why I am short of breath. “You try keeping up with a sixty-nine-year-old Frenchman, who thinks he is 20!”

“Yep, typical,” the hubby says, “Throws her mate under the bus.”

Again!

Raising the Roof, Retiring Maya Moore’s Jersey, Reveling in Women’s Basketball

As an athlete, coming of age in the 70s during Title IX’s infancy, the explosion of women’s basketball today blows my mind.

This summer, I blended into the 19,023 record-breaking crowd at Target Center in Minneapolis to honor the Minnesota Lynx legend Maya Moore.

Before tip off, I trembled. Awed, I watched as people of all ages, races and backgrounds cheered, wearing shirts engraved with the names and numbers of their favorite FEMALE players.

How fitting that Iowa’s Caitlyn Clark’s Indiana Fever team faced off with the Lynx on the night they retired her idol’s number 23 jersey?

Caitlyn grew up dreaming of playing basketball like Maya one day.

Decades ago, girls like me and my sisters, grew up dreaming of playing at all. Of just being allowed on the court.

This profound moment in time was magic. Especially for my family.

Like Maya, I once wore the number 23.

So did my little sister.

Maya was a star at every level, on her high school team, at the storied women’s basketball program at UCONN, and in the WNBA leading the Lynx to 4 national championships.

By comparison, I couldn’t even play on a team until my senior year of high school. When I played college ball in the 70’s, we were ridiculed by peers, scorned by the NCAA. After college, I signed a contract with hard times to compete in a fledgling Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL). We played in empty arenas, hitched rides to practice, survived on crackers and never got paid. In the late 70s female ball players were oddities, a pro league of our own insane, but our crazy collective dream gave birth to the 1996 WNBA.

Along with hundreds of courageous pioneers, our sacrifices helped thread together the stunning tapestry of women’s basketball that led to this day, this time, this moment.

In the summer 1999, my sister and I took our daughters to our first WNBA game in the Lynx inaugural season. There were fans, but also enough empty seats that we were able to move close enough to the court for my daughter to catch a free t-shirt.

On August 24, 2024, at Minnesota’s Target Center, as I sat on the upper level of the packed arena, pandemonium erupted as fans paid tribute to their past hero and applauded the exploits of their present star, both catalysts in revolutionizing the popularity of the women’s game.

It’s a far cry from my day, when I played at Madison Square Garden in an arena, so empty, the sound of the ball bouncing echoed through the rafters.

We cannot know who we are if we do not know where we came from.

Before the Lynx/Fever game, when I stood for our national anthem, I raised my hand to my heart and nodded to our past stars.

We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Thanks to Title IX, a girl grows up never questioning her right to be all she can be.
That access to opportunity began in the heartland for me, Maya, and countless other little girls.

When we were kids, women were not only absent from the gym. We didn’t know any female doctors, lawyers or CEOs. We fought for the right to play ball and paved the way for our highflying daughters of today, including my own daughter who was a division III athlete on her way to becoming a doctor.

What made Maya Moore extraordinary, was not just her supreme athleticism, but her human spirit embracing equality and battling for social justice that led to the liberation of a man imprisoned for crime he never committed. Maya, the league’s best player, retired from the game at height of her success, to fight for the rights of others.

After the game, Maya Moore Irons addressed former teammates and fans as they raised her number 23 to the rafters. Known for her illustrious MVP career, Maya stands out most, not for her accolades on the court, but for the person she is off it.

“There’s no end to possibilities, when a group of women together bring it!” She said blinking back tears. “Let our unity go beyond Target Center. Show your love and appreciation for those around you!”

“My life,” she added“is an example of what happens when we love a little girl well.”

I, too, am an example of a little girl being loved well. I grew up first in my adoring McKinzie family, then my hometown, Sterling, my Illinois State University community, and my country, the USA. As an adult, I dedicated my life to helping teens reach their dreams on the hard courts and in the classroom across Europe. Never in my wildest fantasy could I imagine how far the game took me and how far we have come.

Basketball, like life, is about paying it forward. Passing it on.

The current Lynx icon, Napheesa Collier, grew up in Jefferson City, just like Maya. Somewhere out there is a little girl who looks at Phee and dreams of being a WNBA star. I look back at my younger self and think “you did good girl”.

