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Where the boys are, and the girls weren't always
Girls baasketball has long been a source of pride for Georgia high schools. Though the Peach State was one of the first in the nation to establish a permanent girls state basketball tournament, there were areas of the state that did not play the sport competitively.
Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of the schools not playing girls basketball in the 1950s and 1960s were from bigger cities - Columbus, Macon and Savannah schools did not play girls basketball. Atlanta city/metro area and Augusta did have teams, though north Fulton County had exceptions.
Below are known coeducational schools to have had boys teams, but not girls, and when the sport was introduced or, frequently, reinstated. These are in order of reinstatement/introduction, with schools and systems without as much information available in a quick list below these. This list is probably missing many teams and unfortunately there are not conclusive conclusions on many.
PERRY
Basketball's return was announced in the August 21, 1958, Houston Home Journal. Perry's Board of Trustees voted on its return.
"The movement for a girls basketball team was launched by a group of Perry women, who obtained more than 500 signatures to their petition for basketball for girls on an interscholastic basis," said the Home Journal. "The petition was presented to the local board of trustees Monday."
It was said to be the first team since 1931. A search of Houston Home Journal archives indicates that is correct. A July 10, 1958 article said girls basketball stopped that year "when interest in the sport reached a low ebb and candidates for the team were few." No official announcement has surfaced from 1931 as to the stoppage of the sport. Younger school teams continued to play one another for at least a few years at Perry.
MACON
Bibb County was a unique system in 1970. Its six main traditionally white high schools were split by gender. This had been going on for 50 years in Macon city itself, incorporating the small county high schools as they consolidated. African American high schools were coeducational.
1970-71 was a major shift in Bibb education. As part of full integration, the eight regular public high schools were split geographically into Central, Northeast and Southwest and became coed. It was also the first year that all girls in public schools had the opportunity for to play competitive basketball.
Black high schools of Peter G. Appling and Ballard-Hudson were already playing girls basketball. However, at the time of the 1970 full integration and rearranging of Bibb County Schools, the single-sex white girls high schools of Lasseter, McEvoy and A.L. Miller did not play basketball.
Harley Bowers, longtime local sports writer with the Macon Telegraph suggested in a February 15, 1968 column that no one was strongly advocating enough for the sport at the white girls high schools:
Though Bowers had no problems placing the blame on teenagers as to why their established institutions didn't allow them to play competitive basketball, Bowers did advocate starting programs at Miller, McEvoy and Lasseter, if nothing more to ease scheduling for Region 2-AAA's existing teams of Ballard-Hudson, Peter G. Appling, Warner Robins and Northside of Warner Robins.
Girls weren't happy with not being able to play. One month earlier in a Forum of Teen Opinion in the January 14, 1968 Macon Telegraph and News, every person quoted was for competitive girls athletics. That included boys who were asked as well.
That was also the opinion of those were the opinions of those surveyed by Tommy Madden in the Macon News in a December 5, 1970 article about it being the first year competitive hoops were available to everyone in Macon public schools.
"We felt like we were being discriminated against since so many other schools had girls basketball and we didn't," said Rosie Robinson. "It should have been done a long time ago," said Lisa Johnson.
Why didn't Bibb white girls public schools have basketball?
Macon Telegraph writer Sam Glassman and Macon News writer Hal Allen were both advocating for teams in the 1940s. "It has always struck me as odd that our Miller High School for Girls doesn't field a competitive basketball sextette," said Glassman in a column on January 13, 1948.
No ban on the sport is known at the county level. There were strong opinions, however, from others in high-ranking positions.
Soon after the inaugural 1945 Class B and Class C girls state tournaments took place in Macon, Susan Myrick looked into the state of competitive athletics at A.L. Miller High, then the only white girls public school in Macon (similarly Lanier was the only one open at that time for boys) in an April 1, 1945 article for the Macon Telegraph and News.
...
Standing by them in complete approval is Dr. Mark Smith, Bibb County school superintendent, who disagreed with the school executives in Georgia in their effort to begin basketball tournaments for high school girls.
Major objection to inter-scholastic competition for high school girls is based on the nervous strain encountered by the girls who go out to "win for dear old Miller," according to Lasseter. But he counts also as an important reason for the plan of intra-mural sports, only, the fact that the present plan permits several hundred girls to participate in basketball, while the inter-scholastic plan would provide for not more than 15 or 20.
"If Miss Ellis had to coach a team to win over the other high school teams of the state, she would have no time left to supervise sports for the other 600 girls at Miller," said Lasseter.
Twenty years later, foes of competitive women's sports in schools were just as noisy.
A rumor got around in 1965 that McEvoy was planning a girls team for later that year. Principal William Brake not only denied it, the January 6, 1965 Macon Telegraph added:
"I am all for girls basketball on the intramural level," he continued, "and I like for the girls to have a good physical education program, but no varsity competition."
