Elvera 'Peps' Neuman is a Minnesota basketball icon. You may know her as the ‘blanket lady’
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In a gymnasium in Eden Valley-Watkins High School, the gym’s namesake Elvera Neuman practices her trick shot.
According to the Minnesota native, it's the first time the 81-year-old has picked up a ball in years.
After showing off dribbling between her legs and deftly maneuvering the basketball behind her back and in the air, she stands at the 3-point line, preparing to sink a shot — backwards.
“I did it when I was 75 in Cincinnati for a book signing,” she shouted over her shoulder, readied to lob the ball behind her.
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As a famed alumna from Eden Valley-Watkins school district, she’s better known by her nickname "Peps." But more recently, she’s acquired another nickname — “The Blanket Lady” — which has gone viral.
At Minnesota Gophers games, she can be spotted just off the court hyping up fans with a maroon and gold blanket in hand. It has an old Goldy Gopher design, something you can’t buy in stores anymore.
It all started years ago when Neuman and her friend and former teammate Vicky Nelson became Gophers season ticket holders.
“There was a big fan overhead, and I would always be cold, so I’d just take my jacket off and put it on my legs," Nelson said. “These two ladies that sat next to us, they brought me this blanket so I could put it on my lap.”
Neuman first held the blanket up to fans when Nelson got it in 2006, who immediately reacted with an outpouring of celebration. She took off running then and nearly two decades later, she hasn’t stopped.
At the games, usually while the opposing team is shooting free throws sometime in the third quarter, Neuman runs alongside the bleachers waving the blanket, an act of complete fan enthusiasm.
“How the Gopher nation has taken it and ran with it. I mean, I run with the blanket, but they ran with the story," she said. “I’m in heaven. I’m just saying this is my highlight.”
Women’s basketball royalty
Neuman is no stranger to fame. Long before the blanket, the WNBA or college basketball, Neuman was instrumental in establishing the foundation of girls and women's basketball by the way she fought to be out there herself.
While she was in high school during the late ‘50s and early ’60s, over a decade before Title IX legislation, she lobbied for her school to get a varsity girls' basketball team.
She was successful, and while still a student, she created one of the first leagues of surrounding girls basketball high school teams that competed against each other.
She then went on to play pro and created her own pro team named the Arkansas Gems.
“Nothing was going to stop Peps,” said author Howard Megdal, who wrote “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way For the WNBA.”
Neuman shot hoops in between milking cows on her family's farm growing up. She would shovel the court to run drills and she even walked miles in a snowstorm to one of her high school games, Megdal said.
For the Gems, she did it all. She drove the bus, recruited and ran the office, which was out of Minnesota. She was a star player. She even performed for the halftime show doing dribbling tricks.
That’s where she got her other nickname “Peps” for both her peppy spirit and also her love of the sugary pop Pepsi.
“When I was a kid, and now, I never dreamed that basketball for women could ever get this big. I mean, I’m so proud of the women,” she said. “It makes my heart proud of how basketball started as barnstorming.”
What Neuman made jumpstarted a culture of women’s basketball here in Minnesota, long before it was equal in other parts of the country.
The state’s commitment to girls and women’s basketball can be traced through to Lindsey Whalen, Cheryl Reeve and the Minnesota Lynx’s leadership in the WNBA, Megdal said.
“In all of these cases, you had women who believe that women’s basketball could be more than its detractors claimed,” Megdal said.
Pioneering women athlete’s faced challenges that have transferred into similar topics. Neuman remembers being called a tomboy for wanting to play sports, and she remembers facing mostly teams of men since there were few women playing yet.
“Back in the ‘60s, it was strictly girls were cheerleaders, boys were players,” she said. “It’s wonderful where this world has come with equality. It’s not equal yet. We all know that. But we’re trying to get there.”
Now, as women’s sports reaches new heights in the public zeitgeist, leagues like the WNBA shape society’s impressions and opinions of women. Megdal said that in similar and much different ways, women’s basketball has always been more than just the game.
“People’s identities are on the line the way in which our society as a whole comes to understand women, the way in which our society understands the artificial limitations set on women and women of color,” Megdal said. “I think there is a collective understanding of not only from the people involved in the lead, but those of us who are privileged to cover it, that the stakes are bigger than basketball.”
Neuman grew the sport and now takes joy from watching high school, college and professional basketball.
“When Mara Braun is out there dribbling, or Amaya Battle, or the other girls are getting a rebound, I’m out there, in there, I’m going with them. Just like you watch a movie, how you get involved, I get involved,” she said. “I have the knack to relive my life through sport.”
For over 15 years, Neuman and Nelson have not missed a single Gopher women’s basketball game, driving the 126-mile round trip in snow, freezing temperatures or sunshine.
They’ll be at the Sweet 16 game against UCLA on Friday in Sacramento, Calif., cheering them on from the crowd.
And, of course, they’ll have the blanket.
