Lady Hoopsters: A History of Women's Basketball in America

Introduction: "Girl ball"

This is a book about women who have played basketball-- about "lady hoopsters." When I was a young, aspiring lady hoopster and played basketball with my brother on our family farm in the late 50s/early 60s, I felt plagued by limitations and the restrictions of what I called "girl ball." First of all, we played in the farm granary, which housed a big pile of grain, a cart, and various ill-sorted machines, leaving us just limited room to maneuver, usually to the right of the (netless) basket. This helped my set shot from the right, but didn’t do much for my ballhandling. Of course, in the 60s, girls could only dribble three times before you had to pass anyway.

The second problem was that I was also constantly plagued by "girl ball." Girl ball was any time my brother hesitated to guard me or play all-out basketball. Early feminist tendencies had me resenting this from the start. That was as a pre-adolescent girl though, and girl ball was much more noticeably enforced as part of puberty rites. When it came to sports or any outdoor play, I grew up considering myself the other son in a family of three girls and a boy. With less than a year separating us in age, my brother Gary and I spent a lot of time playing catch, olley-over (softball catch over the roof), and touch football. We were also running constant footraces, or spending time up in the hayloft doing insane stunts like forward-rolls over up to five bales of hay or walking beams 25 feet up from the floor. At age 10, I was the proud hula-hoop, twist and 50-yard dash champ of my fifth grade class; and at age 12, I once did a running broad-jump of over 16 feet. But my attitude toward sports competition, especially any contest I had against the guys, radically changed by 1966, the year I turned 16.

By the time I turned 16, my brother had his own friends, and I was expected to start being a "lady," part of which was to apply the knowledge that guys would not appreciate the ladies who beat them in any contest, or who appeared overly strong and athletic. I only played basketball in intramurals, half court and three dribbles, and I used my jumping ability as a cheerleader and big fan of the boys’ basketball team. In 1967, when I tried out for my college team at SUNY Albany, I found the girls’ rules had changed to continuous dribble, full-court. Though I just barely made the softball team, there was no way my girl ball, teenage athletic experience prepared me for Coach Delamater’s dribbling and stair-running drills, and I did not make the basketball team.

Although I wasn’t playing in the 70s, I remained a fan—of men’s basketball, of the Albany men’s team, and then the NY Knicks. It wasn’t until the light of feminism dawned upon me in the mid-70s, that I started thinking about girl ball again, and about the gross inequalities in sports, the last male bastion. I started insisting my new husband Ira really guard me when we shot hoops, and that he run all out when we ran footraces in Central Park. When I went to graduate school at Syracuse in the early 80s, I was an Orangewomen fan as well as Orangemen’s, and couldn’t help but compare the several hundred fans who were in Manley Field House to watch the women, versus the several thousand in the Carrier Dome to watch the men. What impressed me about the Orangewomen, the NCAA college women newly on television, and later, Dawn Staley on the Olympic team, was their movement and their moves. By the 90s, the girls’ team at my high school had more followers than the boys’ team, and my niece Jennifer, a point guard, starred on her high school team. But girl ball is not dead.

Traditionally, to preserve femaleness and femininity is to institute and preserve limitations—to have girl ball. Women’s basketball, unfettered and unchained, would be an all-out drive down the floor followed by a hot-dog shot, or some impressive ball-handling and ball movement by a disciplined team. Women’s basketball limited, played by "ladylike" hoopsters, would be no more than three dribbles, a careful underhand pass to a designated offensive player, and a modest shot attempt, which if missed, should not dishearten the player.

It is amazing how constant notions of the importance of maintaining delicate femininity have been. One relatively recent glaring example (and it was my husband who actually mentioned this) of "concerns" about female weakness and exhaustion, is the fact that women were prevented from having an Olympic marathon race until 1984, the accepted wisdom being that they could never survive it. In 1912, Dr. Dudley A. Sargent worried in the Ladies Home Journal that athletics were making girls masculine, while exhausting them and putting a strain on their hearts and lungs. In 1969, in High School Sport, Dr. Paul Weiss suggested that "[o]ne way of dealing with these disparities between athletic promise and achievement of men and women is to view women as truncated males," and view women’s sports as "foreshortened versions" of "male" sports. Here are two definite advocates of girl ball.

