🏀0️⃣4️⃣1️⃣Dianne Nolan

CoachesBasketballPioneers
Written By Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff

Meet Dianne Nolan, one of the longest reigning NCAA D1 women’s basketball head coaches who discovered her FranceAndUS connection at the world’s oldest basketball court in Paris during her broadcast career with ESPN.

Nolan grew up in a basketball family. She took early cues from her mother, a legendary high school girls’ basketball coach at a time when it wasn’t fashionable for women to coach. Her older brother was an All-American at Temple University, so, for Nolan, playing was a natural progression. She was a four-sport athlete at Glassboro State University (now Rowan University), and upon graduation earned her first head coach position with St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y. in 1974. Five years later, Nolan began a sterling 28-year tenure as head coach at Fairfield University (Connecticut) during which her teams crafted 19 winning seasons, three MAAC Tournament Championship titles, and qualified for the NCAA Tournament four times. Every senior she coached with the Stags graduated on time. After Fairfield, she coached at Lafayette College before transitioning into a broadcast career. The Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2005) and South Jersey Hall of Fame (2007) inductee currently serves as color commentator and sideline analyst for Quinnipiac University’s basketball programs. 


Dianne’s Story

For Nolan, Europe as a basketball destination was long on her radar. “When I coached, I was aware that a lot of players at the time, before the WNBA existed, went to Europe to make a living playing basketball and extend their careers,” she noted. But it was not until she began a new phase of her career in broadcasting, first in radio then in television, that the French basketball connection began to take shape. 

“Obviously in the States, they think they know: it is Springfield. But that court burned, so today it is that court in Paris that is the oldest original court in the world.”

She often searched for interesting facts about basketball to convey to listeners during the halftime show, a full 20 minutes of airtime to fill. One day, she Googled ‘where is the oldest basketball court in the world?’ and found that, surprisingly, it was in Paris at the city’s YMCA outpost at 14, rue de TrĂŠvise. “I announced it on air, and many of the listeners could not believe it!” she relayed. 

With her curiosity piqued, Nolan made the pilgrimage to that fabled hoops terrain, often referred to as 14TrĂŠvise, a nod to its location. Thankfully, before her visit she researched for further information. “It’s this nondescript building on a street where there’s no signage,” she said. “When you walk in, you cannot immediately find the court as it is not exposed.” 

Nolan saw the plaque on the Paris YMCA building dedicated to James Stokes and Cornelius Vanderbuilt II, two U.S. financiers who helped fund the building’s 1893 construction, and knew she was in the right place. She finally found her way into one of the offices where she met architect Christelle Bertho, whose expertise is YMCA building construction.

“Christelle knew all about the court,” Nolan recalled. “She took me to the court and relayed how the wood for the structure was imported from Narraganset, the history of the court’s quirks like the beams in the middle, and the track suspended around its perimeter.” 

Nolan found herself in awe.  “It impacted me first by the significance and the history,” she relayed of the court’s presence and power. 

“I kept thinking, ‘back in the late 1800s, basketball was important enough to build this, and it was important for a variety of reasons that are different from what we probably experience today.’” 

Nolan was also struck by the court’s symbolism of French and American aimité, of how the two sides joined forces to build the YMCA structure, to ensure the materials for its fabrication were imported from North America. “When you walked in there, you could feel the history,” she said. “You could feel something. It really did move me.”

“I looked up at the net, with the elevated track around it. In the United States, I played on courts just like that. When I recruited, I recruited in different gyms that had those similar architectural components. I just thought it was so inspiring that people in the United States would bring it over, and how many probably good things happened on that court.” 

But the most significant feature of the 14Trévise court? The wood. “I felt like it was talking to me,” she explained. “It sounds weird, but you could feel some kind of connection to the game and to the court itself.”

Nolan kept thinking of how the court remained such a hidden component of hoops history at the time. 

“None of my friends, none of my basketball contemporaries, and they all have wide ranging experiences. But they were always surprised when I told them where the oldest basketball court was!” 

It was a moment of inspiration. When Nolan returned home, she began to plot out how to help tell the story of this unique court. She engaged in far deeper research, continued her conversations with Bertho, began to work up a treatment of the 14 TrĂŠvise basketball court story, and registered it with the Writers Guild. “This is something that I think has legs, and it has importance,” Nolan wrote to a friend whose production company was interested in the creative project. 


The Sports Diplomacy Connection

Through her work to illuminate the French-US basketball history enshrined by the 14TrĂŠvise court, Nolan engages in different types of unofficial sports diplomacy through informal cultural and knowledge exchanges. Critically, thanks to her broadcast and visual storytelling work, she communicates, negotiates, and represents to U.S. audiences about their French basketball counterparts. 

“People in the United States are surprised at how many French people love the game of basketball.”

It’s work informed by her previous experiences as a coach and exposure to U.S. players who dribbled overseas for a living. “I remember how the players who went to Europe and South American to play basketball after college alway said that one of the best gigs was in France,” she recalled. 

“They said the French loved their basketball, and were one of the better paying countries to play in, too. So it resonated with me how little we knew in the United States about how the French loved their basketball and how it opened so many doors since the late 1800s–and how we’ve forgotten that part of history.”

Nolan thinks of herself as an advocate of the game. “Basketball is a microcosm of society where all of your life issues and experiences crystalize,” she explained. “I like to preach the message that basketball is an important component of society for it helps impart all the things that you need to be a better citizen, as well as a better person for your own personal growth: of working to get something, your cooperation, your competitiveness, your appreciation for those in the game.”

That’s why for Nolan, basketball holds such universal appeal. “You cannot lie on a basketball court,” she said. “You’re exposed if you’re not doing your job. You’re exposed if you cannot do certain things. Its a team effort, for nobody can do it alone.”  Moreover, people who watch or cheer for teams can also take lessons from observing how that group develops together. “When they look and they see the sacrifices, the different things that people have to do on a basketball court to be successful, that teaches all kinds of lessons translatable to off-court life,” she said.

“The game teaches lifelong lessons. For the United Nations and the world to recognize that basketball has a place in the world, in history, and that it should be celebrated worldwide is important.”

The 14TrĂŠvise court is currently closed to the public as it undergoes much-needed renovations. But the public can adopt one of the floorboards as part of the renovation fundraising campaign. For more information, see https://www.adopteunelame.com/. 

Mapping the Connection

From Connecticut, USA to Paris, France

Further Reading/Resources

[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “Paris’ hidden gem for basketball lovers faces the ravages of time,” CNN International, January 23, 2020

[F] “Au cœur du berceau européen du basket-ball à Paris,” La Nouvelle République, November 17, 2019

 

How to Cite This Entry

Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Dianne Nolan,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/041dianne-nolan. (date of consultation).

Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff
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