Two days before she was murdered, Connie Kunzmann played the game of her life.
It was the evening of Feb. 5, 1981, and Connie, a long-limbed 24-year-old with a halo of curly brown hair, was matched up against the best women’s basketball player on the planet, Dallas Diamonds point guard Nancy Lieberman. The face of the nascent Women’s Professional Basketball League, Lieberman was as skilled a passer as she was a scorer. Kunzmann? She was a 6' 1" reserve forward for the Nebraska Wranglers known for her tenacity, defense and exuberance. If Lieberman was the WBL’s Magic Johnson, then Connie, as friend and one-time teammate Molly Bolin puts it, was “our Kurt Rambis.”
From the time she picked up a basketball, as a seventh-grader, Connie had devoted herself to the sport. A standout in high school and college, she’d jumped at the opportunity when invited to try out for the WBL, the first women’s pro league. The job wouldn’t pay much, but she didn’t care. She was all in.
