Lindsey Meder-Cowherd was there at the beginning of the Lisa Bluder era of Iowa’s women’s basketball.

Which is why getting the call from her former coach, who told Meder-Cowherd that she was going into the UI Athletics Hall of Fame this year, was so special.

“She was with my parents at the time, and I thought they were calling because they were going to do a toast to the Final Four,” Meder-Cowherd says. “But she said they were actually toasting me because I was going into the Hall of Fame. So it was a pretty neat way that she did it.”

The Solon, Iowa, native was part of Bluder’s first two NCAA tournament teams in 2001 and 2002. She was a three-time All-Big Ten selection (first team in 2001 and 2002 and second team in 2000) and was a two-time Academic All-American. She finished her career with 1,906 points and led the team in scoring three consecutive seasons.

“It was really a dream come true to be able to play at Iowa because I was such an avid fan growing up,” Meder-Cowherd says. “I feel like I knew every single player that played for C. Vivian Stringer. I was just a passionate fan, so it was kind of surreal for me to be able to actually play for the program that I had been watching growing up. To be able to run out of the Carver-Hawkeye Arena tunnel, there’s nothing like it.”

Meder-Cowherd remembers what it was like to be a part of Bluder’s early success.

“We won the Big Ten tournament (in 2001), and that was something that I’ll never forget, because of the amount of struggles that we had together as a young team, and then to start to see the fruits of all the hard work that we put in together,” she says. “The coaching staff really believed in us, and they were just so good at what they did, putting people in the right place, the right time.”

That’s why Meder-Cowherd appreciated Iowa’s runs to the NCAA national championship games in the last two seasons.

“It’s just incredibly special having children of my own and girls that also love basketball,” says Meder-Cowherd, who lives with her husband and two children in Des Moines, where she is an endodontist. “They have brought so much pride to not just the former players, but to the whole state and everybody that associates themselves around the country, in the world, with Iowa.”

By John Bohnenkamp