🏀0️⃣3️⃣9️⃣Gail Marquis

Meet Gail Marquis, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer with the 1976 Olympic silver medalists,Team USA, who blazed trails in the United States and France through basketball.

The Saint Albans, Queens, New York native grew up playing punchball and street games, but began her illustrious basketball career as a “hail mary” after she entered high school. When she transitioned to ninth grade, resolution of a months-long teacher’s strike led to elongated days in the classroom, which left her frustrated with school. Ready to quit, her sister talked her into remaining in school with the suggestion that she join the local Catholic school league, which had sports programs. Marquis began to play basketball at St. Catherine of Sienna Church.

“I was tall, so they would give me the ball. I didn’t have any skills outside of being tall,” she said. But it was enough to hold her interest in the game, school, and set her on a groundbreaking path on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Gail’s Story

Andrew Jackson High School provided Marquis the opportunity to play and dribble as part of its girls’ basketball club. “That really got me wanting to play the sport,” Marquis recalled. “I could go and dribble and make believe I’m shooting.” She played softball and ran track. Finally, by her junior year, the school organized limited games against other schools in the area, which continued to whet her appetite. So, too, did a local newspaper column that highlighted girls’ and womens’ sports, from swimming to basketball, including that of Queens College, which at the time had the area’s best women’s basketball team.

There were no scholarships for female student-athletes at the time. It was just prior to passage of the 1972 U.S. Education Act, whose Title IX’s sports provisions enabled women to have equal access and opportunities to sports as part of federally-funded educational institutions.

Marquis matriculated at Queens College in 1972 and rapidly began to set records. The two-time All-American was part of the first women’s team at any level to play in Madison Square Garden, the mecca of basketball in 1975, and was later inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame in2009 as a player and in 2012 for her role with the 1972-73 Queens College team.

After her first season with the team, she went to coach at the Pocono Invitational basketball camp in Pennsylvania on the advice of her college coach. While charged with coaching some of the youngest female campers, aged 9-12, Marquis learned more about the game, particularly shooting, rebounding and boxing out. There she met Dotty McCrea, a 1,000-point-scoring standout at Monmouth College who was set to play basketball in Monte Carlo.

“But just to have the idea that after all of this, you can go to France, you can go play somewhere. That idea guided me–or pushed me–because my focus was then, ‘yes, let me play better because ultimately I want to go play in the South of France.’”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Marquis recalled of her fascination learning how McCrea signed to play the 1973-74 season with Monaco and be paid to do so. “I’m thinking [at the time] after I play four years of college, I’m going to go play for the NBA and the Knicks, if they draft me, but most likely they’re not drafting me,” she said.

Thanks to McCrea, Marquis had her heart set on playing in the South of France. Thus began not just a player’s journey to better basketball, but a geographic and cultural adventure, too.

“I had to find a team, and I didn’t know the whole country,” she said.

“I didn’t even know what the best teams were like, Clermont-Ferrand (Université Club), Paris (Université Club), or Lyon. That’s how I learned that there was competition. That there was something for me after four years of college. That I could make a living playing basketball in France.”

Shortly after her 1976 Olympic triumph, Marquis signed with Olympique d'Antibes-Juan-le-Pins in southern France, where for three seasons she spinned and spanned the transatlantic divide via basketball.

The Sports Diplomacy Connection

*Gail Marquis with Olympique d’Antibes, 1976. Photo: Gail Marquis*.

Although Marquis engaged in formal sports diplomacy as an official representative of the United States at the Montreal Games, throughout her time in France she served in various ways as an unofficial diplomat for her country, culture, and its hoops scene.

Her experience was one of learning and sharing with others, starting with her arrival in Antibes. Due to a misunderstanding about when she would arrive, nobody was at the Nice airport to welcome Marquis to France. Instead she took a bus to Antibes where, after walking around a bit, she came upon one of Olympique d’Antibes’ men’s team players, Jacques Cachemire.

