Basketball's best

Edmonton, 1923

Charlie’s face was bright red, and beads of sweat were rolling from his eyebrows to his chin, but he didn’t seem to notice. He stared at the gym’s scoreboard. “I still can’t believe it,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “How did we get beaten by a bunch of girls?” His teammates just shook their heads. They couldn’t believe it either. “What a pack of ninnies!” said a girl’s voice. Charlie’s younger sister tossed a towel at her brother. “Did you really think you could win? Nobody beats the Edmonton Grads!” Louise grabbed a basketball from under a player’s arm and dribbled it down the court. She jumped for a layup but bounced the ball off the backboard and onto the court, where a smiling young woman in a skirt and blouse picked it up. “You were close,” the woman said. “You just need to relax a bit. Don’t shoot it quite so hard.” In the blink of an eye, she expertly dribbled up to the net, jumped and with a soft flick of her wrist, the ball obediently dropped through the net. “Can you teach me that?” Louise asked eagerly. “I’d give anything to play with you, Daisy!” The woman grinned. “Keep practising, and in a few years, you’ll be old enough to try out. But you’ll have to work hard. Not just anyone makes it onto the Edmonton Grads! Right, ladies?” Daisy Johnson turned to her teammates, who were chatting and laughing as they left the change room. “Right!” several of them said. Eleanor Mountifield stopped and pretended to be very serious as she laid a hand on Louise’s head. “You don’t have to be the tallest or the fastest or the strongest basketball player to be on the Grads, but you do have to be the hardest-working.” She winked. “Otherwise, you might end up like these chumps.” She jerked