BOULDER — The University of Colorado played its first varsity women’s basketball game on January 17, 1975. It was a 57-54 win over Weber State.

Fifty years and two weeks later, about 100 former coaches, players and support staff will gather Sunday at CU Events Center to celebrate 50 years of women’s basketball in Boulder as the current Buffs host Texas Tech.

There’s no shortage of memories, stories to tell and pride in the program’s success. Just look at the banners hanging in the north end of the arena.

There’s one that stands out from the others. It’s dedicated to the winningest coach in the program’s history and the person most responsible for 12 of the 16 NCAA Tournament appearances, six of the eight trips to the Sweet 16 and all three to the Elite Eight.

It’s the banner for Hall of Fame coach Ceal Barry.

As current coach JR Payne told The Denver Gazette, everything she knew about the CU program when she took the job nine years ago was Barry and her 22-year run.

“It was everything,” Payne said. “That’s all we knew.”

To this day, it remains against odds Barry found her way to the Flatiron mountains at all. After wrapping up her playing career at Kentucky, the Louisville native immediately began her coaching career as an assistant at Cincinnati. Two years later — before she turned 25 — Barry was the head coach for the Bearcats, with whom she went on to win 83 games over four seasons.

It was in 1983 when she learned of the chance to replace Sox Walseth, who had previously coached the CU men’s basketball program for over 20 years and came out of retirement to lead the women’s team for three seasons.

“The draw, like it is for anyone who moves to Colorado and anyone who moves to Boulder, is the beauty of the city and the campus,” Barry told The Denver Gazette. “As a coach who depends on recruiting, I think any coach who comes to Boulder thinks, ‘Oh my gosh, what a beautiful setting for a campus, and this will be attractive for young women and their families and a place they’d be willing to go away from home to go play basketball.’

“That was the attraction for me.”

During her job interview, it became clear to Barry that Boulder and CU would not just allow, but encourage, women’s basketball to thrive. She remembers being ready to fight for 2.5 hours of practice time per day on the Events Center court, but that wasn’t necessary.

“One of the administrators said, ‘The men take 1 -3:30 (p.m.) in the first semester, and the women take 3:30-6, and then in the second semester, we flip it,’” Barry recalled. “This was 1983 when gender equity wasn’t truly embraced.”

The Buffs took a chance on a 27-year-old coach from Kentucky, and the rest is history.

“It was intimidating,” Barry said. “I was moving away from my friends and family back in the Midwest, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, and back in those days, I wanted to make the most of the chance to do it. If I was going to make this move, I wanted to do well at the job.”

In her third season, Barry had her first 20-win campaign and a second-place finish in the Big Eight, but it was year six when everything changed. CU went unbeaten in conference play and in the conference tournament, the first championships of any kind for the women’s program. The first sellout at the Events Center came when the Buffs hosted UNLV in the NCAA Tournament. It was the biggest crowd for a home women’s basketball game until a 2024 sellout against UCLA.

“That’s the untold story,” former Buffs star and current assistant coach Shelley Sheetz told The Denver Gazette. “Our community really embraces our women’s basketball team and they have really wrapped their arms and embraced JR, which is really cool for me to see because they did that for coach Barry.”

It wasn’t hard for the community to embrace what Barry had built by the time Sheetz’s career wrapped up in 1995. Sheetz, whose name is all over the program record book, went to four NCAA Tournaments, one Sweet 16 and two Elite Eights. It’s a run that hasn’t been replicated since — but that doesn’t mean it never will.

The Buffs have a chance, over the next two months, to play their way into a fourth straight March Madness appearance. They’re coming off back-to-back Sweet 16s and have gone all over the globe to find talent.

“What JR has done is to take the baton from the first seven coaches and escalate the expectations and bring in tremendous players from all over the world,” Barry said. “There’s players from all over the world that are interested in playing basketball at the University of Colorado. I mean, it’s not just a national name. It’s got a worldwide brand.”

Barry will be the star of Sunday’s 50th anniversary celebration. But don’t be surprised if she has company in a few decades when the 75th anniversary celebration rolls around.

“At the end of JR’s tenure, she’s gonna be up there with the Ceal Barrys. We talk about (how) our program raises banners and that’s what she has done in her nine years here,” Sheetz said. “There’s so many similarities between the two coaches, just how they carry themselves on the sidelines, how they carry themselves off the floor, how they coach.

“They’re so similar and so parallel. It’s been really fun having a front-row seat on the other side of it.”

The Ceal Barry file

• Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee (2018)
• Colorado Sports Hall of Fame inductee (2006)
• 427-242 record at Colorado (1983-2005)
• 510-284 overall record (Cincinnati, Colorado)
• Six appearances in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16
• Three appearances in the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight
• 13 seasons with at least 20 wins
• Four conference championships
• 13 top-3 conference finishes
• Four-time Big Eight Coach of the Year
• 1994 National Coach of the Year (USBWA)
• 1996 U.S. Olympic assistant coach (gold medal)
• 2004 U.S. Junior World Championships head coach (gold medal)