Snapshots of History: Beaconsfield High School
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Beaconsfield High School about 1955.
By Mike Avitt
Here’s what the Tingley Vindicator newspaper had to say about sports in its April 2, 1903 edition: “Basketball is becoming as much of a menace to life and limb as football.”
The Vindicator was not in the minority on this issue. I have read several articles in local newspapers warning against dangerous sports like football and basketball.
The first attempt to organize a high school girls’ basketball program at Mount Ayr was made in 1899 and was eventually successful.
But, in 1939, girls’ basketball was replaced by “a girls’ athletic association” in which different activities and exercises would give the girls credit for manual training. We call that Physical Education today.
The girls’ basketball program at Mount Ayr would not return until 1959-60. The Mount Ayr High School Football boys had their program stopped from about 1912 to 1921.
Despite the fears and anxieties, high school sports moved forward.
The Ringgold County High School Boys’ Basketball Tournament started in 1919 and ran continuously for forty years. Not so with the girls, but they did have a tournament.
It was not continuous nor was it long.
The first girls tournament in Ringgold County was held at Benton in 1928. Redding was scheduled to be in the tournament, but for some reason they were replaced by Worth, Missouri. The Worth girls were 17-4 that season but finished third in the tournament, ahead of Mount Ayr.
Did I mention there were only four teams entered? The other two teams, Maloy and Benton played a close game for the championship. Maloy star Gladys Polley fouled out and that spurred a Benton comeback and the Benton girls won 21-18.
Ebon McAninch was the referee and was probably the organizer, too. Mr. McAninch had previously been a girls basketball coach at Knowlton, Beaconsfield, and Mount Ayr.
That 1928 girls’ tournament was the last one I could find until 1942.
Beginning in 1942, a Ringgold County Girls’ Basketball Tournament was held for seventeen consecutive years ending in 1958, the same year as the boys’ tournament.
Teams missing from that 1942 tournament were: Diagonal, Maloy, Mount Ayr, and Benton. I don’t know why Benton missed but two of the others, Mount Ayr and Maloy, never participated in this run of girls’ tournament.
The Diagonal girls only entered in four of these seventeen tourneys. More on that in the next article.
The 1942 tournament was held in Ellston. The best two gymnasiums in Ringgold County were Diagonal and Mount Ayr but the first six tournaments were held at Ellston or Beaconsfield.
This is a problem for my research because neither Ellston nor Beaconsfield had a newspaper. And because neither Mount Ayr nor Diagonal was in the tournament, newspaper coverage was thin.
The 1942 results, Delphos over Kellerton in the championship, were on the front page of the Record-News, but the 1943 results were buried on page 5 in the Record-News in the Beaconsfield column. No names of players or coaches were mentioned.
It gets worse in 1944 when only the teams that placed one through four are mentioned.
The good news is that 1943 marked the beginning of the Obermeier era and Tingley had a newspaper, so their championships were covered.
Next week we’ll look at the success of Melvin Hanks Obermeier. Also, we’ll look at how the small gymnasium problem was solved and I’ll bring up a school sports nickname that most of you have not heard of previously.
