Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
5-on-5 fine at 40
Arkansas girls basketball has grown since 1979 rule change
It’s been 40 years since a federal court decision altered the landscape of girls’ high school basketball in Arkansas, but players from the state formerly known as the Land of Opportunity have taken full advantage of today’s opportunities to play at top colleges across the country and even professionally.
Morrilton’s Shekinna Stricklen and her Connecticut Sun fell one game short of a WNBA championship just a few weeks ago. She played for the legendary late coach Pat Summit in college at Tennessee.
Christyn Williams gained national attention when she became the first female athlete from Arkansas to be named Gatorade National Player of the Year in 2018 while playing for Central Arkansas Christian in Little Rock. She will begin her second season playing for coach Geno Auriemma at one of the most esteemed women’s programs in the country at the University of Connecticut.
Those are just a couple of Arkansas natives who earned national attention for their skills on the basketball court. They are also named to a list of the top 25 high school girls basketball players from Arkansas in the 5-on-5 era in a
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ballot of coaches, former players and sportswriters.
Stricklen and Williams can now both be seen regularly on national television broadcasts, but Rogers High girls basketball coach Preston Early remembers when that wasn’t the case.
Early recalls a phone call from his father, Alvy, the day after his Arkansas-Monticello women’s basketball team lost in the NAIA national finals in Jackson, Tenn., in 1990. He stopped in West Memphis on the way back to Monticello to pick up a newspaper to see what coverage his team had received and was not pleased.
“I’ll never forget him telling me they had a story about the Razorbacks’ third-string running back was going to miss spring practice because he had turf toe on the front page and they got a box score on page six,” Preston Early said.
But that was standard for the time, when women’s sports was an afterthought if it was even thought of at all.
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
It was groundbreaking when federal judge Richard Arnold ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Diana Lee Dodson, in a discrimination lawsuit against the Arkansas Activities Association in April 1979 (see related story on Page 1C). That decision forced the AAA, the governing body for athletics in the state, to change from the standard 6-on-6 half-court basketball for the girls to the more traditional full-court 5-on-5 game played by the boys.
Charles Berry, the longtime and highly successful girls basketball coach at Huntsville who retired with more than 1,000 career wins, famously said when the rule was passed that it would kill girls basketball. He later admitted he was wrong about that.
Gary Blair, the former Arkansas women’s basketball coach who won an NCAA championship at Texas A&M, has seen the girls game rise to where it is today.
According to Blair, Stricklen and Shameka Christon are the standard in Arkansas. Both earned Southeastern Conference Player of the Year honors and went on to stellar professional careers in the WNBA. Christon played for Blair at Arkansas.
“They did it at the highest level,” Blair said. “And not far behind was Amber Shirey.”
Shirey starred at tiny Newark High School before leading Arkansas to a Southwest Conference tournament title and earning Most Valuable Player honors. She got Blair’s attention while he was coaching at what was then a powerhouse at Stephen F. Austin when his team met Arkansas in the NCAA tournament.
“She was like a little John Stockton out there,” Blair said. “Never changed her expression and was always such a positive person.”
Wendy Scholtens-Wood, like Stricklen, opted to play collegiately out of state to Vanderbilt. The 6-foot-4 star from Fort Smith Southside shined brightly as well.
She was a three-time All-SEC selection at Vanderbilt and a Kodak All-American as a senior and has the distinction of being a part of the Arkansas and Tennessee Sports Halls of Fame.
Lanell Dawson played for longtime Hall of Fame coach John Hutchcraft in high school at tiny Guy-Perkins but was no doubt one of the best, said current Arkansas-Little Rock coach Joe Foley.
“She was so athletic nobody could stay in front of her,” Foley said. “She would still average 20 a game today.”
Dawson earned All-Southwest Conference honors as a freshman at Arkansas, but ended up being a two-time All-American for Foley at Arkansas Tech. She was Arkansas’ leading scorer as a freshman, but transferred after having academic issues.
BLAZING A TRAIL
Terri Conder-Johnson recalls a different time for women’s basketball, playing in a small town in front of friends and family.
She became a three-time All-American at the University of Central Arkansas
and is enshrined in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. But playing at tiny Rose Bud High School gave her that opportunity, she said.
Conder-Johnson classified herself as “a late bloomer” and said if she’d been at a larger school, she might not have gotten an opportunity to play.
“I was 4-foot-11 and weighed 88 pounds and I grew six inches one summer,” said Conder-Johnson, who currently serves as the executive director of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. “At a bigger school, I might have been weeded out. But playing with my close friends and the community thing, those were some wonderful memories.”
Conder-Johnson loved her time at UCA, too, but said it was also different. When they earned their first national tournament berth in 1981, it wasn’t a sure thing they would get to actually go to the tournament.
