Betty was pretty well keyed up before her first game of the class competition, but Betty never lost her self-control. She set her lips and went through the rather difficult written test as well as she could. The air grew close, and it was with a thrill of actually joyous expectation that Betty hurried to the gym as the time approached, and joked with the freshman captain whom she met on the way. She could breathe in the gym!
“We’re going to ‘lick’ the sophomores,” jovially the freshman captain informed her.
“Don’t be too sure. We’re out to win,” cheerily answered Betty. She gathered her girls together and told them of some points she had noted about the freshman playing and they entered the game with confidence, though warned not to be too sure. The “rough” freshman was taken out after some too apparent fouls due to her performances, and the final score was eighteen to three in favor of the sophomores. They had won their first game at least, Betty said. “Now send up the score, girls, as high as you can with every game. No telling what we can do if we try!”
The inter-class games continued, with some intervals due to other important school events, for three weeks. Classes were given more than one opportunity to better their score against other classes. But finally it narrowed down to a contest between the juniors and sophomores, Betty finding the sophomore record making her “famous,” as Kathryn said. Senior luck held part of the time only, but that class never had done as well in basketball as in other things, Carolyn told Betty.
The championship game was to be played in the boys’ gym, which was larger, and the boys were allowed to attend. Betty, her cheeks pink from excitement, saw that her mother with Amy Lou had a good seat. “Look out, Amy Lou, and don’t get hit with the ball!” and Betty left them to disappear into the regions of the girls’ gym, where the teams were getting ready.
Dick and Doris were there and all the girls of the G. A. A. who could come, to say nothing of various boys, particularly those of the sophomore and junior classes. “Forget the crowd, girls, and whether your nose gets shiny or not,” advised Betty. “You’re a graceful lot anyhow and usually succeed in avoiding a terrible scramble. But remember that we have to beat those juniors!”
Betty was distrustful of Mathilde, who had gotten on the first team by no wish of hers. She would be playing against Marcella and the other juniors of Kappa Upsilon and Betty thought, though she could not be sure, that she surprised a message between Mathilde and one of the junior players at the other game they played with that class. Mathilde’s play had been a failure. Could it have been that she wanted to give the game to the junior captain, her sorority sister?
Betty told her worries to no one but Kathryn. She did not want to worry Carolyn, who could not imagine that any one would be as mean as that and was too unsuspicious to see anything but the most flagrant acts. “I’ll keep an eye out, Betty,” said Kathryn. “Mathilde doesn’t care for the sophomores or anything but that old sorority, and she doesn’t like your being captain, though I hate to tell you that.”
“Don’t worry. I know it. We’ll just keep awake and I’m glad to say that it’s Miss Fox who’s keeping an eye out this time, besides the referee. But it’s going to be a fast game and no telling what may happen.”
First with applause, then with silence, the little audience in the gym greeted the two teams as they came out, without the preliminary stunts that sometimes marked school affairs, and started right in. Amy Louise stood straight up when she saw for the first time the big ball, tossed from one to another, going across the floor, in the hands of Betty’s girls, to be popped into the proper basket. That was after the “tip-off,” as a freshman girl told Mrs. Lee. She knew few of the correct expressions, but enough to indicate results. “The point is to put the ball through their own basket, Mrs. Lee and they ‘make the goal’ and ‘score.’”