Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team That Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory

by Lydia Reeder

Overview

At the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb, the charismatic basketball coach of tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, began dreaming. Like so many others, he wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm, he recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals.
 
Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices faced by their families, the women followed Babb and his dream. He shaped the Cardinals into a formidable team, and something extraordinary began to happen: with passion for the sport and heartfelt loyalty to one another and their coach, they won every game.  

For author Lydia Reeder, this is a family story: coach Sam Babb is her great-uncle. When her grandmother handed her a worn, yellowed folder that contained newspaper articles, letters, and photographs of Sam and the Cardinals, she said, “You might want to tell their story someday.” Now, with extensive research and the gathered memories of the surviving Cardinals, she has.

Combining exhilarating sports writing and exceptional storytelling, Dust Bowl Girls conveys the intensity of an improbable journey to an epic showdown with the prevailing national champions, led by the legendary Babe Didrikson. It captures a moment in American sports history when a visionary coach helped his young athletes achieve more than a winning season.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616204662
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	1120L (what's this?)

About the Author

Lydia Ellen Reeder is the grandniece of Sam Babb, the extraordinary basketball coach featured in Dust Bowl Girls. She spent over two years conducting research for the book and also wrote and narrated a short film about the Cardinal basketball team, currently on view at the Oklahoma Historical Society website: youtu.be/fokmbnWmp50. As a former associate editor at Whole Life Times in Los Angeles and Delicious Magazine in Boulder, Colorado, Reeder has worked for many years as a copywriter and editor on behalf of corporate and organizational clients and most recently developed e-learning for a national nursing association. She lives in Denver with her husband and enjoys hiking in the mountains of Colorado. Dust Bowl Girls is her first book.

Table of Contents

1 New Recruit 1

2 The Making of a Coach 6

3 The Field House, 4 a.m. 27

4 A Good Shot Maker Believes in Herself 42

5 Choctaw Town 56

6 A Man's Sport 73

7 Weak Ankles and Weaker Nerves 95

8 Barnstorm 113

9 End Game 133

10 Babe Didrikson and the Golden Cyclones 153

11 Guts and Glory 172

12 Next Stop, Shreveport 193

13 Brains, Beauty, and Ball Handling 209

14 A Team That Won't Be Beat Can't Be Beat 233

15 A Hometown Welcome 247

Epilogue 256

Acknowledgments 263

Notes 267

Editorial Reviews

08/29/2016
Reeder, a former editor at Whole Life Times, tells the inspiring story of Oklahoma Presbyterian College basketball coach Sam Babb’s efforts to create and maintain a championship women’s team, the Cardinals, amidst the hardships of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Discussing both Babb’s coaching philosophy and the players’ individual stories, Reeder explores the charm and excitement that the small team of unknowns brought to their hometown of Durant. In equal parts personal homage to Babb (the author’s great-uncle) and surprising underdog story, Reeder recounts the Cardinals’ journey from humble beginnings to becoming the 1932 American Athletic Union national tournament champions. They demonstrated the perseverance necessary to overcome the political and financial difficulties facing women in sports. The descriptions of the political strife and characterizations seem forced and caricatured at times, but when the story turns to basketball season, Reeder relaxes into comfortable and engaging storytelling. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

“Lydia Reeder has crafted a thrilling, cinematic story that seems destined for the big screen (please cast Saoirse Ronan as Doll Harris!). I loved every minute I spent with the bold, daring women of the Cardinals basketball team, whose remarkable journey to victory is the stuff of American legend.”
—Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy 

“Long before the influence of Title IX, a small college in Oklahoma, under the direction of a volunteer coach, was actively involved in recruiting women athletes. Based on extensive research and told with the talented storytelling ability of the author, Dust Bowl Girls is an important and enjoyable story."
—Virginia Peters, Ph.D., Former Coach of Women's Basketball and Director of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, Oklahoma
                      
“Dust Bowl Girls reads like something pulled from the imagination of a Hollywood dreamer. However, it is a true story of a group of Oklahoma Dust Bowl farm girls melded together by a one-legged coach into the finest basketball team of the Depression era. This epic sports story is the stuff of which legends are made.” 
—W. Lynne Draper, Former President and CEO of the Jim Thorpe Association and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and recipient of the NFL Players Association National Award of Excellence

“Fun. Heartwarming. The story of a little-known but important moment in the history of basketball and women's sports in general.”
—Fastpitch: The Untold History of Softball and the Women Who Made the Game
                           
“For so long, women have been told they couldn't or shouldn't. In Dust Bowl Girls, Lydia Reeder tells the story of pioneers in women's sport who refused to listen. In a mix of history and sports thriller, Reeder unearths the story a rag tag group of women - some of them teenagers - who took the first steps to proving women could be athletes too. It's an inspiring story.”
—Jen A. Miller, author of Running: A Love Story