We struggled too hard for too long.

We are NEVER going back.

Happy 90th Birthday to my Extraordinary Mom

From kindergarten teacher, to camp leader, to club member, to quilt-maker, to card sender, to grandma extraordinaire… everybody loves Lenore!

You, mom, who brought us into the world and then taught us to embrace each day as a gift, also showed us how to nurture, to console, to compromise, to accept, to fight, to forgive, to teach, to learn, to praise, to thank, to welcome, to love.

Unconditionally.

Thank you for the gift of life. Only in my later years, have I appreciated what a selfless act that truly is. When I was a young mother, you wisely told me: “From the moment your baby is born, you offer her as a gift to the world.”

I have been so blessed to have been born to you - a generous, intelligent, forward-thinking mom, who nurtured me through so many tough transitions with my identity intact during the tumultuous 60s and 70s. Because of you I became strong, courageous and resilient.

I could have never navigated my path as a trailblazer without you encouraging me to rise up after each setback, to persist through every trial, and fight back from injuries in my rough and tumble life as a female athlete.

Because you loved and accepted me, I learned accept myself, long before society did.

Had you been born in a different era, when women had equal educational and athletic opportunities, you would have been an athlete, a doctor, an engineer or a scientist, like your two brothers. Instead you broke glass ceiling in the 1950s earning a college degree, becoming a teacher and raising four children five years apart.

If I became a Title IX pioneer, it was because from day one, my strong, loving, selfless mom believed in me and led by example. You walked so I could run.

You taught me to live with gratitude and to “hang by my faith hook”. How much kinder and more hopeful am I because you taught me to believe in the goodness in mankind?

I feel grateful for every sunrise, every phone call, every Summit Lake summer, I can share with you.

You, my beautiful, blue-eyed Norwegian-American Mom, have only to look into your children’s, grandchildren’s and great grandchildren’s eyes to see the reflection of your love. A love that keeps on giving.

Normandy 1944-2024: Eighty Years Later The Memory Lives On

I climbed into the steel reinforced bunkers overlooking the Normandy landing beaches on Pointe du Hoc eighty years after the Rangers overtook the strategic German lookout 90 feet above the English Channel. I pictured a 19-year-old American boy jumping out of a PT boat into icy waters, with nothing more than a gauze bandage for comfort on a stormy dawn illuminated by gunfire.

I imagined him staggering across the dunes, dodging bullets and booby traps, clawing at the red cliffs, crawling through the hedge rows, groping for life in a foreign land, shooting at the shadows that could be his own comrades. He was an American soldier killing boys/men, who would have been his friends in another time and generation.

Here rests in honor glory a comrade in arms known but to God

I am of another time and generation — an American with a French-Normand spouse and German friends. Though I’ve been to Normandy hundreds of times, I visited the Normandy American Cemetery (outside St. Laurent) just once.

Only when standing on the hallowed grounds, where Americans lay under a blanket of emerald earth, marked by 9,386 white crosses, could I truly understand the enormity of their great and tragic endeavor on June 6, 1944.

On a rainy day, Normandy’s landscape offers a bleak reminder of her sad past, but on sunny ones the murky coastline, black sea, and gray fields are transformed into a tapestry of colors. Orange cliffs drop off into purple waters. Inland reddish-brown Norman cows and pink apple blossoms dot verdant hills under powder blue skies. Soft light white washes half-timbered houses and solid stone farm houses that remain as they were centuries ago.

The beauty and tranquility of Normandy today could drive a full-grown man to tears. And I, who am too young to have understood the impact of World War II, get a lump in my throat every time I return to the dairyland of northwestern France on one of those pinch-me-I-am-dreaming days of sunshine.

my husband's village on Normandy shores

Decades ago, on one of those sunny days, I pedaled my bike past red poppy fields and green valleys where newborn calves and lambs romped. I devoured veal “à la Normande,” Camembert cheese and berries in cream. Somewhere between the first and last course, I fell in love with a Norman.

Now the sacrifices of the men of the great war, their silent testimonials of white crosses that cover the rich green hills above the beaches Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword and Omaha have taken on special meaning for me.

