February 15, 2024 will go down in history as the day Iowa’s Caitlin Clark broke Kelsey Plum’s Division 1 NCAA Basketball scoring record. It was an incredible feat from a player that has dominated the sport, but there are some people still questioning the validity of the record.
Clark surpassed Plum’s 3,527 points but there remains another player the discussion. Lynette Woodard, who played for Kansas in the late 70’s and early 80’s, is still considered by many analysts to be the unofficial leader when it come to total points. Woodard amassed an astonishing 3,649 points over a career that spanned 139 games.
🗣️ “Lynette Woodard is one of the great women’s players of all time” #RockChalk 🤝 pic.twitter.com/zk4DvKvGP3
— Kansas Women's Basketball (@KUWBball) February 25, 2024
The issue, however, is that during Woodard’s collegiate career, the women’s game was not regulated by the NCAA. Women’s basketball was governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women during that era. The NCAA did not set up their first women’s tournament until 1982.
According to a recent piece in the Washington Post, Woodard herself believes her record should stand.
“Those records should have been merged a long time ago,” said Woodard. It’s just not fair. There’s a lot of history there, and it just should not be dismissed.”
Caitlin Clark will most likely surpass Woodard this year but the bigger issue remains a generation of female athletes whose achievements have been air-brushed from history. The current crop NCAA women’s basketball players are fortunate to have state of the art facilities and budgets Woodard did not have access too. Woodard remains a main reason for those changes over the decades and is a major part of the history when examining the growth in the women’s game.