While teaching history at Keene State College in the early 90s, I was amazed at how my students were far from sharing what I though were 90s feminist sentiments. Like most present-day women’s college teams who call their teams "lady" bulldogs or "lady" wildcats, the Keene State team is called "Lady Owls." A move was underway to change the name of the women’s team from "Lady Owls" to Keene State Owls’ Women’s Team, and it was being met by huge resistance, especially from alumni. When I innocently raised the subject in my U.S. History class, equating "lady" with my definition borne out of living through the constrictions for "ladies" in the 50s and breaking out of those limits in the 70s; to a man, and woman, my students wouldn’t hear of changing the tradition of "lady owls." Their X-Generation connotation of "lady" seemed to be grounded in "respect" and the right to wear make up. I quickly saw that a historical perspective would be helpful for us all to understand what girl ball used to be for "lady hoopsters" and what it might be now.

After researching the history of women’s basketball, it becomes very apparent that there have always been those who wanted to control the game and who thought they knew what was best for women--best in terms of protecting them and their femininity. Marjorie Bateman, Director of Physical Education at Keene State College in 1936 exemplified the absurdities of some portions of physical education from the 1890s through today:

The players…crouch…bodies tense, ready to leap in any direction. Their eyes shift quickly from ball to opponent. A rush after the ball -- two bodies crash in midair and tumble to the floor. The radiance in their eyes: mouths are half open, gasping for breath. It is a fight, and from the faces of the combatants, one would judge it to be a desperate fight.

She goes on to talk of "the slaughter of innocents" and the "atrocious crime committed in the name of education." Bateman may seem an extremist, but she actually is not all that atypical of physical educators and their concerns about what basketball might do to bring about the ruination of the female. In spite of educators’ concerns, there have always been those who fought the controls and who just wanted to play basketball, and who usually also wanted to play just like the guys. Lorene Moore, all-time scoring great and long-time star of the touring women’s professional basketball team, the Red Heads, said it best. She told me: "We played all the time and played real hard. And yes, I enjoyed it!" This was a real ball player who just wanted to play and play hard.

There always seem to be constraints on women who just want to play and play hard. My reason for writing this book is to explore how women athletes have broken out of those constraints. I wanted to look at women’s basketball in the context of women’s history in America. Existing works on women’s basketball tend to concentrate on the college game alone, hence leaving large black holes of relative inactivity in the 1920s to 1950s period. I wanted to do a more comprehensive look which would include the industrial and community leagues, as well as women’s semi-pro and professional basketball touring teams, from the 1890s to the present. Part of the story of women’s basketball is the continuing struggle to overcome "girl ball," and to expand and redefine the boundaries of the lady/athlete.

From 1890s physical educator Senda Berenson Abbott’s desire to limit women’s basketball parameters and her successors’ attempts to have playdays and not competitive tournaments, to the apparent necessity for Olympic players of the 1990s to look good (very good) while storming down the floor, the societal impetus to limit and control female athletes is there. I have divided the book into three sections outlining three periods of increasing progess toward all-out play for women’s basketball: I. The Start, 1892-1920; II. Half Court, 1920-1970; and finally, III. Full Court, 1970 to the present.

Section I, The Start, 1892-1920, contains three chapters on the earliest days of women’s basketball, when the original (men’s) rules were immediately "modified" for female play. On the heels of YMCA instructor James Naismith’s invention of the game featuring shooting a ball into a peach basket in 1891, young women were introduced to it, most notably by Smith College educator, Senda Berenson. Berenson and other physical educators would move quickly to impose orderly rules and limitations on what they saw as a potentially healthful and useful game. They feared that if the game was let out of (their) control, it would deteriorate into an unhealthy and very unfeminine activity. In the meantime, basketball for women and men spread like wildfire, popular with Chinese girls in San Francisco, African-American girls in Philadelphia and farm girls throughout the Midwest and South. All of these female basketball players had their own ideas of rules, and many had no desire to change the original Naismith (men’s) rules.

