The History of Girls High School Basketball in NC

The Two Divisional Game

Three on Three + The Rover

1945 - 1970

 

Purpose of the NC Girls Basketball History website

One day I was visiting my hometown of Southern Pines and I happen to run into an old high school friend who I hadn't seen in about 25 years. We wandered off to a local watering hole, got to talking about the "Glory Days" [thanks for the title Bruce, that's Springsteen of course] and the subject of high school athletics came up.

Arguably Southern Pines was the state's most prolific six-man football team but did not fair as well in basketball as did our down-the road [four miles] rivals, Aberdeen. The Red Devils girl's basketball team, also, was arguably the most prolific female basketball team of the two-divisional era.

The next day, I made a phone call to the NCHSAA and was told that for some reason, probably because it involved mostly small county schools and a female athletic program, which other than basketball, were virtually non-existent. As a result the game did not receive the same attention that the men's game did. Consequently, the records for the two-divisional game were sketchy at best.

Having grown up in this exciting time and have been one of the hundreds of sports minded and community orientated people attending regular season games and thousands attending state championship games, of which I witnessed all four, I just couldn't allow this era to disappear without making an effort to preserve the memories.

Being somewhat of a military historian [author or co-author of seven books on WW2 memorabilia] and former editor of two martial art publications, I launched "The History of Girl's Basketball in North Carolina - project 1945-1970 The Two-Divisional Game" through my non-profit organization's [Eastern North Carolina Sports Development] research and development department.

I first contacted some of my old classmates, friends and players looking  for any information, such as pictures, newspaper articles, scrapbooks, etc. I have visited numerous libraries and looked at thousands and thousands of feet of newspaper microfilm looking for information.

The information you are seeing here at our web site is just the tip of the iceberg.

All this said – WE NEED YOUR HELP!
                   
  If you have any photos, articles, scrapbooks, or yearbooks that have pictures of the teams and would be willing to share them with us, please contact me at

252-758-5344
or

Thanks for your interest.

John Ormsby - Eastern North Carolina Sports Development - Research Department


         DISCLAIMER – Every effort has been made to document all information presented. However, there may be some discrepancies, especially in actual dates as many newspaper were not published on a daily basis, game scores not reported until several days after the  contest and some of the microfilm quality was so poor or, in fact, illegible so the dates used were the actual date of the newspaper rather than the actual playing date. If you find any discrepacies, please notify us and provide documentation so that corrections may be made. Thank you.

 

 
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