They are my countrymen laid to rest in my adopted country. In a sense they saved my family.

freedom for the next generation

Every time, we used to visit Dieppe, (France) to see my grandfather-in-law, he’d greet me at the gate chanting the Star Spangled Banner.

“Ah, ma petite Pat,” he’d say recounting the highlight of his career as a trumpeter in the Garde Republicaine “I’ll never forget riding Lustucru (his horse) across the courtyard. The Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, but didn’t make it to Paris until the end of August. We waited for four long years…never quit believing they’d make it.”

He’d stop and pull a handkerchief from his suit pocket and wipe his eyes, before continuing, “Never forget how I blew the trumpet that day to welcome the Americans — greatest day of my life.”

The old heart does not forget. Now even though my generation never knew the horrors of war, my young heart will remember. When I stood in front of a sea of stark, white marble crosses, I felt overwhelmed by a debt that can never be repaid.

Suddenly I knew the unknown soldier — he was my father, my brother, my countryman, who died so nobly and unknowing, so that today I might live in freedom and peace in a land whose magnificence offers its own thanks to the skies.

Rest in peace my comrades-in-arms. You have not died in vain. I wish my words could transcend time so you could know. Because of you Normandy today, like the true Normans, remains proud and gracious.

Women’s History Month, March Madness, Acknowledging Ghosts of Women’s Basketball

Half a century ago, no one paid any attention when my friends and I played basketball. We got kicked off the court, but shoved our way back in the game, clearing the lane for Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, Juju Watkins and the contemporary stars of today.

Over the decades, women’s opportunities grew thousandfold because the cultural landscape changed with media exposure. Today girls never question their right to play basketball; they have female sport icons to emulate.

Born at the turn of the twenty-first century, Caitlin Clark grew up idolizing role models. As early as second grade, she wrote about her goal to play in the WNBA. As Caitlin reached the pinnacle of her college career at Iowa, she helped pack arenas. America watched, mesmerized by her engaging personality, athleticism, and exciting style of play.

In the sixties, in my own second grade story I wrote about the lockers playing a basketball game against the waste baskets during recess. Back then, I imagined inanimate objects in school had a greater chance of competing in the game than girls. Yet, like my sports loving peers, we shot hoops anyway creating a path so new that no one envisioned its existence.

The female hoopsters of my era grew up invisible in a vacuum of time.

As a high school junior, we were allowed to compete in three basketball games. My senior season, we played 14 games and won a conference title, which at the time was more than most schools where girls’ sports remained nonexistent. No one registered my Sterling High school records. Why would they? Still, I know the next generation, including my biological little sister, wanted to play basketball like me. They did. In 1977, they became the first IHSA Sterling Girls State Championship team.

Back in my day, without specialists, and pre/post season programs, girls like me had to be our own personal trainers, dieticians, strength coaches and shot doctors. My dad, Coach Jim McKinzie, gave me a head start by perfecting my jump shot and fundamentals. Workouts with coach, Phil Smith, helped me reach the pro level.

ISU Coach Jill Hutchison presenting Wade Trophy Finalist 1979. Best national basketball player award named after Coach Margaret Wade, 3-time Delta State National Champion.

I attended college in the 70s and received Illinois State’s first athletic scholarship (1978.) Right place. Right time. Right people. My coach, Jill Hutchison and her ISU colleagues paved the way for the groundbreaking reform Title IX that mandated equal opportunity for women in college athletics. Her graduate research dispelled the myth that women’s hearts would explode by playing full court. Hence the girl’s 3 on 3 half court game gave way to full court play in 1970. In 1972 Hutchison, along with ISU’s Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics director, created the first women’s national basketball championship.

This year, when Caitlin Clark, broke the all-time NCAA scoring record, she acknowledged Lynette Woodard’s scoring record during the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) era.

“By 1981 the AIAW staged 41 championships in 19 sports and put women’s basketball on national television,” Sally Jenkins wrote in the Washington Post February 24, 2024. “Which is exactly when the NCAA swooped in with a hostile takeover, pressuring universities into abandoning the AIAW, to absorb what the women had built.“

I played ball in the AIAW era. In the infancy of Title IX, as collegiate athletes, we pushed our bodies, played hard, pulled all-nighters and still made it to class. We drove ourselves cross country in campus station wagons to compete against Michigan, Indiana, Ohio State and today’s Big Ten schools.

