Janice Dziuk’s Third Act

GROWING UP ON A 90-ACRE FARM IN POTH, TEXAS, Janice Dziuk ’90 (MS ’93) stayed busy helping to feed and care for 50 to 60 head of cattle. Between chores and the expectation of excellence in school, Dziuk (pronounced “juke”) always made time for basketball.

“My parents put up a hoop for me in our driveway when I was pretty young,” she said. “I found time to practice in the minutes right after school, before I started my homework or on Saturdays when we didn’t have plans.”

Working to perfect her reverse layup and develop a mean floater, Dziuk earned the nickname Dr. J after Julius Erving, the 16-time NBA All-Star and Naismith Hall of Famer. Dziuk and her sisters enjoyed plenty of one-on-one and challenged each other to replicate the most outrageous trick shots they could invent.

“There was a competitiveness about growing up with three sisters,” she said, “and I was just always moving — throwing, running, kicking. I noticed early that athletics came easy to me.”

Dziuk ranks among the most dominant female basketball players to don a TCU jersey. In August 2024, she became the first TCU women’s basketball player in the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame. The capacity for hard work instilled in childhood distinguished her entire career, setting her apart as a player, a coach and a businesswoman.

TITLE IX EFFECT

Dziuk’s foray into organized sports coincided with a significant moment in the evolution of women’s athletics. Even after being signed into federal law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 experienced a turbulent rollout. The NCAA challenged its legality in 1976, but the lawsuit was dismissed. In 1979, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued a final policy interpretation, making explicit each school’s obligation to provide equal athletic opportunities to men and women.

“Starting in junior high and into high school, I played every sport I was allowed to play,” Dziuk said. “And I’m thankful I had parents who said, ‘Sure, go do it!’ At the time, not all parents felt the same way about girls in sports.”

Dziuk’s parents were so supportive that when their eldest daughter expressed enthusiasm for softball — a sport that Poth Independent School District did not offer in the early 1980s — they found a team for her to join.

Janice Dziuk, right, wasted little time adjusting to Division I competition, pacing the Horned Frogs with 12.1 points per game as a first-year player in 1986-87. Courtesy of TCU Library Special Collections | Linda Kaye

“I remember they would take me on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I played in a women’s softball league. So, here I am, this 14-year-old girl playing softball in a women’s league because there just wasn’t that much opportunity from ’80 to ’82.”

But basketball proved the best crucible of character. She shined at center, putting up 18 to 20 points per game by her senior year, she said. In skill, speed and creativity, she was peerless.

“I hate even saying this because I’m not that person, but there was just no one to challenge me,” Dziuk said. “I’m sure I could be a handful.”

Dziuk has been thrown out of a gym only twice, “and the first time was by Coach Hosek,” she said, referring to Peggy Hosek, who coached the Poth Pirettes to 21 district championships and more than 800 wins in her 32-year career.

“Coach Hosek taught me the fundamentals and was able to coach me, even though I was a stubborn-headed kid at that time,” Dziuk said. “That day she threw me out of the gym, I absolutely deserved it.”

THE COLLEGE YEARS

Competition increased dramatically as Dziuk took to the court at TCU’s Daniel-Meyer Coliseum in 1986 as a starting center. Standing 6 feet tall, Dziuk had also been recruited for volleyball and track and field. Ultimately, she said, “Basketball was my love, and that’s the route I took.”

Finding her bearings on a bigger stage in a bigger city took some time, she said. Her first year on campus involved a lot of adjustment. “I was coming from a town of 1,200 people,” Dziuk said. “There were 40-something in my entire graduating class.”

In 1986, TCU women’s basketball was little more than a decade old. The inaugural WNBA draft was still 11 years away; it would be five years before Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, now household names, were even born.

Fran Garmon, head coach from 1983 to 1993, remembers the late 1980s as a time when the women’s game did not include a bench full of assistant coaches, an athletic trainer, a psychologist, “so I did all that,” she said.

“There was a competitiveness about growing up with three sisters, and I was just always moving — throwing, running, kicking. I noticed early that athletics came easy to me.”
Janice Dziuk

Garmon had four full athletic scholarships each year for gifted recruits, of which Dziuk was one. Dziuk credits her teammate Carol Glover ’88 (MA ’92) for the inspiration to keep her focus on basketball even in the offseason.

“Nowadays, that’s a given,” Dziuk said, “but when I played, universities usually didn’t have the funding to house us or cover summer coursework.”

Dziuk secured a summer job in Fort Worth during all four years of college. She hit the weight room several times a week and played pickup basketball whenever possible. “So much of the offseason work was mental,” she said. “As I matured, I think my level of commitment to doing what was needed, what was right — physically, mentally, spiritually — just increased.”

Dziuk said she climbed two rungs higher up the ladder when each new season began.

“I’ve never personally seen anyone work harder than Janice,” Garmon said. “She worked hard to make her program and her teammates look good.”

During her final year at TCU, Dziuk averaged 18.6 points and 8.7 rebounds per game. She also racked up 2.9 steals per game, a feat accomplished only three times in the 35 years since. She graduated in 1990 with a career total of 1,448 points and 778 boards and was named to the Southwest Conference’s all-decade team for the 1980s.

NEXT CHAPTERS

After graduation, Dziuk turned down an opportunity to play basketball in Germany.

From 1993 to 1995, she coached varsity women’s basketball at Seguin High School in Arlington, Texas, then began a coaching journey that included stops at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State), Texas A&M and the University of North Texas.

“Coach Dziuk first came out to see me play in a basketball tournament in Scottsdale, Arizona,” said Karolyn Haskin, who played basketball for North Texas from 2000 to 2004. At first finding college competition too intense, Haskin said, she considered quitting before Dziuk invited her to breakfast.

She “just sensed that I was running low on energy and commitment,” Haskin said. “I remember she asked me to look ahead, to think about the long term and how one day I’d be so excited to tell my kids about this time in my life.”

It was enough to tip the scales, and Haskin pressed on, working hard and cheering for her team, even when she didn’t get the playing time she wanted.

In the end, Haskin said, “Coach Dziuk was right; today, my kids do think it’s cool to Google my name and tell their friends about how I played basketball in college.”

Dziuk retired from coaching in 2007. She then pivoted to the business world, where she forged a career selling Sensormatic loss prevention and video analytic systems. Only five years into her time with the company, she closed a massive deal. “It was a $47 million deal, the Holy Grail of sales.”

She credits her business success to the experience as a teammate and, later, as a coach who sold an institution’s program to ambitious high school seniors and their parents.

“Competition, handling disappointment, leadership, conflict resolution, anticipating — all of that came into play,” Dziuk said.

When she retired in 2021, she returned home to care for her parents, particularly her father, who has Alzheimer’s. “I had spent my entire life away, and I wanted to get close to my parents and help my mom care for my dad as best I could.”

It is impossible to overstate just how much change women’s basketball has seen since Dziuk’s TCU years. In 1991, 7.3 million viewers tuned into CBS to watch the inaugural broadcast of the NCAA women’s championship game. More recently, the sport has captivated fans in record-shattering numbers. Dziuk said she joined the estimated 18.7 million viewers who watched the NCAA women’s basketball championship last April. Excluding the Super Bowl, it was the most-watched annual sporting event across all TV networks since 2019 and the most-watched basketball game — NCAA or professional, men’s or women’s — in the last five years.

“When I watch now, I totally miss playing,” Dziuk said. “I miss tying up my shoes and getting out there with my teammates.”