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.
She played for that team, the Minnesota Fillies, in that first season, 1978-79. Two seasons later she was doing public relations for the team when, with the league struggling through what would be its third and final season, the Fillies' legacy came to an end.
Financial issues plagued the league from the start, and the same was true in Minnesota for owner and GM J. Gordon Nevers. A difficult season was heading down the home stretch when the Fillies went to Chicago to play the Chicago Hustle before a big crowd at DePaul University's Alumni Hall.
Unhappy about not having been paid, the team decided to make a stand in the Windy City, where league Commissioner Sherwin Fischer was based. The team warmed up, then walked out.
Coach Terry Kunze said he didn't know about the players' plan.
"We warmed up," he said. "There was a full house, a good crowd. Then we went down [to the locker room] for a few minutes. When they went down they left, and I came up alone."
