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[Illustration: THE BALL ROSE AND FLEW DIRECTLY AT THE BASKET.]




THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH AT BASKETBALL

GERTRUDE W. MORRISON

1914




CONTENTS:
    CHAPTER I--HESTER IS MIFFED
    CHAPTER II--THE KERNEL IN THE ATHLETIC NUT
    CHAPTER III--JOHNNY DOYLE
    CHAPTER IV--"THERE'S GOOD STUFF IN THAT GIRL"
    CHAPTER V--HESTER AT HOME
    CHAPTER VI--THE FIRST GAME
    CHAPTER VII--THE SECOND HALF
    CHAPTER VIII--THE ROUND ROBIN
    CHAPTER IX--ANOTHER RAID
    CHAPTER X--MOTHER WIT AND THE GRAY MARE
    CHAPTER XI--HEBE POCOCK
    CHAPTER XII--"OUT OF IT"
    CHAPTER XIII--THE WIND VEERS
    CHAPTER XIV--RACING THE FLAMES
    CHAPTER XV--THE KEYPORT GAME
    CHAPTER XVI--UPHILL WORK FOR THE TEAM
    CHAPTER XVII--HEBE POCOCK IN TROUBLE
    CHAPTER XVIII--MOTHER WIT TO THE RESCUE
    CHAPTER XIX--AT LUMBERPORT
    CHAPTER XX--WINNING ALL ALONG THE LINE
    CHAPTER XXI--WHAT HESTER DID
    CHAPTER XXII--WHAT MR. BILLSON COULD TELL
    CHAPTER XXIII--CLIMBING UP
    CHAPTER XXIV--HESTER WINS
    CHAPTER XXV--THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED




CHAPTER I

HESTER IS MIFFED


The referee's whistle sounded sharply, and the eighteen girls of
Central High engaged in playing basketball, as well as an equal number
strung along the side lines, stopped instantly and turned their eyes
on Mrs. Case, the physical instructor.

"Hester Grimes! you are deliberately delaying the game. I have
reprimanded you twice. The third time I will take you out of the team
for the week----"

"I didn't, either!" cried the person addressed, a rather heavily built
girl for her age, with a sturdy body and long arms--well developed in a
muscular way, but without much grace. She had very high color, too,
and at the present moment her natural ruddiness was heightened by
anger.

"You are breaking another rule of the game by directly addressing the
referee," said Mrs. Case, grimly. "Are you ready to play, or shall I
take you out of the game right now?"

The red-faced girl made no audible reply, and the teacher signalled
for the ball to be put into play again. Three afternoons each week
each girl of Central High, of Centerport, who was eligible for
after-hour athletics, was exercised for from fifteen to thirty minutes
at basketball. Thirty-six girls were on the ground at a time. Every
five minutes the instructor blew her whistle, and the girls changed
places. That is, the eighteen actually playing the game shifted with
the eighteen who had been acting as umpires, judges, timekeepers,
scorers, linesmen and coaches. This shifting occupied only a few
seconds, and it put the entire thirty-six girls into the game, shift
and shift about. It was in September, the beginning of the fall term,
and Mrs. Case was giving much attention to the material for the
inter-school games, to be held later in the year.

Hester Grimes had played the previous spring on the champion team, and
held her place now at forward center. But although she had been two
years at Central High, and was now a Junior, she had never learned the
first and greatest truth that the physical instructor had tried to
teach her girls:

"_Keep your temper!_"

Since spring several of the girls playing on the first team of Central
High had left school, graduating as seniors. The work now was to whip
this team into shape, and finally Mrs. Case and the girls themselves,
voting upon the several names in their capacity as members of the
Girls' Branch Athletic League, had settled upon the following roster
of names and positions as the "make-up" of the best-playing basketball
team of Central High:

  Josephine Morse, goal-keeper
  Evangeline Sitz, right forward
  Dora Lockwood, left forward
  Hester Grimes, forward center
  Laura Belding, jumping center
  Lily Pendleton, back center
  Dorothy Lockwood, right guard
  Nellie Agnew, left guard
  Bobby Hargrew, goal guard

The basketball court of Central High was located in the new Girls'
Athletic Field, not far from the school building itself, and
overlooking beautiful Lake Luna and the boathouses and rowing course.
At the opening of Central High this fall the new field and gymnasium
had first come into use.

The athletic field, gymnasium and swimming pool were the finest in the
State arranged for girls' athletics. They had been made possible by
the generosity of one of the very wealthy men of Centerport, Colonel
Richard Swayne, and his interest in the high school girls and their
athletics had been engaged by one of the girls themselves, Laura
Belding by name, but better known among her schoolfellows and friends
as "Mother Wit."

The play went on again under the keen eye of the instructor. Mrs. Case
believed most thoroughly in the efficiency of basketball for the
development and training of girls; but she did not allow her charges
to play the game without supervision. Lack of supervision by
instructors is where the danger of basketball and kindred athletics
lies.

The game is an excellent one from every point of view; yet within the
last few years it has come into disfavor in some quarters, and many
parents have forbidden their daughters to engage in it. Like bicycling
in the past, and football with the boys, basketball has suffered "a
