Adamczak discusses Moose Lake legacy following Hall of Fame inductions

In the 1981-1982 season the Moose Lake girls basketball, volleyball, and softball teams each went undefeated earning three state titles while being led by 1982 Ms. Basketball Annie Adamczak.

Just last Thursday she was honored for her trailblazing success by officially being inducted into the Minnesota Sports and Minnesota Basketball Hall of Fames.

"Girls were just starting to play basketball," Adamczak said about her high school career. "Girls didn’t shoot jump shots, they only scored 40 points a game, but my team really broke through. I mean we averaged 72 points a game, we won the state tournament, we went four times back-to-back to the state tournament. So it was really a huge honor and a great class of people to go in with this year."

RELATED STORY: Moose Lake’s Adamczak, Duluth’s Kunze inducted into Minnesota Basketball Hall of Fame.

Adamczak would go on to play Division I volleyball at the University of Nebraska, and then compete professionally for the Major League Volleyball’s Minnesota Monarchs.

For her impact on women’s sports she was also named to a special 50th anniversary Minnesota Title IX honoree class last week.

"When I tell kids who are school age now about Title IV, like do you understand my siblings, my older sisters, didn’t have sports? There was no gym time, we didn’t have a bus, you had to sew your own uniforms. They just can’t imagine that there was a world like that and it was only 40 years ago," Adamczak explained. "It was a huge honor to be included in that group as one of the pioneers."

She added, "I think I was like a baby pioneer. I wasn’t the one doing the work, I was the one who received the benefits of the work from the people who went before me."

Her career is also helping show a bright future for the next generation of female athletes, albeit living in a more competitive world.

"It’s cool because they can relate to it like, ‘hey I can do this if I’m from a small town’," Adamczak shared. "The thing that’s changed a lot though is the fact that we have traveling sports now. I grew up in that really sheltered, almost innocent Norman Rockwell type setting where you didn’t know if you were good or bad, you played because you love the sport."