M. Ann Hall - The Grads Are Playing Tonight! : The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club

The Grads Are Playing Tonight!

TONIGHT!

The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club

M. ANN HALL

Published by

The University of Alberta Press
Ring House 2
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1
www.uap.ualberta.ca

Copyright 2011 M. Ann Hall

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Hall, M. Ann (Margaret Ann), 1942

The Grads are playing tonight! [electronic resource] : the storyof the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club / M. Ann Hall.

Electronic monograph issued in EPUB format.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Also issued in print format, ISBN 9780888646026. Index in print edition.

ISBN 9780888646125

1. Edmonton Commercial Graduates (Basketball team)History. 2. Basketball for womenAlbertaEdmontonHistory. 3. Women basketball playersCanadaBiography. 4. BasketballAlbertaEdmontonHistory. I. Title.

GV885.42.E3H34 2011 796.32309712334 CC20119072149

First edition, first printing, 2011. First electronic edition, 2012. Print edition includes index.

Digital Conversion by Innodata Isogen.

Copyediting and Proofreading by Joanne Muzak.

Indexing by Judy Dunlop.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent. Contact the University of Alberta Press for further details.

The University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from The Canada Council for the Arts. The University of Alberta Press also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund (AMDF) for its publishing activities.

This book was funded in part by the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation.

Tribute to the Grads

They brought their city more than fame,

They brought their nation more than pride;

The strongest foe, the toughest game

Were things they simply took in stride.

For first they faced the inward jars

The jealousy, the selfish dreams;

Those things which make outstanding stars

But wreck consistent, winning teams.

The pass that meant anothers score,

The faith that fed anothers drive

Were constant, on and off the floor,

For every year of twenty-five.

FREDERICK B. WATT

Contents

TODAY IT SEEMS UTERLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE to several generations of Canadian sports fans, but once upon a time, a long time ago, there was an Edmonton team that could claim greatness to equal the almost mythical glory gangs of Oilers and Eskimos. Greatness to match that of Wayne Gretzky and the group coached by Glen Sather, including Hockey Hall of Famers Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, and Glenn Anderson, who won five Stanley Cups over a span of seven seasons? Success to compare to the five-in-a-row Grey Cup champion Eskimos coached by Hugh Campbell, featuring the likes of Warren Moon, Tom Wilkinson, Dan Kepley, Dave Fennell, Brian Kelly, and Dave Cutler? Could such a team have existed?

Before this sports columnist would go on to cover those great Eskimos and Oilers teams, it seemed like pure fiction to listen to the tales of Jack Deakin, my old Edmonton Journal sports editor, over drinks, invariably at 4 A.M., about J. Percy Page and the Edmonton Grads. Deakin colourfully told about a team that in its time brought glory to Edmonton on a scale that would not be outdone by Jackie Parker, Normie Kwong, Johnny Bright, and Rollie Miles and the three-in-a-row Grey Cup Eskimos of 1954 5556. In the wee hours of many a morning after the paper was put to bed, Deakin related tales of the first team to own the town that became known as the City of Champions, the first team to put Edmonton on the map in sports, and not just nationally but internationally. A basketball team. A girls basketball team!

Deakin explained that the Edmonton Grads were a team of graduates of McDougall Commercial High School coached by J. Percy Page, who may be familiar to readers now as the former Lieutenant Governor of the province of Alberta. The Edmonton Grads drew capacity crowds of more than 6,000 people, 10 per cent of the population when Edmonton was little more than a pimple on the prairie. The Grads even outdrew hockey teams of the time. Deakin told of how the Grads took three tours to Europe and won what were effectively demonstration sport versions of the Olympics in Paris in 1924, Amsterdam in 1928, and Berlin in 1936. He spoke of how they played 522 games and won 502. And he spun stories of how a third of the population welcomed them home on return from some of their many conquests. He told the young scribes on his staff how James A. Naismith, the inventor of basketball, declared the Grads to be, in many ways, the greatest team ever to play the game he had invented. One night, Deakin produced a report from the newspaper morgue in which Naismith called the team the finest basketball team that ever stepped out on a floor.

As it happened, sports editor Deakin assigned me to cover a reunion of the team, which gave me the opportunity to meet many of the Grads and J. Percy Page. All those years later, the women spoke of Page with a reverence Ive heard few players have for a former coach, no matter the success involved. They explained how he coached them not just to be the glory of their times playing international basketball, but also in life, by coaching them how to represent themselves and their city, at all times as ladies first.

Covering the Oilers in the World Hockey Association one year as a young sportswriter, I found myself in Springfield, Massachusetts, the town where hockey legend Eddie Shore, a.k.a. the Edmonton Express, who married Edmonton Grad star Kate Macrae, ran his minor league Springfield Indians. Its in Springfield where Canadian Naismith invented the game of basketball, and where the Basketball Hall of Fame and Museum are located. On display at the time was the uniform of Noel MacDonald, the greatest of the Grads, but recognition for the team was token and infuriating if you knew their story. In a recent visit, there was no evidence whatsoever of their existence in a new Hall of Fame building in Springfield. In Toronto, the massive Underwood International Trophy, bigger than the Stanley Cup, sat at a display in Canadas Sports Hall of Fame, but it ended up in boxes when the place was closed in recent years. Hopefully visitors to Canadas fabulous new Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary are able to see this trophy.

One by one the members of the team died, many without notice. It was as if the Edmonton Grads had faded into history, forgotten by time. Then one day in 2010 I was invited to the 100th birthday party for Grad Edith Stone Sutton. And it all became real for me again with the spunky old gal who proclaimed it great to be alive and an Edmonton Grad. She used the occasion to declare herself the last living member of the Edmonton Grads, despite the fact her twin sister and teammate Helen Stone Stewart was still alive in Vancouver and teammate Kay MacRitchie MacBeth was living in Comox. Edith was, however, the last Grad still living in Edmonton.Look at me. Im the last one. All by myself, she said. Then she paused for a moment. Its lonely at the top, she laughed. This was a happy occasion. Posing for a picture with me, she hooted, Imagine, at my age, being interviewed by a sportswriter!