Women in Fargo, North Dakota, home of the North Dakota State University Bison, have been playing basketball for more than 100 years. Over that span, the tradition has matured to produce one of the most dominant programs in NCAA Division II history.

At its height in the 1990s, the North Dakota State women’s basketball program appeared in six straight Division II championship games and came away with five titles. More impressively, the Bison captured four of those crowns consecutively, an accomplishment that catapulted the program onto a broader stage as one of the Top 25 Defining Moments in NCAA history.

Former North Dakota State player Jen Rademacher was one of several student-athletes who knew the program was on the verge of something special. She arrived in Fargo as a freshman in fall 1992 knowing the program was capable of winning multiple crowns. The Bison had just missed a second straight Division II championship the year before, falling to Delta State University, 65-63, in front of a huge hometown crowd of 7,100. The disappointing finish launched a run of success duplicated only a few times in other NCAA sports, but never in Division II women’s basketball.

In a rematch of the title game from the previous year, North Dakota State defeated Delta State by 32 points in the 1993 championship game to start the string. California State University, San Bernardino; Portland State University; and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania were the next three victims.

Rademacher was there from the start, landing on the 1994 and 1996 all-tournament teams.

"I knew we’d have a shot at winning championships," she said. "My high school team hadn’t been very successful, so I wanted to go to that level where you win the big game. Did I ever imagine we’d do it four times? Absolutely not. But, I knew we had the potential."

En route to earning consecutive titles, North Dakota State also put together a 49-game winning streak that included going undefeated (32-0) to collect the championship trophy in 1995. That streak stood as the longest in Division II women’s basketball until this past season when Washburn University of Topeka won 51 straight contests. However, the Bison still remain the only Division II women’s team to finish a season as undefeated national champions.

To run the table, though, was never the goal, according to Lori Roufs Hanson, who like Rademacher was a member of all four title-winning squads. On the contrary, Hanson said it was to win the next game, get better and ultimately win the national championship. To that end, she believes physical toughness, teamwork and senior leadership were hallmarks of those teams.

Other elements helped transform that potential into championships, such as talented student-athletes, team chemistry and even luck, said Rademacher.

And at the center of it all was longtime head coach Amy Ruley.

"Everyone bought into her system and everybody believed what she was saying," Rademacher said. "We were totally prepared for everything — sometimes we knew what the other team was doing better than they did. She gave us everything we needed to play, and we went out and got the job done."

Ruley became North Dakota State’s first full-time women’s basketball coach before the 1979-80 season. The opportunity excited her for a couple of reasons — she wanted to coach and she was enthusiastic about the commitment the school had made to women’s basketball. A former point guard at Purdue University, Ruley took over the North Dakota State program immediately after completing her graduate work at Western Illinois University.

By her own admission, Ruley started with the intention of staying three or four years to gain some coaching experience before moving on.

Though Ruley describes earning the four straight championships as "a blur," she said the character and attitude of the athletes made those teams tough to beat. They saw everything that was before them as an opportunity to improve.

"They worked hard. They loved the competition and the teamwork," Ruley said. "We went into the contest as one — from the coaching staff to the players. There was a lot of mutual respect and trust, and in most cases we played to win rather than not to lose. Each time we won the national championship, we were like ‘Wow, how did that happen?’"

Ruley called the 1991 championship the most memorable because it was the first, and because heading into the contest, the Bison were the clear underdogs against a Southeast Missouri State University team in its last year of Division II membership. But she said earning her fourth straight championship in 1996 was exciting, too.

"You set your goals and as you achieve the next level and the next, finally you get to the point of a national championship. Then the goal was to repeat that. After you get the right athletes in and the kids come in with that same level of commitment and expectation, pretty soon it becomes this running engine."

If the Bison program was an engine, it was a state-of-the-art piece of machinery. Although the team hasn’t claimed a national title since 1996, it has remained formidable. Under Ruley’s 28-year tenure, North Dakota State has compiled more than 600 victories, recorded 20 20-win campaigns, won 10 league titles and made 18 NCAA tournament appearances.

The veteran coach attributes the program’s consistent success over the years to the support and high expectations of the broader university and surrounding community.

"It’s the institution, the people that we have at the university and in the community as well as in the program. That kind of expectation carries over," she said. "It’s a system bigger than the basketball team."

These days, Ruley and her staff are focused on finding new ways to continue the tradition of excellence on the court after a recent university decision to move to the Division I level. Now in the fourth year of a five-year transition process, North Dakota State will become a member of the Mid-Continent Conference in July 2007. The team will begin playing a conference schedule in 2007-08 and will be eligible to compete in the league’s postseason tournament starting with the 2008-09 season.

Ruley admits the program has experienced some growing pains as a result of the move, particularly in recruiting, but she believes her program is making progress toward re-establishing itself at the Division I level.

"Anytime you make that kind of change and you have that five-year period where you’re not eligible for postseason play, it really changes things. That was one carrot we could always put out in terms of our recruiting — if you come and stay with us for four years, you’re likely going to have a chance to play in the national championship," she said. "Most of the teams have already proven that it’s been a good thing for us. We’re probably more successful than we thought we’d be in the early going with some of our teams. It gets better each year."