Section II, Half Court, 1920-1970, is divided into four chapters, and looks at a time period when women’s rules restricted play to movement on half the court—or less. This period is often given short shrift because of the dearth of competitive activity in the colleges, ordinarily the focus of basketball histories. By the 1920s the game would be standardized for men, not looking much different from the running, shooting and jumping of today’s game, and very popular as a competive college sport. For women it was a bit different, as physical educators insisted that "playdays" and intramurals were the only womanly way to athletics. However, at the same time, some very strong and excellent athletes who were female were doing just the opposite. Women’s basketball flourished in this period, but it was in the industrial and community leagues where they fielded teams like the men, and in rural high schools where sometimes women played against men. The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sponsored hard-fought, serious women’s basketball tournaments entered by such amateur teams throughout this period. The men’s National Basketball Association (NBA) began in the mid 1940s, while professional women’s basketball began in the mid 30s, most notably with the extraordinarily talented touring All-American Red Heads.

Finally, Section III, Full-Court, 1970 to the present, has three chapters outlining the literal movement of women down the entire floor of the court when the rules were finally officially changed in 1967. This is also the time when the (more abstract) women’s movement fueled an explosion of women’s sports. Many women still played on semi-pro AAU teams, while many college stars went on to play professionally overseas. New professional leagues started twice in the 1970s/80s and then again in the 90s. Individual women basketball players gained fame on college and pro teams as the women’s movement and Title IX provided more opportunities for women’s sports. But the AAU struggled with the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women), which would then struggle with the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) over control of women’s sports. Black women players protested versus racism, even as female coaches protested against sexism. And professional team owners (all men) as in the 1940s, wanted their own "beauty ideal" as women players continued to struggle with notions of "femininity" vs. athleticism. Even amidst such struggles, it’s clear that today’s high school, college and professional women basketball teams are no longer playing "girl ball."

[The Red Heads] were just super, everyday people who just loved playing basketball. … We played in little towns, for PTAs, churches, Kiwanis clubs. We played men’s college teams, former NBA fellows . . . a lot of men’s baseball and football players.

- Coach Orwell Moore of the Red Heads, 1997

Not much could be further from basketball play days than the professional All-American World’s Champion Basketball Red Heads. And not much was more glaringly obvious than the ambivalent emotions generated by those who watched professional women basketball players take on men’s teams and beat them. What could be further apart from what the physical education establishment wanted for women? Not only was this competitive basketball, but here were women playing men by men’s rules—full court—to large crowds, for money. Of course there was a catch. According to the Babe Didrikson biography ‘Whatta Gal’, in the 1930s "women and athletics" didn’t mix, so the only way for women athletes to make money was as "sideshow exhibitionists." At least that’s what Babe Didrikson ended up doing. If women were willing to play in a "vaudeville"-like atmosphere and put on a "show," then that would make it more palatable and people would pay money to see it. Coach Orwell Moore of the All-American Red Heads told me that for women to succeed professionally they must "play good basketball and put on a show (but "not a sideshow"). That’s what you need." Just like the AAU tournaments and their beauty contests, would-be female professional basketball players would probably be expected to play in short shorts. They would have to put up with articles in Collier’s calling their athletic efforts "sex appeal dished out" in front of local crowds. But whatever the press might say, the women players on the touring teams between 1933 and 1970 were able to earn their money playing the game they loved. Both of the first great touring basketball teams were called All Americans: one was the short-lived Babe Didrikson co-ed team, begun in 1933; and the other was the very long-lasting, all-female, All-American World’s Champion Red Heads, founded in 1936.

