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Final of three parts.

When 1942 rolled around, girls basketball at William Penn High School started to lose its luster.

The talent was there, but the way the games were reported seems to indicate a lack of interest in girls sports at Penn, thus the gradual demise of girls basketball.

Back in those days, girls basketball rules were much different. There were six players, and the guards would bring the ball up to the half court line and pass it to the forwards. The guards could not cross the half court line. People today don’t understand why only three players (forwards) made points. The guards did not get to score.

In January 1942, the William Penn girls played powerhouse Booker T. Washington High from Reidsville to a 16-all tie.

Although the game was a tie due to a contested call that wasn’t upheld, Penn’s girls played a heck of a game against the Booker T. girls, who had lost only one game out of the last 50 played over the last three years. If I am not mistaken, that one Booker T. loss came at the hands of the Penn girls back in 1933.

Frustrated by that tie, the Penn girls arrived at the Livingstone College gym in Salisbury, where they jumped all over J.C. Price High from Salisbury, and won by 24-12.

When the Penn girls played Immanuel Lutheran, Greensboro, in February 1942, it was almost the same as it had been in February 1941. In 1941 the score was 17-5 and in 1942 the score was 15-4. I took great interest in this report because although I was born and raised in High Point, I spent my senior year at Lutheran, where I graduated.

Even though the Penn girls had easily defeated Dunbar High of East Spencer over the last few years, Dunbar was able to play them to a 19-19 tie.

Annice Moffitt played her usual good game, making 11 of Penn’s 19 points. The remaining eight points were divided between Robbins and Taylor.

Around 1943, the reporting of William Penn High basketball games started to slow, and the information that was reported was usually only announcing whom they would play next.

For instance, I found the following regarding a game between Florence High School and Penn on Feb. 5 on Florence’s home court: The boys won their game, but the Penn girls lost 24-16. I wish I could have found more because there was mention of the fine defense played by the Pinnix sisters, and the great offensive show put on by Kizzie and Mary Louise Robbins.

Once again, the 1946 reports regarding Penn’s girls basketball team only mentioned whom they would play next and the date. The girls from Walnut Cove High in Walnut Cove were to play the Penn girls Jan. 3; on Jan. 23, the Penn girls were to play the Florence High girls, whom they beat in 1945, in the William Penn gym; Feb. 12, the Penn girls were to meet the girls from Carver High in the Penn gym.

When I reached 1947, it was still the same basic information being reported: William Penn High to play Asheboro High in the William Penn gym Jan. 27.

It was at this point that I decided to look at the name of the reporter for the News of Interest to Colored People to find out who was writing the column. There was no name. At that moment, I knew that omitting the reporter’s name was tied to the way stories were being reported.

Now, it made sense. Thomas B. Smith, who had been writing the colored column since the early ’30s joined the Army around 1942, and Clarence E. Yokely became the primary writer of the colored column.

Smith must have been a sports fan because he gave detailed reports on the sports at the three Negro schools.

When Yokely or the fill-in reporters — Grayce and Evelyn DeBerry — wrote the column they only mentioned the William Penn basketball games as a reminder to come out and support the team.

The William Penn girls opened their 1948 basketball season at home against Carver High in Winston-Salem on Jan. 6.

The William Penn girls team played the Penn women’s faculty members in a preliminary game Feb. 8, 1949, when the William Penn men’s faculty members met the N.C. A&T College faculty.

The William Penn boys and girls basketball teams played in the Central Carolina Athletic Tournament at A&T on March 4, 1949. The Penn girls’ first game was against Dudley. The Penn girls met the J.C. Price girls of Salisbury in the William Penn gym on March 6, 1949, for the Western Division Championship. No results found.
On Jan. 6, 1950, the William Penn girls opened their season against Lexington in the William Penn gym.

Penn’s girls basketball team played Carver High on Jan. 23, 1951, in the William Penn gym.

In February 1951, Leonard Street boys and girls played the Trinity boys and girls at Leonard Street School. Kimberly Park of Winston-Salem played the Penn Jr. Varsity that night.

One school year back in the early ’50s, girls basketball just disappeared at William Penn High, never to return before the school closed in 1968. Folks have said they remember seeing the girls play in the late ’50s but I can’t find one story that indicates that girls basketball survived into the mid-1950s as some claim. Even longtime Penn coach, James Atkinson Sr., says they had no girls team when he arrived at Penn in the early ’50s. It couldn’t have been for the lack of a physical education teacher because his wife Fannie Atkinson arrived in that role in the ’50s.

If someone out there can enlighten me with some facts that will help solve this mystery, please get in touch with me. Meantime, I salute William Penn’s early girls basketball teams, which entertained so many Penn fans in the 1930s and ’40s.

Personally I think a team composed of the Moffitt sisters, Sarah Colson, Hazel McCollum, and Thelma Harris would have matched up well against either the Tribune Five or Bennett College in the ’30s and perhaps beat them soundly in a three-game series in the William Penn gym.

Glenn Chavis researches and writes about High Point’s black history. Contact him at Storytime40@aol.com.