By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
It was the 1970-71 school year and something new had come to the high school sports scene. A new league had been formed in southern Ohio, the Southern Hills League. Not all of the school in Adams County were original members of the SHL, but North Adams was and that resulted in the school fielding its first-ever varsity girls basketball team, perhaps the first group of “Devilish Darlings”, of course now known as the Lady Devils.
It was an inauspicious debut for the North Adams girls, who didn’t even have uniforms to begin their careers. According to the team’s assistant coach, Dorothy Geeslin, they managed to find some t-shirts and had the school’s Home Economics Department iron on some numbers. Things on the court didn’t go so well in the inaugural season as the team went 0-13, but fortunes for North Adams basketball have certainly improved since those days.
The North Adams girls were coached by Katie McDevitt Dabbert with Geeslin as her trusty assistant. Members of the original squad included: Doris Ping Hendrickson, Janice Porter McCarty, Marie Bolton Simmons, Teresa Armstrong, Jude Breeze Endicott, Diane Porter, Jeanie Charles, Dee Dee Johnson, Debbie Harrison, and Diane Cooper.
The team was recognized before a North Adams girls basketball game earlier this winter and this statement from their head coach was read by current Lady Devils head coach Rob Davis.
“When I was asked to coach girls’ basketball, I had no idea what I was creating was going to become a 50-year tradition. I was just a young, green teacher who decided to say yes to a job that I thought would be fun and would help the students. Fifty years later, I am honored to say that I was a very small part of that tradition. I’m sorry I can’t be with you tonight but I am thinking of you and of those lovely young women on that team who worked to be successful. Congratulations on your 50-year tradition and ‘Go Lady Devils!’”
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