When the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association approached George Napier Barnes III to pen a history of the conference’s now 50-year-old women’s basketball tournament, he picked up the phone and started calling around. It was hard for Barnes, a freshman at Fayetteville State in 1974, now a journalist who has been to 51 consecutive tournaments, to appreciate the magnitude of the moment.

“As a student,” Barnes said, “I’m thinking it was smooth transition.”

It wasn’t until years later that he’d become more aware of the pushback against Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational programs, enacted in 1972. Several university leaders and NCAA brass dragged their feet, Barnes said, arguing a lack of revenue potential. One Division II conference, made up of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, was among the first to buck that notion.

This week, the CIAA is celebrating the half-century milestone of that first women’s basketball tournament. It’s come a long way since 1975.

It took years before the women joined the men playing their postseason tournament in major venues. The first women’s CIAA championship tournament was played on the campus of Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia. The men dueled 140 miles away at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina. The women did not award an Outstanding Player of the Year in 1975 — Barnes suspects it would have been Norfolk State’s Vivian Green — and delayed picking a winner until 1983. The first women’s Coach of the Year was North Carolina Central’s Yvonne Edwards in 1984.

“Maybe the thinking of the day,” Barnes wrote in “Title IX and the history of CIAA women’s basketball” for the tournament programs, “was that a women’s tournament was just a passing fad.”

Twenty-five years later, a recent college graduate named Jacqie McWilliams-Parker was working as commissioner of championships and compliance. A not insignificant member of a not-so-huge staff trying to commemorate the tournament’s quarter-century birthday. “Golly, I’m 56 now,” said McWilliams-Parker, who became the CIAA’s first female commissioner in 2012.

Her goals are pointed, rooted in fairness and tailored toward the student-athlete experience.

“For us, we want to make sure that when [teams] walk in the building, they feel that they’re in a place they’ve never been before,” she said. “It’s not just a sign up. We really go hard in making it feel like they’re at a Final Four. So if our teams never go past the CIAA in the playoffs, they will get a playoff experience in the CIAA.”

There are countless women worthy of recognition over the tournament’s 50-year history. Katherine Bennett, Jackie Dolberry and Lauretta Taylor, to name a few. You could fill a book about the folks who blazed a trail to this birthday, celebrated by the marketing campaign, #PaintingHERStory.

That said, it’s impossible to tell the story of the growth of the CIAA — particularly this tournament — without McWilliams-Parker.

In 1988, she was a freshman at Hampton University. She moved from Colorado to Virginia and walked on to the Pirates women’s basketball team, eventually working her way up in the rotation to the first or second player off the bench. That team finished 33-1. Their only loss? The CIAA championship vs. Virginia State. But their bid into the conference Hall of Fame was a nod to their national championship.

That season and that team mark the happiest memories of her athletic career. They’re still in a group chat together. Because there were three Jackies on that team (spelled differently), McWilliams-Parker is still “Little Jaq.”

It wasn’t all great. Like many women’s programs across the country, they had less access to uniforms, they played in scaled-down facilities until the championship, fought for gym time, celebrated success in smaller banquets and were pushed to earlier tip-off times. The good and the frustrating has all been a deep influence in McWilliams-Parker’s work with the CIAA.

“I was a former player and now I’m leading this conference,” she said, “and I have the opportunity to give them an even better experience than I had.” She tries to watch ESPN’s 2008 film, “Black Magic” before every tournament to serve as a reminder that, “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.”

This week is a chance to celebrate that through events like EmpowerHER Town Hall, a Women’s Empowerment Brunch, “The Mind, Body, Soul” Panel, the John B. McClendon Jr. CIAA Hall of Fame Breakfast, and Ladies’ Night on Championship Saturday. McWilliams-Parker was with a coach earlier this week and asked how her day was. “It’s magical to be in the CIAA,” she responded. For McWilliams-Parker, that phrasing felt reminiscent of Disney World.

“When you go to Disney and they make you feel special, and they make you feel a part of an experience of a lifetime,” she said. “And you spend a lot of money and do all these things but you don’t even think about it because you care about the experience and the access.”

What was once secluded games with lack of recognition, 50 years later, is now drawing comparisons with the nicknamed “Happiest Place on Earth.”

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