Dudley Hughes Vocational played competitive girls basketball through the 1956-57 season, making it the only white Macon public school known to do so. A preview of the 1957-58 squad, printed in the December 11, 1957 Macon Telegraph said the girls would not play this season, [d]ue to a lack of interest." Available scores show Dudley Hughes' girls did not have a good record in their last season.
As to why there was never an objection to Ballard-Hudson playing, or later, Peter G. Appling when it opened, nothing was probably ever spelled out. If any Bibb powers had an opinion, it probably was at least partially guided by racial prejudice. Or they might not have had any deep thoughts at all about Black women playing competitive basketball.
Though girls basketball had hurdles and brick walls opposing it in Bibb County, it did have its champions.
The McEvoy basketball rumor in 1965 was fueled accidentally by coach Billy Henderson. Macon's single-sex schools were paired, boys and girls. Henderson was at Willingham in 1965, which was paired with McEvoy.
Henderson asked about McEvoy playing girls basketball with Judge Walter Stevens, who was chairman of the Board of Education's athletic committee. In the April 11, 1970 Macon News, Henderson, who had been named athletic director of the soon-to-exist Southwest High, talked with Tommy King about girls' sports.
"This is something I've been after since I came to Macon," said Henderson. "When I got to Willingham I even got up a schedule under the pretense that we'd (Willingham and McEvoy) have a team. I learned otherwise quickly."
(Henderson was named Willingham head coach in 1958.)
Unlike even a few years earlier, doors were now wide open for women's sports. In the same King article, Bibb schools' public information director Johnny Jones said, "I would know of no reason why the board would be against girls' basketball. I'm sure if the schools wanted his the board would not stand in their way."
Henderson didn't just want basketball. He wanted Southwest girls to compete in every sport the GHSA offered, including the relatively new one of track.
"I have battled for sometime for this," Henderson said. "Perhaps I haven't crusaded for this as much as I should have but I am real glad it's a reality."
Via Henderson, Southwest was the first of Macon's reorganized public high schools to announce girls sports. He encouraged the others to follow. "Anything that's valuable for a young man has to be valuable for the girls," Henderson told the Macon News. "They need an outlet and now they'll have one. Everyone's ready to go over here."
By mid-July, Northeast and Central had announced girls basketball coaches. Bibb Tech, formerly Dudley Hughes, returned to basketball for 1970-71 as well.
NEWNAN
Newnan's basketball absence was one of the shorter ones for this list. Girls did not play competitive basketball at NHS from 1963-70.
Newnan and Coweta County were separate school systems and the ban on the sport only affected Newnan High itself. Central kept playing throughout as this was not a ban on the sport or its competitive nature, but circumstances.
Articles in the March 14, 1963 Newnan Times-Herald announcing the dismissal of girls basketball mourned the decision.
The reasoning of the change, according to another article in the same Times-Herald was:
It feels that Newnan's board was a little quick on the decision. In contrast to the horrific status in the above quote, the article "Tribute to Girls Team," which ran beside the article which the cancelation, said 50 had tried out for the squad that year and they won five games. Plenty of schools have done worse.
As Newnan and Central came together as a fully integrated school during the summer of 1970, the Times-Herald of July 30 said 67 Newnan High students were interested in playing and they expected around 20 coming over from Central. Max Bass was to be coach of the revived team.
Girls track was also been spoken of as a new Newnan sport. Central had been one of the GIA's most successful girls programs, which included Olympian Mattline Render.
COLUMBUS
Columbus public schools began playing girls basketball in 1974-75.
Weyman Johnson of the Columbus Ledger tied it to proposed federal Health, Education and Welfare plans to end sexual discrimination in educational programs. Though the proposal had not been passed yet, Muscogee County Schools decided to take action.
That Columbus Ledger article, quotes Columbus High principal Herman Dollar as saying it had been at least 35 years since a local high school had girls basketball. Did they?
Columbus High hosted an intramural girls game on February 10, 1939 and charged money to see it. (A tumbling exhibit was planned between halves as well.) The players, organized into orange and blue teams were under the guidance of physical education teacher Catherine Allen.
The game was not as much a measure of any kind of equality for Columbus High as it was an attempt to make money on a Friday night. The February 10 Ledger said originally Columbus High was to host West Point in boys basketball. Mumps saw the game canceled, though Columbus itself was scheduled to play the next night in Albany.
Like the 1974 article, the one from 1939 hinted at an earlier time with organized girls basketball in Columbus. Finally, a search into archives began paying off.
Columbus High had a girls basketball team by 1920. The 1934-35 season may be the last for both Columbus and Columbus Industrial, soon to be renamed Jordan. However, a bunch is uncertain. Columbus High's girls team is still mentioned in newspaper reports, but quit being given space after 1931 in the available yearbooks on Classmates.com. There are not any Industrial yearbooks available from that decade. (Baker, the third traditionally white high school, opened a few years after girls basketball stopped.)
