Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame: Debbie Gadd, Class of 1976

TOM KEEGAN
Onwardtrojans.com
Then a U.S. senator from Indiana, Birch Bayh started the change for the better in women’s athletics and society in general with 37 words inside an education bill that defined Title IX: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
It takes more than legislation to change long-held practices, however, so it’s not as though with one stroke of the pen all athletes, regardless of gender, instantly were granted equal opportunity.
But it was a meaningful start, and it created hope inside young girls with athletic talent, young girls like Debbie Gadd, who will be honored at halftime
Tonight with this year’s Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame class and tomorrow at a dinner Sand Creek Country Club. Debbie was part of the 2024 inductees, but at the last minute had to postpone the trip. Now she gets to share the evening with her coach and fellow inductee, Connie Hamilton, whose name at that time, shortly before getting married, was Ulrich.
Hamilton said there is only one thing she wishes she could change about Gadd.
“I wish she could have come along a little later so she could have played more games and be seen by more people,” Hamilton said. “Debbie was ahead of her time.”
Gadd was in the summer leading into her freshman year of high school when Title IX passed on June 23, 1972.
“One of my goals actually once I got into high school and Title IX was just being enacted was to get a scholarship to play sports in college,” Gadd said in an interview conducted shortly after she learned of her induction into the Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame.
But when that goal became a reality in the form of a letter from Indiana State University, Gadd thought surely a mistake had been made.
Gadd played varsity basketball for four years in high school and varsity field hockey her first three years, but couldn’t play her senior year because the school dropped the sport.
“I received a letter (from Indiana State) telling me that I had been awarded an athletic scholarship,” Gadd said. “I wasn’t home when the letter came. I was watching the baseball team play a sectional game. My mom opened the letter up and when she told me I got a scholarship in field hockey, I told her it had to be a mistake because I didn’t even play my senior year.”
So Gadd’s mother placed a call to Terre Haute for a clarification. No mistake, she was told. The basketball coach didn’t have any scholarships remaining and the field hockey coach did, so that’s how the first college athletic scholarship ever awarded to a Chesterton girl happened to be for a sport the high school no longer offered.
Gadd played both sports, plus softball at ISU, despite Chesterton not having a softball team then.
But basketball always was her favorite, even though she said she “loved to play field hockey.”
Her final basketball game for Chesterton, and the ensuing bus ride made for a memorable night.
“We were playing in the first ever IHSAA-sanctioned sectional and we were playing Portage in the championship game and we were runner-up. After the game, our team was standing in the hallway watching the Portage players receive their trophies,” said Gadd, a senior in 1976. “We were just standing there. There was a guy standing with us and he had a ladder. I went up to him and I said, ‘As the runner-up, do we get anything?’ And he said, ‘Well, let me go see what I can do.’ And he took that ladder and he went up it and got the net down. He brought it back to coach (Connie) Ulrich.”
Gadd will never forget the particulars of that ride back to school.
“We got on the bus and Coach Ulrich got out a pair of scissors and she said, ‘OK, I want you each to take a piece of the net.’ One of my teammates from the back of the bus yelled out, ‘I want Debbie to have my piece of the net,’ and then another teammate said, ‘Yeah, I want Debbie to have my piece of the net.’ And Coach Ulrich handed me the net,” Gadd said. “And I still have that net. Coach Ulrich didn’t even get a piece of the net.”
The net says it all about how much the rest of the girls on the final bus ride of the 1975-76 basketball season valued Gadd as a player and a leader, a teammate and a friend.
Gadd was team captain, team MVP and all-conference in volleyball, basketball and field hockey. In basketball, she set school records for rebounds in a game (21), highest scoring average (15.0) in a season, and most rebounds in a season (161). She also also set a Goldsborough Gym record with a 28-point game.
The fact that the game was played at Goldsborough was a sign of progress for girls sports. In earlier seasons, the girls played their games at Liberty Middle School and practiced in the little gym at the old high school.
Oh well, it could have been worse. She could have been from Iowa.
“When I was in high school, Iowa’s high schools played 3 on 3,” Gadd remembered.
One place Gadd never felt relegated to second fiddle was at home, where her brothers, two older, one younger, welcomed her in their competitions.
“It really helped me along the way to have brothers to inspire me,” she said. “They would always include me, whether it was basketball or baseball, whatever sport they were playing.”
Gadd has fond memories of riding her bicycle at “probably about 8 years old” from the family’s home in Western Acres neighborhood to Chesterton Park, where “they had all kinds of sports in their summer sports program. When I was in the third grade doing that, I set the goal that I wanted to be a teacher and I wanted to go to college and be involved in sports. Third grade, that’s when everything started clicking for me.”
And it never stopped clicking.
Gadd spent 27 years as a women’s college basketball coach. She started that career as a graduate student at DePauw University, where she was the varsity basketball and softball coach for a year. They were not full-time positions.
“You got a stipend,” Gadd said. “They paid for your graduate school classes and you were the coach. I didn’t have any assistant coaches or anything.”
That experience led to her being assistant basketball and softball coach at College of St. Mary in Omaha (1983-88), then assistant basketball coach at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, NY (1988-93), then associate head coach at Division I Stetson University in Deland, Florida.
Retired and living in Terre Haute, Gadd these days scores her victories on the golf course with long drives and clutch putts.
Naturally, she has enjoyed the leap forward of women’s basketball popularity, much of it spurred by Caitlyn Clark’s senior season at Iowa, which put more eyeballs on the WNBA, where Clark plays for the Indiana Fever.
“It’s just wonderful to see the WNBA getting all recognition, all the fans, and not just girls and women, that’s the thing, it’s men too. They’re into women’s basketball and that’s exciting, it really is.”
Gadd has seen Clark play in person, both for Iowa and the Fever.
“Oh my, she’s just awesome. I just love her,” Gadd said. “Not just from a basketball standpoint. She just handles everything so classy. She has a great mindset. You can tell her parents have done a really great job with her in preparing her. She’s just awesome. She’s just great for the league. And some of the other rookies too. Angel Reese, I know she gets some backlash, but she’s a phenomenal player too.”
Gadd was a phenomenal athlete for Chesterton in her day as well, not to mention a pioneer.