Cindy Haugejorde, Iowa’s first star, reflects on her journey and the evolution of women’s sports

“I was a wild card and aggressive and something no one had ever seen in Iowa, no question there. And it blew a lot of people away,” Haugejorde told The Next. “When you’re so aggressive and you’re so committed, it kind of scares and intimidates people sometimes, and they don’t know where you’re coming from. I just wanted to play. I had no bad intentions at all.”

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Birdsong was hired as Iowa’s coach in 1974, a few years after Title IX had been ratified. She was in charge of her own recruiting under Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) rules. Funding the travel herself, she drove across the Midwest looking for talent to join her team.

She came across Haugejorde by chance, meeting her uncle at a barbecue in Minnesota. During a conversation about basketball, Haugejorde’s uncle told Lark, “Hey, I’ve got a niece who plays basketball.”

“Lark invited me to Iowa for a visit and we hit it off,” Haugejorde said. “I visited Minnesota; I love the Gophers. But when I went to meet with their coaching staff, they said everybody plays 20 minutes. I thought, ‘That’s not for me; I can’t do it. I’d lose friends in a second because I would want to play more.’”

Despite playing in just 41 total games in high school — Minnesota didn’t have high school girls basketball until 1974-75, when she was a junior — Haugejorde had an uncanny knack for rebounding and shooting from all spots on the floor. Growing up with a family full of athletes helped hone her skills. 

“I had a brother who played basketball, so I never missed a practice of his for probably five years,” she said. ”I would be the kid on the sideline shooting baskets every day, and that’s where I developed my turnaround jump shot, because no one would pass me the ball, so I’d have to throw it against the wall, turn and shoot and then do it either way.”

Her father, Harold Haugejorde, was a Hall of Fame basketball player for Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

“He played four sports, and basketball was one of his big loves,” she said. “He would give me hints every once in a while of what to correct on my shot or what to do, and I certainly did it. And then he also made my brother always include me in all the pickup games.”

It also didn’t hurt that her dad was superintendent of schools and had keys to the gym.

“Those things all have to kind of fall in place for a kid; that’s where I developed a love for basketball,” she said. “I just love playing because I thought it was the fairest thing. You take a shot and either make it or miss it. There’s no in-between. There’s no gray area. It’s black and white.”

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When Haugejorde got to Iowa as a freshman in fall 1976, she was already a force not yet seen on the young team Birdsong had put together. 

“She was very, very talented,” Birdsong told The Next. “My dad taught me this: ‘Don’t say ‘Whoa’ to a racehorse.’ … You want them to stay in their lanes and you don’t want them to hit the rails, but you need to let them go. … That’s how I thought of Cindy. She was a very passionate and very good player.”

Haugejorde’s passion and intensity for the game reminds her of another Hawkeye who would electrify the sports world nearly 45 years later.  

“I see that in Caitlin [Clark] in her early years, but she was coached and massaged and brought through with Lisa [Bluder],” she said. “That’s the same thing that Lark had to do with me.” 

An enticing opportunity

After her successful freshman season at Iowa, Haugejorde made the 1977 U.S. Junior Pan American Team coached by Pat (Head) Summitt. A starter for the team that won the gold medal in Mexico City that summer, Haugejorde caught the attention of teammate Nancy Lieberman, an All-American guard who played for Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia. 

“She’s a great person, and she just had a great knack for rebounding and playing hard,” Lieberman told The Next. “Her determination … she’s a Midwesterner. Those guys are tough. And she would never quit. She would just work hard, and she just did her job. She played her role. And I thought there’s something to be said for somebody who plays like that.”

Lieberman convinced Haugejorde to play for Old Dominion, a top national program that offered players amenities like socks, shoes and jackets.  

“I thought about it and decided, because it was so much fun playing that summer with people that could really play, it was really enticing,” Haugejorde said. “So I went out there for a week and hated it. I’m not an East Coast person. I’m really a true Midwest Minnesotan. I didn’t feel comfortable, so I came back to Iowa.”

