Sometimes there’s an extra player on the floor during practice.

She’s taller than most members of the Northwestern women’s basketball team and she has a great knowledge of the Wildcats’ offense. One might even say she has the most pure talent of anyone on the court.

So with the Cats entering Thursday’s Big Ten Championships as the worst-seeded team, one question should be asked: Why hasn’t this practice player seen any game time?

Because June Olkowski is no longer a collegiate athlete — she’s just a coach who has held onto some of her All-American, national championship-winning skills.

‘It was bedlam, and it was great’

Olkowski’s love for the game developed as she was growing up in Philadelphia. The city known to basketball fans as the home of the Palestra — the legendary University of Pennsylvania gym built in 1926 — was burgeoning with women’s basketball talent in the 1970s.

Olkowski began in the schoolyard and eventually made her way to performing in front of large high school crowds. Meanwhile, Theresa Grentz, now the coach at Illinois, and Rene Portland, now the coach at Penn State, were busy winning three straight national championships (1972-74) at Immaculata University, a Catholic school just outside of the city.

Besides those local heroes, however, there weren’t many women Olkowski saw as role models.

“All of my mentors as a player were guys,” Olkowski said. “I have two older brothers, and my oldest brother played college basketball at the University of Baltimore. I didn’t really have a (female) mentor, someone who said, ‘Let’s shoot.’ You just played.”

Initially, Olkowski thought of basketball as a game she loved to play, not a ticket to college. But media coverage opened her eyes to the reality of a game on the rise.

“I can remember reading an article in Sports Illustrated on Theresa Grentz,” Olkowski said. “It was called ‘Center of Attention.’ That was really my first exposure. I was like, ‘Wow! There’s an article about a girl playing basketball in Sports Illustrated.'”

The article was a big deal for Grentz as well.

“It was an article written by Jane Gross,” Grentz said. “The front cover had Steve Carlton, and it was dated April 9, 1973.”

How does the Illinois coach remember it so clearly?

“I have it sitting right here in front of me,” said Grentz, who keeps a copy in her office in Champaign, Ill. “It was a big thing for a female athlete to be in a magazine at the time.”

Philadelphia was the epicenter of women’s basketball — when Olkowski’s high school, Saint Maria Goretti, played its rival, West Philadelphia Catholic High School, seats were hard to come by.

“When the two schools would play, they’d play at 3:45 or 4:00, and the gym would literally be packed,” Grentz said. “I was recruiting (as the head coach of Rutgers), and I would have to go down at 1:00 and wait outside just to make sure I got a seat. It was bedlam, and it was great.”

Airfare not included

By the time Olkowski graduated in 1978 from Saint Maria Goretti, she was being recruited by more than 100 colleges across the country.

“She was a legitimate inside player with guard skills,” Grentz said. “This was unheard of.”

But women’s basketball was not yet under the the NCAA’s jurisdiction. The Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was in charge of women’s programs, and recruiting was a difficult process.

“When I went to school, you didn’t have five paid visits,” Olkowski said. “If you wanted to visit a school, you had to do it on your own, with your own money. A lot of kids stayed locally and didn’t go too far away. My parents didn’t have the money to send me to California to check out UCLA or USC.”

Olkowski was confined to the East Coast. She seriously considered North Carolina State, Maryland, St. Joseph’s, Old Dominion and Rutgers, where Grentz had taken over as head coach in 1976.

“Recruiting was all about relationships back then,” Grentz said. “There were no restrictions, and so I had seen the players I was recruiting several times. When it got to March I said, ‘Enough. June, you know what I’m all about. You call me when you’re ready to play for me.'”

Sure enough, one night that spring, Olkowski gave Grentz a call — the highly touted prospect was headed for Rutgers.

But there was a little bump along the way.

“We spelled her name wrong in the letter of intent,” Grentz said. “We put an apostrophe in her last name. I almost had a conniption.”

Despite the inauspicious start, one of the country’s finest players and an up-and-coming coach set the scene for a national championship run.

Palestra magic

Grentz’s squad was an immediate success. Olkowski and the Scarlet Knights reached the AIAW national tournament three years in a row, from 1979-81. They made it as far as the final Eight, but seemed unable to break into the Final Four.

“One year we lost to Long Beach, and one year we lost to Tennessee,” Olkowski said. “Those are the games that I probably remember the most — the games that we lost.”

Meanwhile, women’s basketball was about to experience a fundamental change.

The NCAA noticed the growing popularity of the AIAW national tournament and decided it would play a role in women’s collegiate athletics.

“In 1981 the NCAA wanted to take over women’s athletics,” Olkowski said. “Up until that time, they didn’t want anything to do with us. But in the 1981-82 season, all of the schools voted. Some schools joined the NCAA, and some schools stayed with the AIAW.”

The Scarlet Knights decided to stick with the AIAW for one more season, Olkowski’s senior year. And this time, Rutgers was able to get over the hump and into the Final Four.

Olkowski averaged 19.6 points and 10.1 rebounds per game as an All-America forward her senior season, and her team went on to win the 1982 AIAW national championship, beating Texas, 83-77.

But something made it even more special for Olkowski and Grentz: the win came at the Palestra.

“The Palestra was a Mecca,” Grentz said. “When the first basket was scored, people would throw streamers. When you grew up in Philadelphia, you always went there. And when we won the championship, it was an awful lot of fun to be there with those young people at that time.”

Because the NCAA also held a national tournament, 1982 marked a year with two national champions: Rutgers and Louisiana Tech. Olkowski remembers when the Scarlet Knights faced the Lady Techsters earlier in the season.

“We had lost to Louisiana Tech in double overtime in Madison Square Garden in December,” Olkowski said.

But nothing could take away an amazing championship run.

“We had been around and we played them all,” Grentz said. “We played Tennessee and beat them, we played UCLA and beat them and we played Cheyney State and beat them. We did our fair share of playing and winning.”

Becoming a RUTGERS legend

Olkowski finished at Rutgers with a career average of 14.6 points per game, and the consistent production earned her a spot in the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1999 she was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, joining the great Philadelphia legacy of women’s basketball.

“She was a true competitor who was all about integrity and decency,” Grentz said. “People who came to the games loved watching her. She was a Kodak All-American and a national champion — I’d say that was a pretty good career.”

Does Olkowski tell NU players about her magical four seasons with the Scarlet Knights?

“Every once in a while, she’ll bring it up,” NU center Sarah Kwasinski said. “She doesn’t do it too often though.”

Olkowski doesn’t think they’re interested.

“They don’t want to hear about that,” Olkowski said.

Well, they might be wondering where that big practice player got all of her move
s.