Babe started playing for her touring team immediately after leaving the Dallas Cyclones and amateur sports. After her disagreement with the Cyclones about her salary, she entered into even deeper controversy with the AAU and Olympic officials. With all her success, her female hormone levels became suspect, so she took to wearing lace. Apparently that still wasn’t enough for the AAU’s Avery Brundage who was moved to praise the ancient Greeks who "kept women out of their athletic games." Tired of the conflict, early in 1933 Babe Didrikson spoke about getting together a women’s pro basketball team. It was Roy Doan, a promoter from Muscatine, Iowa, who actually arranged for the "Babe’s All-Americans" tour. He knew people would flock to see her, maybe as a great woman athlete, but also probably as a sort of sideshow freak. The same thing happened to legendary black Olympian Jesse Owens in 1937, when the only way he could make enough money to go to college was to agree to a promoter’s scheme for him to run races against thoroughbred horses.

Even as an amateur, Babe Didrikson had always insisted on being shown the money. Why shouldn’t a female athlete earn money doing what she did best? As the star attraction of Babe’s All-Americans, Babe pulled down $1,000 a month, a lot in U.S. Depression dollars. It was her name that drew in the people, and they came in droves. The team was organized by Doan in the fall of 1933. He planned for four men and two to three women to barnstorm through country towns, playing men’s teams. One of the women on the team was Jackie Mitchell, the Texas AAU basketball and baseball star. People were struggling with tough times, but they really enjoyed the distraction of Babe’s team coming to town.

For a five-month season in 1933-34, Babe’s All-Americans played 91 games across seven states, grabbing headlines everywhere. They rolled through Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. The Springfield Hall of Fame has a great February 12, 1934 poster advertising Babe’s team coming to Saratoga Springs, New York, to take on the "Paramount 5." They beat three quarters of the teams they faced. Babe’s All-Americans toured in a seven-passenger sedan with a luggage trailer. In contrast to her past experience, Babe was well-liked by her touring teammates, who, according to team member Dick Butzen, appreciated her humor and generosity. Her generosity still extended to her family also, whom she regularly sent hundreds of dollars in cash through the mail.

Babe also got along well with the short, blond and "feminine" Virne "Jackie" Mitchell. According to a 1933 St. Louis Dispatch article, neither woman "had an interest in men from a standpoint of other than athletics." That was apparently a 1930s way to suspect not only the normalcy of Babe’s hormone levels, but to question her sexual preferences. Such questions would become more commonplace and more open for any successful female athlete as the century wore on. Didrikson biographer Susan Cayleff notes that "groups of women playing passionately and intimately together," in games of "unwomanly" physical contact could count on being suspected of lesbianism. Babe wore lace and married George Zaharias to try to counter society’s perception of her "mannishness." But being on a touring co-ed basketball team which regularly beat men’s teams probably didn’t add to an image of femininity. Nor did it help when she followed the basketball tour with a tour on the male House of David baseball team. Babe always fought for the right of woman athletes to pursue their sport professionally and with dignity. Babe Didrikson died of cancer in 1956 after a brilliant track and field, baseball, billiards, golf, and basketball career.

Didrikson had often been treated like a phenomenon, like a woman far from the normal female athlete. She no doubt got very tired of fighting for a woman athlete’s right to be taken seriously, and not as a freak show. When I had the chance to speak to the now 81-year-old Coach Orwell Moore and his wife Lorene Moore of the Red Heads, one of the questions I really wanted to have them answer for me was: Did the Red Heads just put on "a show" against the men’s teams they played, or was it serious basketball? Their answers were not as uncomplicated as I had anticipated.

In February of 1947, John K. Lageman wrote a piece on the Red Heads for Collier’s called "Red Heads You Kill Me." The accompanying photos show players garbed in short shorts, and some show opposing male players reaching to grab them inappropriately. One picture is captioned: "’Ouch my manicure!’ exclaimed pretty Ruth Haines, nursing her fingernail, as Mary McGee saves the ball. The girls use perfume on and off the court." [!] Meanwhile "the girls" look very athletic, and more concerned about rebounds than manicures. Lageman uses a cutesy, sexy tone throughout the article, no doubt making the subject of women playing men’s teams much more palatable to his readership. The public had been seeing all-women’s basketball teams on tour before: the Edmonton Grads, the AAU’s Hanes team, and the African-American Philadelphia Hustle squad, had all travelled the country. In 1949 AAU All-American Hazel Walker organized a women’s pro touring team called the Arkansas Travelers. Lurlyne Greer Mealhouse of the Hanes team played for the Travelers in the 1950s. The team toured the country until 1966. But by far the longest-lived women’s touring pro basketball organization was the All-American Red Heads, which sent out touring teams between 1936 and 1986.

