"You Let Some GIRL Beat You?"    was chosen in November 2020, as runner up out of over 1700 published books for adaptation by the Pipeline Team. In addition to awarding a monetary prize,  the Pipeline Team is currently pursuing a development deal. 

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Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first female to receive a full athletic scholarship to a Division I school (UCLA) where she competed in track, volleyball and basketball, leading the women’s basketball team to their one and only championship, and becoming the first 4-time All- American, male or female. She brought home the Gold in the Pan Am games and the Olympic Silver for the first US Women’s Basketball Team in ’76. She was the first woman to broadcast an NBA game, and the only woman ever invited to compete in ABC’s Men’s Superstars. Today Ann is an executive VP for the NBA Phoenix Suns and an award-winning TV sportscaster.

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Her meteoric rise wasn’t without controversy, however. The press skewered her ’79 NBA Indiana Pacers bid while the first Professional Women’s Basketball League accused her of “shaming herself” and major women’s magazines said she was slighting her sisters - she would eventually play for the league and be named MVP. Growing up, she’d competed with her brothers in basketball, tennis, football, track, and soccer - in part to win the attention of a father who’d once played for Marquette but now was always on the road; and in part, just to win. “Thou Shalt Honor Thy Desire to Compete” was the Eleventh Commandment in the Southern California Meyers family household.

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After petitioning to play in the all-boy afterschool sports program, Ann later tried out for the boys’ high school basketball team while parents screamed, “You’re letting some girl beat you?” and classmates questioned her sexuality. But Ann refused to be held down. From becoming the first high school player on the US National Team, to her historic NBA bid, Ann’s memoirs never let up; yet her athletic career is only half the story. The fifth of eleven children, Ann worshipped her brother, David, who would go on to be the #1 NBA draft pick for the LA Lakers. She followed him everywhere, until the day he exploded, “You’re a girl! Act like one!”

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She would endure the loss of an older brother and a younger sister, and later the untimely death of the only man she ever loved, Dodger great and Hall of Fame pitcher, Don Drysdale, leaving the 38-year-old Ann to raise their three young children alone. Still, through it all, she continued to break ground. Inducted into six Halls of Fame, she has achieved far more than most of the athletes we read about in the annals of history, yet her name remains less recognized than her husband’s.

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Author Biography: Joni Ravenna is an award-winning playwright, TV writer and journalist whose articles appear regularly in national newspapers. She was host and head writer of the TV series, Earth Trek (PBS) and the ACE-nominated series, Great Sports Vacations - at one time The Travel Channel’s highest rated show – while also writing and hosting select segments for E! and ESPN. In 2019/early 2020, several of her plays were produced including the critically acclaimed, “Beethoven and Misfortune Cookies,” (Smith & Kraus, Aug. 2021) which is based on the life of Kabin Thomas, a black music professor teaching in the deep South who was fired after a white student complained about his radical style. The oft-produced play became a New Works of Merit Honoree (2016) after Woodie King Jr. optioned it for his Federal Theatre (NYC, 2014).

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