“We had to go ask the president if we could go,” Conder-Johnson recalled. “Nobody had done that before. They didn’t have a budget for basketball. Myself and two of my teammates were our first scholarship players, period, but the faculty and staff were so supportive.”
Conder-Johnson and Wynne’s Bettye Fiscus were billed as the top two players in the state in the early 1980s and she recalls playing against Davidson and UAM.
Fiscus went to Arkansas and enjoyed a banner career. She is still the school’s all-time leading scorer and became the first woman to be elected to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
COTTON BLOSSOM SPECIAL
Arkansas-Monticello set a then-state record with 34 victories and were led by four-time All-American Tina Webb of Bryant.
Early, who died in June 2018, was a pioneer in women’s collegiate sports and ended his career as the winningest coach in the history of college athletics in Arkansas. Early’s UAM girls’ basketball and softball teams combined for 1,178 victories, just ahead of legendary Arkansas baseball coach Norm DeBriyn’s 1,161.
Webb, like Early, is enshrined in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. But her basketball career, which also included a stint playing professionally in Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil, and Japan, might have stopped after high school if not for meeting Theodis Bealer.
Bealer was a former UAM standout himself and played high school basketball with former Arkansas Razorback Sidney Moncrief. He also spent two years as a graduate assistant for Early.
Webb, who led Bryant to its first state title as a freshman in 1982, drew interest from several colleges when she graduated in 1984, but decided not to play collegiately. Three years later Bealer a 2002 game in Fort Smith. convinced her to give it a shot.
“I knew her father and I was working her out some,” said Bealer, who is now retired from coaching. “I told her ‘you need to be in school somewhere.’”
Bealer made a call to Early, and Webb and her mother visited the campus. She made the decision to pick up basketball again at UAM and became a legend.
“I told him ‘Coach, I got a young lady here she’s pretty good,’” Bealer said. “When I told him it was Tina Webb, he got excited.”
That set the stage for the 1990 Cotton Blossoms team, which would be enshrined as a group in the UAM Hall of Fame. Rose Avery and Brenda Rhodes, Webb’s teammates at UAM join her on the list of greats.
Avery joined Webb on the All-American list, twice, coming to Monticello after a stint in junior college. Rhodes played a year at Arkansas from Wilmar, a small town in southeastern Arkansas, and led the team in steals before running
into grade problems and also ending up at UAM.
If that group put Monticello on the basketball map, they can thank Parkdale’s Perlean Davidson for paving the way. Davidson, who played only one year of 5-on-5 basketball in high school, remains the all-time leading scorer in Arkansas girls’ basketball history according to AAA records. She also earned All-American honors and set school records at UAM, which Webb later shattered.
LIMITED PROSPECTS
Conder-Johnson said there were a few opportunities for women to play professional basketball overseas when she finished college, but it never entered her mind.
Scholtens-Wood and Sonja Tate, like Webb, both took advantage of the chance to play professionally.
Scholtens-Wood played one season in Japan, after a standout playing career at
Vanderbilt. But she also acknowledged playing basketball helped her get a degree from one of the top schools in the country.
“It allowed me to go somewhere where my parents could never have afforded to send me,” Scholtens-Wood said.
Tate, a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, starred at Arkansas State and played several seasons in Russia, Spain and France, but she also played in the American Basketball League which eventually became part of the WNBA.
Scholtens-Wood used her pro salary to help pay for law school and is an attorney in Little Rock. Tate moved into coaching after her playing days were over to help make sure young ladies had good positive role models. She’s currently the girls’ basketball coach at Paragould.
“I think it’s important to have other females in those leadership positions,” Tate said. “I had female coaches in junior and high school and had Jerri Ann Winters at ASU.”
THE SWOOSH
Fort Smith Northside has enjoyed plenty of success under coach Rickey Smith. The Lady Bears claimed their seventh state title last season, but even Smith acknowledged it all started with a group that included Tamika Kursh (now Williams). She is still the lone Lady Bear to be named a McDonald’s All-American and the only one to make the NWADG’S Top 25 list.
Relentless is the word Smith used to describe Kursh, who went on to star at Louisiana Tech.
“Every day in practice, in games,” Smith said. “Whether it was in the fullcourt press, scoring or going for a rebound she had such a high motor and played with such passion.”
Kursh helped the Lady Bears to three consecutive state championships and a No. 3 ranking in the nation her senior season. Smith said she probably also helped Northside garner the attention that helped the school obtain a coveted Nike apparel contract. The continued success has allowed the Lady Bears to keep it for almost 20 years.
The contract affords players and coaches free apparel and shoes just like many college athletic programs across the country. Northside is one of only 20 high schools in the country that are part of the elite program, Smith said. It also afforded Northside other advantages in scheduling games against other top programs across the country.
“They played against the best there was,” Smith said. “Their only loss was to the number one team in the nation at the time. Nike liked our style of play and the athletes. They latched onto us and we’re still with them 20 years later.”