Coach Orwell Moore assured me that "the Red Heads were the best women’s team in the 20th century." Moore says "those women could really play. . . could really shoot. There has never been anyone like them." They were successful because they were "very competitive" ballplayers, but they could also "put on a show."

In 1936 C.M. Ole Olson of Crossville, Missouri, sent out the first Red Head squad. They were originally called the "All-American World’s Championship Girls’ Basketball Club," but soon became simply the All-American Red Heads. Olson’s wife ran some beauty salons, and player Peggy Lawson had the idea that the team could advertise the salons by wearing Mrs. Olson’s "do’s" and dyeing theirs a distinctive red. Lawson thought the team’s hair color should match that of their red-haired players, the Langerman twins (Jo and Genevra) and then they could call the team the Red Heads. So the women dyed their hair red, but they never wore red wigs, according to former player Lorene Moore, who was indignant at the thought. Eventually the fans came to expect (and demand) red heads when they came to see the team. The original Red Heads included great players like Peggy Lawson Surface, Hazel Vickers Cone, Lera Dunford, Ruth Osborn, Kay Kirkpatrick Phillips (who joined a bit later), and the phenomenal redheaded Iowa twins, Jo and Genevra Langerman. Olson managed the team, who played male teams using five-player, men’s rules. At one point, Olson featured the attraction of track star Helen Stevens running races against men at halftime. From the start, fans flocked to see them. Their won-lost record is quoted as about 50% for the 1930s and 40s. Scheduling 185 games in six months, they played through 30 states, and in the Philippines and Hawaii.

The Red Heads’ style was to liberally use "fancy play": gags, "trick shots," and dribbling with their knees. The players’ "laugh-provoking antics" entertained the millions who eventually would see them. Coach Moore says he had some amazing dribblers. It made for some great halftime shows. One player could dribble two balls at once blindfolded. She’d go down on the floor and back up again, keeping them going. Some of these entertaining Red Heads received offers from Hollywood, but none of them went. A 1976 Red Heads promotional flyer echoes Coach Moore’s secret to their longtime success: "skilled basketball wizardry" – good players and tricks.

The Red Heads had seen steady success into the 1940s, but owner Ollie Olson did call a two-year halt during the war years, believing that in wartime a "woman’s place was at the lathe." By the late 40s, they were more than back in business, beating any women’s team they faced, and at least half of the local men’s teams who met them in their highly popular contests. In 1947, Lageman said they travelled 30,000 miles in a year in a station wagon they called "The Nellie J. Bly," playing 180 games in 38 states.

As noted, Lageman’s account of Red Head play is mocking and sarcastic. He describes the players as wearing "sassy red slacks," and reminds the readers (and himself?): "But it’s basketball- not a strip tease!" Lageman said that during the game he observed, the local men’s team discussed strategy, while Red Head coach Joe Turner talked to his team about watching out for the opponents’ wives and girlfriends, so they could use the information and distract the men during the game. On the one hand, Lageman noted that Red Head Captain Lorene Daniels was a great player. She led her high school in Byng, Oklahoma to 100 straight victories and three state championships. But he also claims that in this game, Daniels and team use their "female guile" to bother some of the newly-married males on the opposing side and then score on them. He notes that Red Head "Walker" was a national free throw champ, and she’s "not bad to look at."

As basketball players, Lageman calls the Red Heads "fast and tricky." But, he went on, as the "women themselves admitted," they would have no chance against the average man, unless they could "bedizen" and "ensnare" him. He calls guard Mary Alice "Peachie" Hatcher a "clinging vine," and describes how Mary McGee got the men to put an arm around her so the ref would call a foul. Then he tells us about one of the Red Heads’ trick shots which featured the 5’2" Allegra "Stubby" Winter riding piggyback on Ruth Haines for a basket. For Lageman, the whole game was "sex appeal dished out" in front of a local crowd.