A February 27, 1941 Ledger brief said "Chances are bright for girls' basketball teams at both Columbus High and Jordan next season." They certainly were not. Jordan did not play beyond intramurals, as confirmed by a yearbook.
What happened in Columbus? No answer has popped up. There might be a grand gesture that has evaded internet searches. Girls basketball might have faded out for lack of administrative support. That the Ledger in 1941 believed the sport might soon return does not feel like an outright ban. Tradition and surroundings might have fed the length of its absence.
Central High in Phenix City had girls' basketball in the 1930s, too. Nearby Smiths Station is known to have played in the era as well. But with one gone, they might have all faded out and with few schools to play them because they had all stopped playing the cycle continued. Then it became tradition.
Women's competitive high school athletics were not welcomed entirely warmly in 1974.
Columbus High principal Gordon Stallings was asked about funding and what it would do to male athletics. Stallings wasn't exactly warm. "Nobody gets anything now, anyway," he said in the September 30 Ledger. "I'm afraid this is definitely going to have some effect on the boys' teams." Stallings predicted having to cut a sub-varsity boys basketball team.
In contrast, Dollar thought interest in girls basketball would be so great, it would fund itself and other girls' sports. "I think this will develop into something big," he said.
While white Columbus girls had not played varsity sports in 40 years, Spencer had a team much more recently. They are pictured in the 1954 Spencerian yearbook, but a January 16, 1955 Macon Telegraph article previewing a Spencer versus Ballard-Hudson game mentions SHS does not play girls basketball. The program may have stopped in 1954.
SAVANNAH
Why Savannah public schools quit playing girls basketball after the 1957-58 season is unknown, but it is known they did have a fair bit of warning they would be stopping.
The 1957-58 Blue Jacket yearbook (Savannah High) states it flatly: "This will be the last year that the Savannah High girls will participate in varsity competition." This decision affected white and Black schools.
All Chatham County public schools resumed playing girls basketball in 1975-76. For some, such as Windsor Forest, it was their first season.
The level of schedule varied between schools. Groves and Jenkins seemed to stay almost completely within the city. Beach ventured out to at least Waycross.
BRUNSWICK
Glynn Academy had a long history of girls basketball, but stopped playing after the 1963-64 season.
No reason for basketball stopping has been discovered. The 1964-65 Glynn yearbook plays up its new intramural program but makes no mention of varsity ceasing. Risley, the system's Black school, never stopped girls basketball, but Brunswick, opened as a majority white high school in 1965, did not begin basketball.
The August 1, 1977 Brunswick News announced Theresa Adams and Bobbie Jopling to be the new head coaches of Glynn and Brunswick, respectively. The article acknowledged it had been "since the early 1960s" that Glynn played basketball.
No other details have been spotted, but a reason for the white schools stopping (or never starting) could have been the difficulty in scheduling. Glynn would have been playing many Savannah schools, which did not field girls teams at that time.
FITZGERALD
For deep southwestern Georgia, Fitzgerald was an oddity. There were schools here and there not playing girls basketball, but in this basketball-crazy area, only Fitzgerald stood out.
Fitzgerald stopped playing girls basketball at the conclusion of the 1956-57 season. In the December 13, 1957 Fitzgerald Herald, officials listed many reasons for stopping the program, including believing it was harmful for girls to play competitively while admitting the team had not been very good. (Unfortunately, I do not have that article for an exact quote.)
Ben Hill County and Fitzgerald city were separate school districts at the time, though there was only white high school. Ben Hill's Queensland and Fitzgerald's Monitor, Black schools, played throughout. That the sport might harm Fitzgerald High's girls was, like many other things in the segregated South, not separate but equal.
A little over 20 years later, girls basketball returned in Fitzgerald, in the form of a B-team in 1978-79, then moving into a full varsity schedule for 1979-80.
"A girl's team is long overdue here in Fitzgerald," said boys head basketball coach Johnny Young in the November 9, 1978 Fitzgerald Herald and Leader. "I feel that it's a great thing for the basketball program, the kids and the community."
An opportunity for women to play, but also a help for Fitzgerald's scheduling, Young admitted in the same article.
"Last year there were many boys games we couldn't schedule because we didn't field a girls team," Young said. Donna Skinner was the girls head coach for its earliest returning seasons.
Fitzgerald was back, but then it wasn't in 1984-85. The Lady 'Canes played a single game against Turner County on November 20, and that seems to be it. The rest of the season - at least beginning November 27, were only boys games. Fitzgerald did play a full 1985-86.
BITS AND PIECES Schools without much info, but coeducational without girls basketball.
Even shorter-term suspensions of play.
CURRENTLY
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