The game is an excellent one from every point of view; yet within the last few years it has come into disfavor in some quarters, and many parents have forbidden their daughters to engage in it. Like bicycling in the past, and football with the boys, basketball has suffered “a black eye” because of the way it has been played, not because of the game itself.
But the Girls’ Branch played the game under sound rules, and under the keen oversight of the instructor engaged by the Board of Education of Centerport for that purpose. Basketball is the first, or one of the first vigorous team games to become popular among women and girls in this country, and under proper supervision will long remain a favorite pastime.
The rules under which the girls of Central High played the game were such as brought into basketball the largest number of players allowed. Whereas there were often in the games on Central High courts only right forward, left forward, center, right guard and left guard, with possibly a jumping center—these games being engaged in by the girls for their own amusement—in the regular practice and when the representative team played the teams of other schools, the girls on the field numbered nine upon a side.
Thus conforming with the new rules, Mrs. Case, and the physical instructors of the other highs of Centerport and the neighboring cities, made the interest in basketball more general and enabled a greater number of ambitious girls to gain coveted positions on the first team.
Suddenly Mrs. Case’s whistle stopped the play again. And as the bustle and activity subsided, two girls’ voices rose above all.
“You just see! It’s only Hester who gets scolded——”
“It’s not so! If she’d play fair——”
“Miss Pendleton and Miss Agnew are discussing something of much importance—much more important than the game,” said the referee, tartly.
“Well, she said——” began Nellie Agnew, who was usually a very quiet girl, but who was flushed and angry now as she “looked daggers” at Lily Pendleton, who was Hester Grimes’s chum.
“That will do, Nellie!” exclaimed the instructor. “You girls evidently have not taken to heart what I have been telling you. The only way to play this—or any other team game—is to work together and talk as little as possible. And by no means allow your tempers to become heated.