Three of the 8th grade girls of West Milford, New Jersey, who taught Edward Littler a thing or two about the power of girls' schools — over 40 years ago

It happened in 1966, but Edward Littler has never forgotten it. Recently he told me how his view of girls’ schools, and of women in general was strongly affected by one basketball game. He sent me a link to this story and added some further comments.

“They were the best team I had ever played against,and I played basketball from sixth grade thru my junior year in high school. The girls of St. Ann’s would have defeated literally dozens of boys teams. You would have had to see them to believe how good they were. Kathy Klink scored 14 points against us, Eileen Reilly had 11, Lois Pirog scored 8 points with 12 rebounds. Incredible.

It sure was different, especially when the game started! Of course we immediately thought we could take the ball from them at anytime, but when they showed the skills of dribbling and passing and we couldn’t, that immediately was a psychological victory for them!

There was also a question as to how “aggressive” we should be, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They were skilled enough to keep the ball away from us.

I remember one moment that really sort of made my jaw drop.
Three of us surrounded Kathy Klink, who had the ball. She held it high above her head. She was taller than any of us, so we couldn’t get it from her.

Even though three boys were literally inches from her face, all trying to stop her, I’ll never forget how calm she was. She acted as if she were standing alone–with no one guarding her!!! No expression on her face, no sense of panic or anxiety at all! She zipped a pass to Eileen Reilly for a layup.

She played defense against me “with her feet” and was everywhere where I went!

I thought “wow”-a girl can really do this? Lois also smiled at me after she blocked one of my shots, and that never happened before, so it really felt different and I sort of panicked when I found out they were this good.

St. Ann’s also had 4 taller girls who switched guarding our two leading scorers and because of that, we couldn’t get used to one and that kept me off balance the whole game. Lois, Kathy and Mary Klink, and Carol Brown all took turns guarding each of us.

Before the game, I had a feeling St. Ann’s would give us all we could handle because of their height. Then, during warm-up, I saw one of their girls, Eileen Reilly, dribble the ball between her legs and behind her back. I had been trying to do that for quite some time and had not been able to! I knew then they really knew what they were doing.

After the game, I just couldn’t believe how they had developed their skills far beyond any of the boys teams we played! It took awhile to figure out how dedicated they were to basketball. One big difference for St. Ann’s is that ALL of their players were good, whereas boys teams had maybe 3 good players and those on the bench weren’t very good, even among the best boys teams. It took awhile longer to figure out the single gender experience laid the groundwork for the girls of St. Ann’s to defeat one of the best boys teams.

They definitely had their “Black Belts” in basketball.”

Edward Little is in the process of writing an article titled The Girls’ School Advantage: Proving it on the Court.