STrib: Lynette Sjoquist and the Minnesota Fillies

[Ignatius L Hoops]

Minnesota Fillies, a women's pro basketball team, ran out of money in 1981 at end of third season

This week in Minnesota sports history: The Fillies last game in the Women's Professional Basketball League, a 122-61 loss at San Francisco, was played 39 years ago this week.

www.startribune.com

Kent Youngblood:

Lynnette Sjoquist had just finished a fourth season with the All American Red Heads, a barnstorming women’s basketball team. She thought basketball was done for her and it was time to return, she said, to normal life.

Then she saw the ad. It was 1978 and a new league was forming, the Women’s Professional Basketball League. There was going to be a Minnesota team So she tried out at the Decathlon Club, was offered a contract and signed. It wasn’t for much money, but she was getting to play the game she loved.

“It was an answer to my prayers,” she said.

...

It was a difficult end, but it’s an experience Sjoquist — who is part of the broadcast team for University of Minnesota women’s basketball — still treasures. This was a real, professional league for women, one that came years before the present-day WNBA. It was a league folks hoped would benefit from the 1976 Olympics, where women’s basketball was included for the first time.

“It was an interesting time,” Sjoquist said. “The league had a vision of what this could be. It was great, but it was also a struggle. And it ended, after three years, in a little bit of disarray.”