It’s hard to say how these excellent women basketball players might have done in a straight game against those men on that particular night, given that the game in those days was not the power-dunk game it is now. Coach Moore coached both Daniels and Haines, and he told me he spoke to Haines about this particular game. She remembers both teams and the ref clowning in red wigs. (So there’s at least one time with wigs.) Moore said the coaches did get information on the men "to use for the show. . . . The women played seriously, but with a smile. . . They wanted to create the thought the women could beat them at any time. The women always wanted to win. Never forget that." It’s obvious that Lageman and the American public were still somewhat ambivalent watching lady athletes who wanted to win.

It was 1955 when Coach Orwell Moore and his wife Lorene Moore bought the Red Heads from Olson, moving the headquarters to Caraway, Arkansas. The team had remained steadily successful, bagging 134 wins in 1953, all against men’s teams. Coach Moore had been a high school coach before coming to the Red Heads to coach their western unit in 1948. Lorene "Butch" Moore was the Red Heads’ all-time scoring leader with more than 35,000 points in her 12-year career, billed on their 1976 flyer as "the greatest individual scorer in the history of girls’ basketball." She also is a very modest, retiring woman. When asked what her secret was for scoring so many points, she said: "There’s no secret. I just played hard. We all played hard."

Lorene Adams Moore says she started playing basketball in grade school, in the hills of Caraway, Arkansas. She played all through school; she was always playing. She married Orwell Moore right out of high school. She went on to play for Arkansas State (now Arkansas State University). When Moore graduated from Arkansas State in the late 40s, she joined the Red Heads, playing for her coach/husband. She describes playing for six months of the year, every night: "We played all the time and played real hard. And yes, I enjoyed it! . . . We played all over the country, even in Alaska. . . . played all over the world." As far as the red wigs that so many stories on them insist they wore, she says they didn’t: "Can you see a man wearing a wig? . . . We did dye our hair though." Wigs would have been over the top.

When I asked Lorene Moore my burning question about whether or not the Red Heads played serious basketball as opposed to what Lageman described in Collier’s in 1947, she said it had definitely been serious basketball. They "played for real." She said that she’s read those magazine articles, too, and sometimes "they twisted things." [Me: "Probably written by men." Moore: "Yes, that’s it!"] When I said some writers implied they were all show like the Globetrotters, she said it was all serious play. Her husband the coach does stress the "show" aspect more.

Lorene Moore explained that from the beginning the Red Heads always played men’s rules basketball. They always played full court, continuous dribble. She says the Red Heads never played women’s teams: "They wouldn’t have been any competition." So they only played men’s teams. That was their "drawing card" – men playing against women. "Nowadays it’s commonplace. Happens all the time." The Red Heads played men, and they won by a large percentage, she didn’t remember the number. When asked about the men’s reactions to being beaten, she was quick to reply: "How would they react? A man getting beaten by a woman?! Most of them were very nice. . . But when you stole the ball- ! [She laughed]." Coach Moore says that Lorene was good at that, and a lot more: "She was the greatest faker you’ve ever seen. She had that extra something." She could play any position and was always their highest scorer. She could take foul shots off her knee – and did, in games. Moore told me she always "played hard. Played until I couldn’t play any more [because of age]." Lorene Moore simply loved playing basketball.

Unlike Mrs. Moore, Coach Moore could not be described as retiring, but more like a ringmaster. He said that as soon as his Red Head players came on the court, people knew they were "super, everyday people who just loved playing basketball." For Red Heads, "basketball had to be first." Supportive families kept track of their players with pins on a map. After the hometown girl got famous playing with the Red Heads, she might land a great job or marry "the best guy in town. . . . If they got through that, they stayed with the Red Heads." They played "a serious game," but " they also put on a show." Coach Moore explained all those magazine articles by saying that the reporters were picking up on "the show." When Moore took over the Red Heads he had some great ballplayers, making up "the best women’s team in the 20th century. There were none better. No-o!"

