Before there was Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, before there was Washington guard Kelsey Plum. Before there was even an NCAA-sanctioned women’s basketball tournament, there was Kansas guard Lynette Woodard.
Woodard, one of the best female players of her era, scored 3,649 points in a four-year career for the Jayhawks from 1978-81. That is the most in major women’s college basketball history, but it is not recognized as such by the NCAA because it took place under a previous governing body, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).
With Clark 32 points away from breaking Woodard’s mark—having taken the NCAA crown from Plum on Feb. 15 in a 106–89 win over Michigan—Woodard urged the governing body for college sports to respect her and her contemporaries’ achievements.