“I got off the bus and there was a brown skinned man, long legs, with basketball shorts on and he might have worn a silk shirt,” she recalled of first meeting Cachemire. “I just walked up to him and said, ‘you play basketball?’ because he had long legs and wore shorts.”

She spoke to the legendary “shot king” of the 1970s in English, and he responded in kind albeit with an accent. “He said, ‘you’re the American! We’ve been looking for you!’”

Cachemire showed Marquis around and helped her get situated. She also visited the basketball court for the first time. “The gym floor was brown and rickety. You had to find the dead spots as you bounced the ball, meaning the court is going to give and the ball is not going to come back to you on the dribble correctly,” she remembered. Yet, despite the bumpy start to her great southern French adventure, “once I got the basketball in my hand, I knew I was in the right spot.”

Marquis did not speak French upon arrival, but was a quick study, aided by a teammate who spoke a little English. Some of her new teammates were still in high school, and proved helpful. “They liked to practice their English on me, so they would speak to me in English,” Marquis said. “Because they watched a little TV, they knew American culture, so they always had questions.” She took French language classes at the University of Nice and within months of immersion, picked up the language.

“I learned their culture, their design, their dress. And I sort of fell into place. When you’re in Rome, do as the Romans do. I did not want to be an ugly American who wants it their way or not at all.”

She also learned French from her neighborhood shopkeepers. The patisserie across the street from her apartment introduced the basketteuse to the wonders of tartes aux fraises avec Chantilly, strawberry tarts with a little bit of whipped cream. “Chantilly was just such a beautiful word,” Marquis said. “I would come in and order. The baker would place the tarts in a small box.”

She learned about the local cuisine and gastronomic customs, too. “I always enjoyed the seafood,” she relayed, mostly the mussels. “I liked the way we ate them, and I still eat them the same way. And whatever fish they had. Sometimes I didn't know the fish, but if it looked like a fish, I would have it. I enjoyed the croissants: croissants with hot milk, hot chocolate.”

Occasionally she encountered racialized reactions, such as in one small town near the Swiss-German border. When she and her teammates walked to the stadium, she saw people open the windows and hang out of them to stare at her.

“I asked my teammate ‘what's going on? Why are they hanging out?’ And she said, ‘Gail, they have never seen a Negress before.’ I said, ‘a Negress?’ And she said, ‘your skin.’ It wasn't a bad thing outside of them just looking at me, so I said, ‘okay, that’s all right, as long as I know what’s going on.’ I started waving like we were in a parade. Things like that would pop up. I can't remember too many racial things that would occur. And if they did, they were never with my team. They were never with my opponents. Sometimes there would be some racial thing, and I would have to tell them in French that I'm American, ‘okay, knock it off!’

*Gail Marquis and Olylmpique d’Antibes vs Clermont Université Club, 1977. Photo: Gail Marquis*.

Marquis also represented, communicated, and negotiated about the United States to her teammates and those around her in Antibes, turning into a fount of knowledge about things big and small. She was asked about New York, skyscrapers (how big they were, were they really that tall?), whether she knew Michael Jackson personally, was the singer Sylvester a man or woman, and for interpretations of song lyrics.

“I probably considered myself a sports diplomat by my second year,” she said. “My French was good, and I would do interviews for the local television or newspapers, and I did them all in French. I always held myself at a good standard.”

She noted how Antibes’ nickname, the Ville de Fleurs (the village of Flower), was an apt symbol that she used in her work as a sports diplomat:

“Often when we would go to play away games on the road, we would offer a gift exchange of flowers. I might get a couple of flowers–my coach would give them to me, to all of us–and I would always look for an older person in the first or second row, just so that they knew that the American gave them a flower. That America can be good. I didn’t say anything but just gave them the flowers. There are so many ideas about Americans, about African Americans, because of what’s in the news, what’s on TV. So I wanted their impressions of me to be the first. I always feel like I want to put my best foot forward once they know I'm a ball player, an athlete, and of course, an American, because I think other countries have these ideas of us, and I just want to dispel them. And if they still got the ideas, your ideas did not come from me.”

Mapping the Connection