Inductees

The story goes that, after a few years following passage of the federal Title IX legislation which required public schools to offer sports to girls, a group of McDonald County High School girls marched to the superintendent’s office.

That led to the school offering girls basketball in November 1976. Two years later, Jerry Davis returned to his alma mater as an assistant football coach and was asked to coach the girls basketball team.

“My recollection is we were 20-2 in 1979,” Davis said. “And I had three solid seniors coming back from that team and three girls who were coming up from the junior high. I thought, ‘We’re going to be pretty good for awhile.’ It exceeded my expectations.”

Many others could say the same, and it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted the 1980-1983 Era of McDonald County High School Girls Basketball with the Class of 2022.

The 1980 season ended with a state runner-up finish in Class 3, with the Lady Mustangs falling 40-38 to Visitation Academy. Fueled by that season, the program revved up its energy and won it all in 1981, beating Charleston 47-34 in the finals and finishing 29-1.

Two years later, in 1983, the Lady Mustangs not only returned to the Final Four but seized the weekend, exacting revenge on Visitation Academy in the finals with a 52-48 victory.

That McDonald County team was a whopping 31-1 and was unbeaten in Missouri, having suffered its only loss to Springdale, Ark. In the three wins before the championship game, that team won by an average of 21.6 points. And it followed a year after McDonald County’s season ended in the postseason against eventual state champion Bolivar.

Those teams certainly are the pride of McDonald County, whose cavernous district includes Anderson, Southwest City, Pineville, White Rock, Rocky Comfort, and Noel in the far southwest corner of the state.

After passage of Title IX, the school still didn’t have sports, just cheerleading and the scarlet spurs dance team. But the petition ahead of the 1976-1977 season changed everything. At the time, the school allowed girls to play only on Fridays on the boys goals.

“We had to play against the boys, and that’s why many of our girls were so good,” Teresa Orler said.

Several factors went into McDonald County becoming competitive quickly.

For one, despite players living miles apart in the rural district, they found ways to work on basketball drills, either in driveways or farms.

And then were was Davis, a Navy veteran who had returned to the Ozarks in the late 1960s and earned a degree at Missouri State University. He had spent the previous decade coaching basketball at various high schools – Sheldon, Butler and Stockton – before being hired as an assistant football coach at McDonald County.

At the time, superintendent John Willis asked him to coach girls basketball in the fall of 1978. Davis declined, sensing he would be in a no-win situation. His fear? If he coached the girls like he coached boys, they would think he was too hard. And if he backed off, the girls would think he didn’t care.

The 1978 team had finished 17-3 and won the conference.

Still, he took the job, and found creative ways to compete. Because the school offered a physical education/sports class at the start of the day, Davis had early morning practices that spilled into that hour.

“Some days they were late getting to class, which I got reprimanded for. Frequently,” Davis said with a laugh.

The gym also had three courts when bleachers were pushed back, allowing for individual drills.

Those early 1980s teams played 2-2-1 zone press and a 1-3-1 aggressive zone in the halfcourt, and ran the ball well, too. The schedules? They included games against larger Arkansas communities of Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville.

Webb City was always a menace, although there was a stretch in which McDonald County won 10 consecutive games between them, even though the teams were evenly matched.

“My goal was to win the conference and district (against Webb City) and, if we could do that, we could go far,” Davis said.

The 1983 team was pretty impressive.

“I thought we had the best team in all classes that year,” Davis said, noting the team handily beat one of Springfield’s best Class 4 teams that season.

The years since have been just as exciting.

“They’ve gone on with their lives and have done well,” Davis said. “I’m proud of that, too.”