The Golden Cyclones were a 1930s group of women athletes who played

Amateur Athletic Union The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is an amateur sports organization based in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs. It has ...

(AAU)

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

and

track-and-field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping event ...

. Based in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

they were sponsored by the Employers Casualty Insurance Company (ECC) and coached by "Colonel" Melvin J. McCombs, manager of the ECC athletic program in Dallas.

Babe Zaharias Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (; Didrikson; June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956) was an American athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field. She won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Summer O ...

was their star team member from 1930-1932, leading the Golden Cyclone Basketball team to the AAU women's basketball championship, AAU Women's Basketball Championship in 1931. The Golden Cyclones were one of the dominant AAU teams of the era. In addition to the National Championship in 1931, they finished as the national runner-up in 1929, 1932 and 1933, while finishing fourth in 1930. They held the offensive record for scoring the most points ever in a National Tournament game (97) as well as the defensive record for the fewest points ever allowed (4). In 1934, the Golden Cyclones were enrolled ''en masse'' into Dallas's new college,

Dixie University Dixie University was a short-lived college in downtown Dallas, Texas that was chartered in 1933 by the Somerville Law School partly to expand into a liberal arts college, and partly to create a home for the displaced 1932 Jefferson Rangers footb ...

, to become the college's women's basketball team known as the Dixie Rebels. Dixie instantly had a national championship-contending team in time for the 1934 national tournament. After winning its early games, the Rebels were trounced by the two-time defending champion Oklahoma City Cardinals in the quarter-finals. It appears that the Cyclones/Rebels never played another game.

Notes

References

* * Softball teams Athletics clubs in the United States Sports in Dallas Defunct women's basketball teams in the United States 1920s establishments in Texas Sports clubs established in the 1920s Women's sports in Texas {{Dallas-stub