Charlotte Lewis ISU star center 1976 Olympian

In the mid 70s, we knew women could star in showtime. Our ISU center, the late Charlotte Lewis, dunked in practice. Our point guard Vonnie Tomich, a WBL All-Star, knocked down treys from downtown long before the three-point shot was added to the rule book.

Marketing? Sh**! No one in corporate America wanted to promote brands with no names like us. Name Image Likeness (NIL) did not exist. Social media, zilch. Media exposure, nada. Our only fans - loyal families and friends.

Today thousands of people tune in to women’s basketball obliterating the old records of attendance and viewership.

By comparison, in the late seventies, WBL (precursor to the WNBA) players’ paychecks bounced months before the league declared bankruptcy. Back then, no one wanted to watch a bunch of “amazon women” play men’s favorite game.

My sister, Karen, first Illinois State High School Championship basketball player, daughter, Hannah, Minnesota High School State Champion rugby player at sold out Iowa - Nebraska women’s basketball game.

We sacrificed our bodies to chase a dream so farfetched and ahead of its time that we were ridiculed. Those scars of scorn remain etched in our souls. But without us, Luisa Harris, Lynnette Woodard and the superstars of the AIAW and WBL era, there would be no Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers or Juju Watkins. For decades women’s sports have been an afterthought, if considered at all. Thanks to media exposure and exciting play, fans now argue about the officiating, players trash talk opponents, and the women’s game is the talk of the town.

Gender disparity still exist in colleges, corporations, and societies, but the icons of the Caitlin Clark era have demonstrated women’s sport will grow if given a chance.

“Build it and they will come,” said Hutchison, Illinois State University’s winningest basketball coach, Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame recipient (2009) and a true visionary of the game.

After a long, arduous journey from the AIAW to Title XI to the NCAA Final Four to the WNBA, the ghosts of the game are hooting and hollering and dancing in the rafters. Forget bracket standings. Ignore NCAA results. Celebrate Final Score. Women Win!

Keep Walking

“I considered my options
There was only one I knew
There was always only one.

To keep walking.”

from Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

So simple, yet so profound. Trapped in my royal blue funk, regretting, lamenting, mourning for all the things I can no longer do, I take comfort in the words of a woman who walked the Pacific North Trail solo and chronicled her journey in her best selling memoir Wild.

I can’t ski, skate, bike, play basketball, or pickle ball or any kind of ball game. I can’t hop, skip, or jump. But I can stand tall. Shoulders back, chin up, head high. I can put one foot in front of the other.

Why is that so hard to do? I feel like rigor mortis set in while I sleep. When I wake up each morning, I am caught by surprise. So I roll out of bed, crawl onto my yoga mat, stretch my stiff limbs and marvel.

I am still here.

Alive.

Each new day is a clean slate. A chance to get it right.

I remember to smile, be kind, offer encouragement. Someone else is in much worse shape, facing far greater trials, struggling to survive in tougher circumstances.

Today I had an epiphany.

I am an athlete. Still. Only now I am training for life.
Though I will never again play my beloved ball games, I can raise my arms, clap my hands, stomp my feet, wiggle my hips, shake my booty. I can still dance.

I inherited the iron will of my ancestors whose footprints I try so hard to emulate in spite of setbacks.

My father and grandfather, good sportsmen, great coaches, dedicated their lives to helping others find their way and offered me stellar examples of resiliency. They remained athletes at heart, determined to stay as active as their bodies would allow until their final hours.

I can still move.

I may be slower, stiffer, clumsier, but I can sit, stand and even roll over like Rover.

I’m lucky to be here!

Right now.

Today.

We, human beings, take so much for granted until it’s gone.

Aging can be a losing game. Combined with bad luck, terrible accidents, and bizarre ailments, no one can perceive what challenges await.

Today is our only guarantee.

Seize the moment.

Be brave enough to take another step.

As a child I hated to walk, I would rather run. Walking was too slow, too boring. Now walking saves my soul.

We are all just walking and walking, trying our best to find our way.

To stay the course.

To step forward.

To believe.

Eventually all roads lead to the mountaintop.