Wisconsin Badgers

At a time when there were hardly any Black head coaches in collegiate athletics, the University of Wisconsin had two coaching its men's and women's basketball teams.

In 1976, Bill Cofield became the first African-American to coach basketball in the Big Ten Conference. That same summer, Edwina Qualls was hired as the Big Ten's first Black head women's basketball coach.

A native of Connecticut, Qualls came to UW after serving as a successful high school coach in New Haven's RC Lee High School where she accumulated an 82-15 record and made numerous trips to the Connecticut State High School Championships. She was the state high school coach of the year in 1975.

She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in physical education from Southern Connecticut State College where she teamed with basketball great Louise O'Neal serving as her assistant basketball coach at Yale University prior to coming to Wisconsin.

At Wisconsin, Qualls was a member of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) Division I Basketball Committee, and was the Midwest basketball coach at the National Sports Festival held in Colorado Springs in 1979. She had five winning seasons in her 10-year tenure and UW including a second place Big Ten Conference finish in 1983-84. The 13-5 conference record is still the most wins and the best the Badgers have finished in the Big Ten. Her career mark at UW was 131-141 upon her resignation in 1986.

She guided her 1981-82 squad to a 21-13 record (ties second most wins in program history) and to the Midwest AIAW Regional Championship title. The Badgers qualified for their first post-season tournament with that win, and beat Colorado in first-round action before bowing to national powerhouse Texas in the quarter-finals.