The Girls of Central High at Basketball: The Great Gymnasium Mystery

HESTER IS MIFFED The referee’s whistle sounded sharply, and the eighteen girls of Central High engaged in playing basketball, as well as an equal number strung along the side lines, stopped instantly and turned their eyes on Mrs. Case, the physical instructor. “Hester Grimes! you are deliberately delaying the game. I have reprimanded you twice. The third time I will take you out of the team for the week——” “I didn’t, either!” cried the person addressed, a rather heavily built girl for her age, with a sturdy body and long arms—well developed in a muscular way, but without much grace. She had very high color, too, and at the present moment her natural ruddiness was heightened by anger. “You are breaking another rule of the game by directly addressing the referee,” said Mrs. Case, grimly. “Are you ready to play, or shall I take you out of the game right now?” The red-faced girl made no audible reply, and the teacher signalled for the ball to be put into play again. Three afternoons each week each girl of Central High, of Centerport, who was eligible for after-hour athletics, was exercised for from fifteen to thirty minutes at basketball. Thirty-six girls were on the ground at a time. Every five minutes the instructor blew her whistle, and the girls changed places. That is, the eighteen actually playing the game shifted with the eighteen who had been acting as umpires, judges, timekeepers, scorers, linesmen and coaches. This shifting occupied only a few seconds, and it put the entire thirty-six girls into the game, shift and shift about. It was in September, the beginning of the fall term, and Mrs. Case was giving much attention to the material for the inter-school games, to be held later in the year. Hester Grimes had played the previous spring on the champion team, and held her place now at forward center. But although she had been two years at Central High, and was now a Junior, she had never learned the first and greatest truth that the physical instructor had tried to teach her girls: “Keep your temper!” Since spring several of the girls playing on the first team of Central High had left school, graduating as seniors. The work now was to whip this team into shape, and finally Mrs. Case and the girls themselves, voting upon the several names in their capacity as members of the Girls’ Branch Athletic League, had settled upon the following roster of names and positions as the “make-up” of the best-playing basketball team of Central High: Josephine Morse, goal-keeper Evangeline Sitz, right forward Dora Lockwood, left forward Hester Grimes, forward center Laura Belding, jumping center Lily Pendleton, back center Dorothy Lockwood, right guard Nellie Agnew, left guard Bobby Hargrew, goal guard The basketball court of Central High was located in the new Girls’ Athletic Field, not far from the school building itself, and overlooking beautiful Lake Luna and the boathouses and rowing course. At the opening of Central High this fall the new field and gymnasium had first come into use