Even though she was at Old Dominion for only a week and didn’t play a game there, she lost her partial scholarship to Iowa. 

“I had to find even more money to pay for myself that year,” she said. “That was a little hard lesson on my part, but I’m certainly glad I made that choice to come back.”

But first she had to face her coach and teammates she’d left behind for supposedly greener pastures. 

“Everybody was a little mad at me for a while. I think it was probably Lark’s biggest forgiveness exercise of her life,” she said. “My teammates were happy to see me back. I think people were just disappointed.”

Birdsong recalls not being disappointed with her prodigal player, but being proud of her for taking a chance. 

“I’m not one to coerce somebody or shame somebody,” Birdsong said. “She just was there, and she looked at the totality of everything that the decision that she made would be for her, and she made her decision, the decision to come back to Iowa.”

“I have one daughter, and the thing that I know is you have to let people explore and see what they like and don’t like,” she added. “I think my mom and dad taught me that most everything that you learn about what your values are, you experience, and you have to try. I encourage people to explore what you want, let your feelings come in and make your own decisions.”

Lieberman also harbors no hard feelings for Haugejorde’s decision to leave Old Dominion, which won AIAW national championships in 1979 and 1980.

“I just had to respect what she felt and what she was doing, and if Old Dominion was the right place for her, she would stay, and if it wasn’t, then she was going to move on,” Lieberman said. “I was just proud that she tried. But sometimes you get homesick or you miss a certain thing in your life. I’m glad she did what she was supposed to do.”

Iowa started offering full scholarships to women in 1978, Haugejorde’s junior year. While the school then provided socks, shoes and jackets, one of the biggest perks was the training table after practices, she said. 

“We were able to go and eat if we needed to at the training tables, which was a huge benefit, because our practices sometimes would go to 6:30, 7, [when] the normal cafeterias were closed,” Haugejorde said. 

Haugejorde led Iowa in scoring and rebounding all four years from 1976 to 1980. In fact, she held Iowa’s scoring (2,059) and rebounding (1,067) records for nearly 40 years before Ally Disterhoft broke the scoring record in 2016 and Megan Gustafson broke the rebounding record in 2018.

“I kept hoping that somebody else would break them,” Haugejorde said. “Records are meant to be broken, and my era was finished, but I couldn’t believe how long it lasted.”

Gustafson broke Disterhoft’s scoring record in 2019 with 2,804 points. Clark broke it again in 2023 and set the NCAA Division I record — women’s and men’s — with 3,951 points in 2024. 

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A whole new world in Clark’s era

The days of players having to buy their own socks and shoes are long gone as NIL deals and the transfer portal often play a vital role in players’ decisions. 

Like when Haugejorde chose to not stay at Old Dominion in the 1970s, Lieberman still doesn’t judge a player’s decision of where they play or for what reasons. 

“It depends on if you have something or you don’t have something,” Lieberman said. “… Some people have to take care of their family. It’s really important for people to understand that you have to meet people where they are.”

Clark’s decision to attend Iowa — and stay at her home-state school all four years — makes Haugejorde proud of not only her alma mater, but also the transcendent player and her coach. 

“I think she picked the leader she wanted to be like. When you choose who you’re going to play for, you’re choosing a pathway for how you see your life evolve,” Haugejorde said. “I’ve always marveled at Lisa because there’s generations. There used to be generations every 15 to 20 years; now there’s a new generation every three to five years. How do you adjust to all these different players coming from all these different directions? Lisa makes it work, and she does that through keen communication, by making people live up to their commitments and creating that pride. Caitlin was just coached so well.”

Lieberman is also proud of the player who won the Nancy Lieberman Award, given to the top point guard in women’s Division I basketball, in each of the past three seasons. 

“Caitlin has always been tremendously kind and respectful, which is all we could ever ask for — for somebody to respect you as part of the history of the game,” Lieberman said. “I think what she’s doing is amazing. I’m so overly proud of her, and I am protective of her.”

The attention Clark receives, and the reaction to it at times, is something Lieberman can relate to. She experienced a similar situation as her star rose off the court.  

