By Ed Allen, Editor

As I sat watching the Westlake-John Jay girls playoff basketball game Friday night in Kyle, Texas, I had my share of flashbacks to the 1960s when I faithfully attended my two sisters’ home games for the Charleston High School Bantamettes – a feminization of Bantams that era’s former team members still hate to this day. 

The flashbacks didn’t have anything to do with similarities in play. Today’s girls are so much faster, stronger, taller and skilled that it was difficult to think about it as the same game. In fact, watching Friday’s game was like watching an espresso version of 1960s hoops.

What I did see that was similar was a brand of spirit that left me begging for more. Unfortunately, I will have to wait for next year because the Chaps’ hard fought battle ended in defeat.

I couldn’t help but see a little of my sisters, Sue and Michele, in 6-foot Caroline Durbin, who poured in 20 points in the losing effort. Sue, too, was a standout, and her name frequently appeared in Post and Courier articles as the leading scorer in numerous games. 

I don’t remember watching Michele play because she is eight years older than me, and Sue only has me by a few years, so I surmise that watching her in action was the root of my appreciation for girls basketball.  I do recall that both of my sisters had great set shots. I particularly remember Sue, a 5-foot-8-inch forward, was clutch under pressure. That came in handy two weeks ago when Michele suffered a massive heart attack and stopped breathing.

Sue, a headmaster at a Charleston private school who had recently taken a refresher course in CPR, saved Michele’s life. She administered CPR, until EMS crews arrival 10 minutes after her 65-year-old sister had stopped breathing. The EMS team used a defibrillator to restore Michele’s heartbeat, and one of them later credited Sue’s work for even giving them that final opportunity. Michele, a retired X-ray technician, made a miraculous recovery and is now home and is doing well.

Both of my sisters played in an era when girls basketball involved teams of six players – three defensive players (guards) on one end of the court and three offensive players on the other. 

Neither set of players could cross the half-court line, which made for some strategic yet boring play.

Sue affirms my recollection that the game was slow – so slow that she often couldn’t stand the wait to get her hands on the ball.

“I can’t believe we played like that – we were so sissy,” Sue said Monday during a telephone conversation. “And we didn’t train like the girls do today. There were no weights. About the only training mandate our coach gave us was no Cokes, so we drank Tru-Ade.”

But Sue loved the game and played all four years of high school and in 1967 on the varsity at Limestone College, the first women’s college in South Carolina. 

“We never talked about shooting percentages back then, and I didn’t want to,” she said. “I just said, ‘Give me the ball, and I shot.’

“And I can still shoot today,” she said. 

I could hear in the background thunderous laughter from my brother in law, former Bantam basketball standout Barney Henderson, whom she met on the courts at Charleston High.

Sue acknowledges that she got a lot out of basketball, including the high school sweetheart she later married.