Women’s basketball. My how things have changed….

Fourscore and seven years ago….at a small country school in the Panhandle of Florida, teaching girls’ physical education and “coaching” girls’ sports, basketball, softball and volleyball played on a clay court.

The girls’ basketball team was made up of girls who liked the way they looked in their shiny, silky white, red-trimmed short basketball uniforms.

Neither the forwards or the guards hardly ever hey broke a sweat.

So they looked cute on the court.

Girls’ basketball was played with six players, three forwards and three guards, each playing on half court.

Forwards could shoot the ball and try to ring the basket on their half of the court; guards had to stay on their half of the court and try to keep the other team from scoring and then get the ball back to their forwards. Crossing the center line was a foul. The score was kept on a blackboard with colored chalk – a different color for each team.

The basketball court was also the auditorium and was about the size of a cracker box. There was ample standing room for standing on one foot or heels were backed against the wall and open windows offered “box” seating. Pickup trucks would back up to the “gymnasium” and the top of the cab provided stadium seating.

The gymnasium was so small the players had to in-bound the basketball standing on one foot behind the inbound line.

One official called the game from the steps to the stage and the other called from a step ladder in the hall doorway.

The subs had to sit on the stage with the coaches who would yell out to their players but no one heard for the bouncing of the ball.

The cheerleaders cheered from out in the hallway and dogs howled from the back of the pickup trucks.

That’s the way basketball was way back when. And, it was fun.

Congratulations to Troy University’s Women’s Basketball Team for an AMAZING season!!!!