History Alert - When Delta State was bad for women's basketball... | The Boneyard

History Alert - When Delta State was bad for women's basketball...

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ThisJustIn

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Some of you know I'm a wbball history nut.

Just got this email/link from Delta State University:
See the attached photos on Coach Margaret Wade. Many are “never before seen” that were just digitized by Emily Jones in the Charles Capps Archives and Museum at Delta State University.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Delta-State-University-Archives-Museum/149608545092356

Be sure to LIKE and SHARE the Facebook page dedicated to Coach Wade.https://www.facebook.com/coachmargaretwade

Gave me an excuse to repost one of my favorite blog entries:

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Margaret Wade: She’s not just a name on a trophy


It’s been about 75 years since most competitive state high school girls basketball was wiped out and 35 years since Title IX was signed. So how about a little history?

The Wade Trophy is awarded to the best women’ s basketball player in Division I. First offered in 1978, it was named after legendary Delta State coach Margaret Wade (1912-1995).

Many forget Wade the player who, in 1929, played forward and became captain of the Delta State Teacher’s College team. The team, though, was disbanded in 1932 because the administration thought “intercollegiate basketball could not be defended on sound grounds.” Basically, it was unlady-like.

But, like many women of the era who were driven to play, Wade found a place on the court with “semi-pro” AAU teams. In Wade’s case it was the Tupelo Red Wings. She served as the team’s captain and led them to the Southern Championship before a knee injury ended her career.

As a Red Wing, Wade played with Mary Nelle Brumley Chalk and her sister Dew Drop Rowlett, both who have been inducted into the Freed-Hardeman College (TN) Hall of Fame. Clark was part of 1931-32 Freed-Hardeman College team that won the Mississippi Valley Conference despite the fact that they were a junior college competing against senior colleges. Rowlett attended FHC from 1930 to ’32 and was named to the Mississippi Valley Conference tournament team in ’30, ’31 and ’32. FHC’s women’s team was eventually disbanded.

All three women made a careers teaching and coaching, most famously Wade who, in 19 years at Cleveland High School (MS) compiled a 453-89 record. Invited back to Delta State to resurect the program in 1973, she guided the Lady Statesmen to three consecutive AIAW championships (’75-’77) with a team that included the fabulous Lucy Harris.

Chalk taught in the Tennessee school system, and coached both boys and girls basketball at Lexington High School for 20 years. Rowlett started coaching tennis, track and field in 1936 at Kentucky’s Murray High School. One of the founders of the Kentucky Women’s Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, in 1968 Rowlett was recognized as one of Kentucky’s Outstanding Women in Sports.

Rowlett return to FHU as a coach from 1965-1981. In 1979, her sister joined her to help revive the FHU women’s basketball team. The Lady Lions play in the NAIA and have made ten National Tournment appearances since 1997. This year Stacy Myers was the fourth player in FHU history to be named a Kodak All-American.

All hail unlady-like women!
 

DobbsRover2

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TJI, I can't get many of the links to work and the articles seem to have disappeared, and I guess the blog post goes back a ways. Would have loved to read a CT Starters article about some of my Lyman Hall alumni's high achievements, but the Record blew that away too.

Seems that the early 1930s could have been labeled the Great Repression as far as women's sports go, because I know from other research that it was a time when there was a general feeling that sports activities weren't good for women after a promising start in the 1910-1930 period. Of course, a decade later a lot women were flowing into the factories and flexing their biceps and brachs in great avatars.
 
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Lusia Harris is still among my top ten WCBB players; Could flat out play and was downright dominant: Averaged a double-double in her college career.
 

ThisJustIn

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TJI, I can't get many of the links to work and the articles seem to have disappeared, and I guess the blog post goes back a ways. Would have loved to read a CT Starters article about some of my Lyman Hall alumni's high achievements, but the Record blew that away too.

Seems that the early 1930s could have been labeled the Great Repression as far as women's sports go, because I know from other research that it was a time when there was a general feeling that sports activities weren't good for women after a promising start in the 1910-1930 period. Of course, a decade later a lot women were flowing into the factories and flexing their biceps and brachs in great avatars.

Yah, it's annoying how links go away. Perhaps I'll procrastinate... I mean, dedicate some time to updating.

As for history- great repression is a good name for it. Backlash (roaring 20's) fear of women becoming like men (calling each other by their last name, betting, hanging out together), and underlying homophobia, and budget issues spelled doom for so many high school/college programs. The irony is, when the delicate ladies entered the work force during WWII, "Industrial Teams" soared -- Maytag, Haines Hosiery, Nashville Business College, Dr. Pepper, etc. all sported teams.

There's an interested study by.... Sue Gundy (not looking it up) about how team sports were a way to "transition" workers from the independence of farming to the structure of industrial work...
 

ThisJustIn

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Which links did not work?

The facebook link worked for me.

Here is the Women's Hoops Blog from today

He's talking "internal links," stuff I put in back in 2007 has moved or disappeared. Sigh. Sorry to see the AAU basketball article go. Half hearted search couldn't find it - it had been on the CT Starters page.
 

Phil

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There's an interested study by.... Sue Gundy (not looking it up) about how team sports were a way to "transition" workers from the independence of farming to the structure of industrial work...


Sue Gundy? Is this a quasi-portanteau of Susan Shackleford and Pamela Grundy? They made that point on page 88-91 of their book Shattering the Glass.
 

ThisJustIn

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Harris was incredible. First woman drafted by the NBA

I got to speak with her... Amazing woman:

The invitation was significant not simply because it offered her an opportunity to continue playing but, as Pam Grundy and Susan Shackelford point out in their book “Shattering the Glass,” because Harris-Stewart was black, Delta State was a white school and Mississippi had been a fierce battleground during the Civil Rights era. In keeping with her character, Harris-Stewart doesn’t make much of being the only black player on the team. “Sometimes the fans would say, you know, things in the stands,” she told Grundy and Shackelford, “but my focus was to score that basket. And sometimes it got to be pretty rough in the games… Everybody said that I did a lot of smiling, but I had a few to say that I was pretty physical under the boards.”​

http://fraser61.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/lucys-legacy-a-profile-of-lusia-harris-stewart/
 

ThisJustIn

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Sue Gundy? Is this a quasi-portanteau of Susan Shackleford and Pamela Grundy? They made that point on page 88-91 of their book Shattering the Glass.

quasi-portanteau - describes me to a T!
 

Phil

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He's talking "internal links," stuff I put in back in 2007 has moved or disappeared. Sigh. Sorry to see the AAU basketball article go. Half hearted search couldn't find it - it had been on the CT Starters page.


Ah yes, I see what you mean.

The Wade Trophy link was to the WBCA and they reorganzied their site, which messes up dozens of links I have used.

Updated link:
Wade Trophy
 

Phil

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Seems that the early 1930s could have been labeled the Great Repression as far as women's sports go, because I know from other research that it was a time when there was a general feeling that sports activities weren't good for women after a promising start in the 1910-1930 period. Of course, a decade later a lot women were flowing into the factories and flexing their biceps and brachs in great avatars.

Oddly, some of that may be laid at the feet of Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States.

I say "oddly" because in some ways Hoover was supportive of women's issues, as the head of the Girl Scouts of America. However, she was influential in the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Foundation, which tried to ban extramural competition. I don't want to lay the blame solely on Hoover, while she had her version of the bully pulpit, she would not have been successful without sympathy to her views, so others share the blame. (I wrote about this in the history of the Texas Longhorns team)
 
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