Girls basketball teams played half-court ball. Players wore knee pads, for protection if they fell. Some younger ones would be benched after only a few minutes’ court time, so they could ‘rest.’

It was a different ballgame in 1959-60. Different rules. But that didn’t stop Mount Holly High School’s athletes from being daring, aggressive, high-scoring winners.

“You talk about scrappy girls, they would go after that ball like it was a diamond ring,” says Linda Holbrook Cloninger, a freshman forward. “I wish we had some film of it. It was unbelievable.”

How scrappy were they?

“I got hit in the face with a basketball one day and it broke the cartilage in my nose,” Cloninger says. “I wanted to go have it fixed, but the doctor said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You can breathe.’”

Mount Holly’s girls went 11-2 that year, beat Stanley 61-46 in the teams’ final meeting to be co-conference champs and beat Tryon 49-46 to be Little Tournament champions. Their trailblazing efforts have led to their being inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“We are very honored to be chosen, because years ago women didn’t really get recognized that much. It was always the men,” Cloninger says. “And we feel very privileged that they realize we worked so hard. We were there every day, diligently, practicing and running and we would stand and shoot 100 foul shots and have scrimmages. We were hard-core.”

Off the court, in the classrooms, girls had Future Homemakers of America and were required to take Home Economics. They sewed dresses and had to show their work during an assembly. After school, while boys played football and basketball and a handful of other sports, girls played – well, basketball.

But this crew got the memo early. Times would change.

“We were restricted to jobs of being nurses, secretaries or school teachers. You know how people were,” says freshman forward Mary Reel Hartness. “Know what I was? I was a police officer. For the city of Gastonia. And I went to college.”

Cloninger became a sales rep. “I was successful and worked hard at it,” she says. Her initial choice was to become a flight attendant – known as stewardesses, then – but that required out-of-state training and meeting a height requirement of 5-foot-7, “You know, so you could put people’s things in the overhead for them.” Cloninger was 5-8, but she wasn’t playing that game.

Hartness, who was 6-foot-3, says she would like to have tried pro ball, “But I was in that age group [in the 1960s] when women couldn’t do anything like that, really. I was the forward-thinker of my time.”

The 1959-1960 team in addition to Cloninger and Hartness was Miriam Smith, Vicki White, Diane Lyman, Phyllis Fritts, Barbara Biddix, Shirley Grice, Sue Mason, Jo Ricka Greene, co-captain Abbie Moore, co-captain Ann Oglesby, Doris Miller, Linda Robinson, Delores Puett, Linda Wharton, Sue Sisk, Maxine Shiver, Judy Morris, Juanita Helms, Mickey Thompson, manager Gloria Helms and coach Bill Megginson.

Some of their biggest victories were 52-38 over Lowell, 46-35 over Cramerton and 49-36 over Dallas. “I played a good bit, because I started practicing with them in eighth grade,” Hartness says. “We had decent crowds and we did have quite a few come to our games, because they would come to ours then watch the boys play. We had some good players. I remember Ann Oglesby was a good player, and Doris Miller because we competed against each other all the time because she was tall like me and I was aggressive.

“We had to stay on one side of the court, and I remember having to run to the other end to get rebounds, and running back to the other end to score. Their guards played one side, and our guards played the other side and they had to get the ball and throw it over,” Hartness says. “Most of my playing was up close, and it was easy to dominate.”

Cloninger says she became interested in the sport in sixth grade. “We would play outside during recess, and I was one of four freshmen who got put on the varsity team,” she says. “I didn’t even have a basketball goal at my house to practice on. Everything I learned, I learned at school.

“I remember Doris Miller scored 34 points one time against Stanley, and Judy Morris was a real good player who usually scored in the high teens, and Jo Ricka Greene was a very good ballplayer who had 27 points one game.

“It was a big deal if you played basketball. Everybody [at school] sort of looked at the players like, you were really something if you played.”

Megginson left and was replaced the following year by Coach Joe Spears. The women are quick to credit Spears with molding them as players and goal-setters. “He was good to us girls,” Hartness says. “I went to the [Hall of Fame] ceremony the time he got inducted [in 2010].”

“I don’t think I could have played basketball if not for Joe Spears,” Cloninger says. “I had to walk home 2-and-a-half miles after practice, and he would take me home. If some of us girls didn’t have a way home, he would take us himself. He was like a second father to us. He worked with us so much, and that’s the reason we thought so highly of him. If he saw potential in you, he would work with you and bring that out.”

And now, 63 years later, the team is in the Hall as well. The players are in their late 70s, early 80s.

“They waited a long time, but we’re in there,” Cloninger says. “We were probably one of the best girls basketball teams Mount Holly ever had, because everybody was very athletic and they were encouraged to do well for the school and make the school look good. It was just a great group of girls, and everyone got along so well. It was special.”