“As she tells the amazing story of Babb and his underdog women's basketball team, Reeder also reveals the challenges facing serious female athletes during the 1920s and '30s, including the perceived risk of ‘destroying their feminine image by invading a man's world.’ Sports fans and general readers alike a re sure to find the story both worthwhile and enterta ining. A heartwarmingly inspirational tale.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 09/15/2016
Now playing its 20th season, the WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) is among America's most successful women's professional sports leagues. Yet, the struggling basketball league has only turned a profit in recent years, still working hard to put fans in the stands. In this book first-time author Reeder introduces readers to Sam Babb, a remarkable man who saw past the Depression-era thinking that sports were less "ladylike" and even considered physically inappropriate for women. Babb scoured the Oklahoma farmlands looking for young women who would accept his offer of a college education; in return, he molded them into a team that exceeded all expectations. Equal parts social history and sports legend come to life, Reeder's meticulous research and play-by-play game accounts are a fitting tribute to Coach Babb and the trailblazing athletes he inspired. Of special interest for students of women's studies and a strong contender for a film adaptation. VERDICT With high appeal to sports fans and historians, this hidden gem of a story deserves a place in all public library collections.—Janet Davis, Darien P.L., CT

Library Journal

04/01/2017
In the early 1930s, Sam Babb recruited farm girls to play for his basketball team at Oklahoma Presbyterian College in Durant. At the time, most women's teams were sponsored by the companies for whom the players worked. Some, including Lou Henry Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover, thought that competitive sports were not an appropriate activity for young women. But Coach Babb knew that basketball helped participants develop critical thinking and good judgment. He also believed that a winning team could bring a whole community together and raise spirits that had been battered by the Great Depression. Reeder employs player interviews and scrapbooks to tell the true story of the Cardinals, who in 1932 became the first women's collegiate team to win the American Athletic Union's National Basketball Tournament. Her personable narrative is as much about the daily lives of the players as it is about the sport of basketball, and young adults will love details that bring the time and place to life (for example, because many of the players came from farms with no indoor plumbing or electricity, the hot water in their college dorm seemed extravagant). VERDICT Useful for curriculum support, this compelling offering makes for good recreational reading, too. Hand it to fans of A League of Their Own or to anyone who relishes a good sports underdog tale.—Hope Baugh, Carmel Clay Public Library, Carmel, IN

School Library Journal

2016-10-20
A former magazine editor tells the story of how, at the height of the Great Depression, her great-uncle trained a group of young women from rural Oklahoma to become college basketball stars.The son of a stern preacher father, Missourian Sam Babb survived a leg amputation in his teenage years to become a successful Oklahoma school superintendent. His career took an unexpected turn in the early 1920s when he decided to become a part-time high school girls basketball coach. By 1929, he had taken a full-time coaching position at Oklahoma Presbyterian College. On a recruiting trip to bring new talent to OPC, Babb discovered a poor farm girl named Doll Harris who, during the 1930-1931 season, would become his "star shot maker" and an All-American player. The team he built that year was good enough to win a sportsmanship trophy at the Amateur Athletic Union national tournament, but Babb believed they could do better. The following year, he recruited other talented girls with promises of scholarships and worked to create a national championship-winning team. With barely enough funding to keep the team going, Babb took his players on a barnstorming tour of the South to raise money. His OPC Cardinals won every game, including one against the reigning champions, the Dallas Golden Cyclones. In the meantime, Harris found herself in direct competition with sports phenomenon Babe Didrikson, the golden girl who knew how to charm fans and "leverage publicity" for her own benefit. As she tells the amazing story of Babb and his underdog women's basketball team, Reeder also reveals the challenges facing serious female athletes during the 1920s and '30s, including the perceived risk of "destroying their feminine image by invading a man's world." Sports fans and general readers alike are sure to find the story both worthwhile and entertaining. A heartwarmingly inspirational tale.

Kirkus Reviews

Narrator Virginia Wolf’s modulated performance lets this exciting sports story almost tell itself. Her approach works since there’s action aplenty in this audiobook. Set in the depths of the Depression, the story involves a remarkable and little heralded sports feat. In the early 1930s, coach Sam Babb’s Cardinals, from tiny Oklahoma Presbyterian College, twice won the AAU basketball championship. Wolf’s understated style seems fitting for this dramatic true tale of braving the hardships of the era. The story is also a kind of social history of women’s sports. This audiobook puts the listener virtually in the players’ sneakers as these talented farm girls will their way to victory. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2017 - AudioFile