Columbus Quest

American Basketball League (1996-1998)

Background

Now here’s a great team I remember seeing live…

Back in the spring of 1997, I was a senior wrapping up my studies at Emory University in Atlanta.  My girlfriend at the time was in grad school at Ohio State University in  Columbus.  I headed to Columbus for spring break and we spent the week tugging each other in the opposing directions of our respective obsessions.

The first night of my visit she rented some bleak, sub-titled epic about families torn apart in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  I retaliated the next evening with tickets to a Columbus Invaders indoor soccer game at the antiseptic Battelle Hall downtown.  There were about 40 other people in the 6,000-seat building and I will be the first to admit that it sucked.  A few nights later it was her turn again – a modern dance troupe led by Mikhail Baryshnikov appeared on campus.  There were about 40 other people at that one too.

On one of my last nights in town, I dragged Stephanie back downtown to Battelle Hall.  I remember her being exasperated, but I guess I didn’t care because we went anyway.  I was determined to see the fifth and deciding game of the American Basketball League (1996-1998) championship series between the Columbus Quest and the Richmond Rage.

Winners on the Court, Losers at the Turnstiles

In fact, I showed far more determination to support the Quest than the citizens of Columbus seemed to.  They had rewarded the Quest, far and away the best team in the newly launched women’s basketball league, with the worst attendance in the eight-team circuit (2,679 per game). To the extent that the people of Columbus cared about women’s basketball, their loyalty lay with the Lady Buckeyes of Ohio State, who averaged nearly 4,000 fans per game at the time, according to a 1997 Sports Illustrated piece on the Quest’s meager box office.

From personal experience, I lay part of the blame on Battelle Hall itself.  The 6,000-seat arena is buried within the imposing Greater Columbus Convention Center, which looks like a big city courthouse.  It’s a charmless rectangular room full of cheap modular seating that is snapped together like Legos and has all the warmth of an Amazon.com shipping & fulfillment center.  Walking down the street outside you’d have not the slightest clue that a pro team made its home there, much less that a game was going to happen on any particular evening.

Inaugural Season Champions

But on this night, March 11, 1997, the fans came out.  The arena was pretty much full and the Quest announced a sellout o 6,313.  It was, after all, the championship game – Game 5 of a best-of-five series to determine the best women’s basketball team in, I suppose, the world at that time.  (The rival WNBA would begin operations just three months later and drive the ABL out of business within 18 months).

I bought a program and learned a little more about the Quest and their opponents from Virginia.  The Quest were 31-9 in the regular season, plus a two-game sweep of the San Jose Lasers in the semis.  They had the best player in the league in 26-year old Nikki McCray. The 5′ 11″ guard out of Tennessee wore her hair in braided rows and won a Gold Medal with the U.S. Women at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She would go on to win the ABL’s Most Valuable Player honor in 1997. Quest Head Coach Brian Agler was named Coach of the Year.

The Richmond Rage were a little better than mediocre that year, finishing 21-19. But they peaked late and also swept their way through the semis for their date with Columbus.  The Rage were led by McCray’s Olympic teammate Dawn Staley.

The Quest got the better of it on this night, pulling away 77-64.  The atmosphere was terrific, proving that a great crowd can enliven in the dullest of surroundings.  Tonya Edwards was the leading scorer for the Quest with 23 points. Staley was the top threat for the Rage with 19.  In an appealing sub-plot, 35-year old Valerie Still of Columbus was named Series MVP.  Still was the oldest player in the ABL.  Without a viable women’s pro league in the United States between 1981 and 1996, Still kept her pro career alive in Italy for a dozen seasons before coming back to finish her career in the ABL and the WNBA.

Year Two: McCray Departs, Quest Repeats

After the season, Nikki McCray bolted the ABL for the NBA-backed WNBA.  McCray earned $150,000 a year in the ABL, which placed her among the league’s top earners. She earned a bigger payday and better stability from the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. But McCray was the exception rather than the rule.  Most ABL players stayed loyal to the scrappy independent league for a simple reason – typically, the ABL paid much better than the WNBA.  The average ABL salary in the first season was $70,000 plus generous benefits.  The WNBA didn’t come close, choosing to put its money into promotion, rather than players’ pockets.

As mentioned earlier, Head Coach Brian Agler won ABL Coach-of-the-Year honors in 1997, but he really deserved them more in Year Two (when he didn’t win).  Despite losing McCray, the league’s reigning MVP, Agler led the Quest to an even better 36-8 record during the 1997-98 season.  The Quest repeated as champions, coming back from a 2-0 deficit in the ABL championship series to defeat the Long Beach Stingrays 3 games to 2.  Attendance even ticked up to 3,500 per game.

Demise & Aftermath

The ABL suffered from anemic corporate sponsorships, flat attendance, obscure television deals and the WNBA threat.  Heading into Year Three in the fall of 1998, the league cut costs across the board.  But it wasn’t enough.  Two months into its third season, the ABL abruptly shutdown and declared bankruptcy with debts of $10 million.  The date was December 22, 1998.

As always, the Quest were atop the league standings at the time.  Columbus had an 11-3 record when the ABL folded.  Over the league’s two-plus years of operations, the Quest’s regular season and playoff record was a remarkable 86-24.

After the league folded, Brian Agler became Head Coach of the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx expansion franchise, leading that club from 1999 to 2002.  Five Quest players followed Agler to the Lynx, including Tonya Edwards and Valerie Still.  Although Agler could not repeat his ABL success with the Lynx, he would later win a WNBA title as Head Coach of the Seattle Storm in 2010.

Columbus Quest Shop

Columbus Quest Video

1998 ABL Championship Series, Game 5.  Quest vs. Long Beach Stingrays. March 15, 1998

Downloads

1997 Columbus Quest Corporate Sponsorship Binder

Links

American Basketball League Media Guides

American Basketball League Programs

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