“Jealousy has been around for many, many years,” Lieberman said. “I went through it in the 1980s. I had 95% of the pie in 1978-82. I know that there were people who were jealous of me. You shouldn’t be jealous of me because I wanted more. I wanted to do TV, I wanted to have endorsements, I wanted to do certain things. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was an anomaly.”

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Now with social media amplifying everything at all times, the challenge is greater for athletes to stay composed. Clark has done that, Lieberman said.  

“She’s handled it like the champion that she is. She’s strong, she’s smart. You’re not going to make her do something she doesn’t want to do,” Lieberman said. “She has great core values from her family and from Iowa, so I’m just proud of her.”

Although Haugejorde struggled to pay for college or even catch a meal after practice in her days as Iowa’s undisputed star, she has no hard feelings toward the attention Clark receives. 

“I’m not jealous, but proud,” Haugejorde said. “I’m just so happy because I think the value is seen and understood and enjoyed. What Iowa brought to the NCAA the last couple years is team play with a superstar. But it was still team play, and the team play was so good. The chemistry, the plays that they ran, it was true basketball.”

Lieberman wishes more people would appreciate what Clark’s popularity is doing for the sport.

“If we could just see the big picture, she resonates with people. … She is bringing more attention to trailblazers and those playing now. It’s OK for somebody to have the spotlight. There’s so much to go around. And if one person is pushing the needle, then let’s just support that person. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. … We’re all benefiting.”

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Basketball has remained influential in Haugejorde’s life

After graduating from Iowa in 1980 as the program’s leading scorer and rebounder, Haugejorde was selected sixth overall in the Women’s Basketball League draft by the San Francisco Pioneers. She had a successful rookie season, culminating in starting alongside Lieberman on the West team in the 1981 All-Star Game. 

After the league folded that year, Haugejorde played in Italy at Brescia and Avelino. She decided to stay home after two years overseas and served as an assistant coach at Minnesota and then Penn State, where she designed the offense in which Suzie McConnell thrived.

“I thought that’s what I wanted to do, but [coaching] wasn’t right for me,” Haugejorde said. “I wanted a family, and in the ’80s it wasn’t possible to do both.”

She went into business and software and had a long, successful career as a leader in telecom and digital companies such as Adelphia, McLeod USA and MediaBeacon. She has been with her wife, Cid, for 29 years, and they are raising their 20-year-old son in the Minneapolis area, where she continues to manage investment properties.

Haugejorde credits her experience during the early days of Iowa basketball with helping her navigate the ups and downs of her career and life.

“When you [played] at Iowa back in the day, the whole concept is of never giving up and finding a way,” she said. “I think finding a way to make it work has always been my mantra. There’s a way; you just have to find the route to go. And if it’s a dead end, you find another one, and you just keep going. Don’t get overly emotionally attached to the way, but keep moving and be very logical in those decision-making processes.”

“The world is open and always be kind to people, always speak the truth,” she added. “… I’ve always been a direct person, and I think those things helped me in gaining leadership roles within companies.”

Haugejorde also credits her college coach for being a role model in her formative years. 

“When you have a coach that fights for you as much as Lark did, you see that and admire that,” she said. “Here you have these people that love the sport, and no one’s really ever paid attention to that sport or to you, and now you’ve got a coach, and you’re fighting for each other and to win and to find a way to make it work. The leadership of that coach just meant everything. … I’m very fortunate; she’s a key person in my life.”

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The bright lights of Old Dominion drew Haugejorde to the East Coast nearly 50 years ago. But she quickly realized where she truly belonged and has never looked back. She remains in close contact with Birdsong and the Iowa program.

When Haugejorde was diagnosed with non-invasive breast cancer last November, she received a message from former teammate Sue Beckwith and Bluder the day before her surgery. Now cancer-free, she appreciates her lifelong support system. 

“Once a Hawkeye, always a Hawkeye,” she said. “The support as an individual never ends. These teammates are with you for life.”