When asked to contrast the "non-serious," limited, offensive/defensive women’s game played by the schools and sometimes the AAU in the 1940s and 50s, with the more "serious" play of the Red Heads, Coach Moore disagreed with the distinction. He explained that even with three dribbles, playing on half the court, it was still serious play—"just different rules." He told me that when he coached high school ball, they’d get a "great big girl" for center. And then they’d have a real advantage, especially with the limits the rules placed on guards playing someone with the ball. Moore said that he had no trouble getting new players for the Red Head brand of basketball. By the late 40s, with the Red Heads’ fame, woman players came to them. (In fact, he says they still inquired in 1997, after the Red Heads had been disbanded for over 10 years!) The coach did use to look for new talent at the high school and AAU tournaments, although high school tournaments were few and far between in those days. He got a lot of good players from Oklahoma, and especially from Mississippi. By then, there was no friendly trading of players with the "amateur" AAU though. Coach Olson had picked up many former AAU All-Americans when their AAU teams faded. Moore said that the Red Heads and the AAU became "enemies" because the AAU was jealous of them. So his players didn’t go to the Olympics; there was no interchange between groups: "No-o!"

I was also still curious about how the Red Heads played and beat men’s teams (a feat my husband assures me is impossible). Coach Moore told me the way to do it was to control the game. The women had to be "excellent at blocking out." He said that there’s too many out-of-bounds plays now. His girls knew to put the ball in the basket when they had it. They were also "better shooters than you have nowadays. We had to play our game." They had to control the game. If they went up against a fast team, since there was no play clock, the women could keep the ball indefinitely, control the pace and the game.

In the 1940s and 50s, the Red Heads also took advantage of the (men’s) rule that said after a foul, the team fouled could take one foul shot and then take it out of bounds. The women had a much-used play where they’d take it out after a made free throw, whip it in, and run a screen for a player to make a set shot and get three points out of the trip. Moore also noted to me that the officials also had to be in control, to make sure the men played and didn’t "just mess around," and to prevent any possible spiteful violence from the men players towards the Red Heads. "Of course," Moore went on, "the style of play [for women and men] was different then." There were lots of set shots and drives. I asked about dunks and he said no—nobody dunked then, not the men either. He had girls who could jump up and grab the rim. They could have dunked if they wanted to. Anyway, it was against the rules. And, he added, "how we could have used the three-point shot!" He would have loved that.

The pride in his team very evident, Coach Moore at one point asked me what I thought of the Red Heads. I expressed my genuine enthusiasm about their skills and excellence as ballplayers. I only wish I could have seen them play. My favorite Red Head story from Coach Moore was the one he told about one contest held against a men’s team at a local high school. They had requested no "show," ("No-o!") but straight basketball. So by the third quarter, the Red Heads were leading the men by 16. "Then, Moore says, they wanted a ‘show.’"

The professional Red Heads women’s basketball team would still be going strong in the 1960s, in fact until 1986. They would play to hundreds of thousands, and log hundreds of thousands of miles on the road. In a vehicle which was a later incarnation from Nellie J. Bly, called "She Has To"( has to have water, oil, gas, tires), the Red Heads might average 40,000 miles in six months. They made one-night stops, sometimes covering 500 miles to get to a game scheduled for the next day. They were written up in Sports Life, Life Magazine, Sports Illustrated and Women’s Sports. They appeared on "I’ve Got a Secret," "Real People," and "What’s My Line." Between 1964 and 1971, the Red Heads sent out as many as three touring teams at the same time. The first all women’s professional basketball team has also been the most successful.

The Red Heads played a full court/ men’s rules, serious basketball game, but they also were expected to interrupt the game to do the clever tricks and put on the kind of "show" that made women athletes easier for society to accept. In a similar way, perhaps the showmanship of the Harlem Globetrotters made black athleticism more palatable to whites. Still, the Red Heads were the first women besides Babe to be truly professional basketball players. They got to do what they loved most and were paid too. It would be a long time before women successfully established a women’s professional basketball league. And when they did, they still had promoters who wanted them to play against Playboy Bunnies.