Edmonton Grads

Origin

In 1912, J. Percy Page moved from Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta. Page took charge of Commercial Classes at new McDougall High School. His teaching assistant Ernest Hyde coached the boys team, while Page coached the girls team. In their first year, the club won a local high school tournament. The following year, the team were provincial champions of Alberta.

The 1914-15 senior girls basketball team of McDougall Commercial High School in Edmonton, Alberta won the Alberta High School Provincial championship. Upon graduation, the team asked their high school coach J. Percy Page (later the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta) if he would coach them if they continued to compete. Formally named Commercial Graduates Basketball Club the team soon became known informally as the Edmonton Grads.

National championship

On May 12, 1922, the Grads played the London (Ontario) Shamrocks to determine the first Dominion of Canada’s women’s basketball championships. The first game was played with Canadian girls rules (six players on the court), while the second game was played with Canadian boys rules (five players on the court). The Grads won the first game by a score of 41-8, while the Grads lost the second game by a score of 21-8. By a cumulative score, the Grads won 49-29, and were awarded the championship.

The roster of this team included:

Record

The team compiled a record of about 502 wins and some 20 losses between 1915 and 1940., The Grads won their first Canadian title in 1922 by defeating the Shamrocks from London, Ontario. The next year the Grads competed for the Underwood Trophy (provided by the Underwood Typewriter Company), their first international competition. The Grads faced the Cleveland Favorite-Knits, who were the reigning American (and world) champions. The Grads defeated the Favorite-Knits in a two-game combined score match, 55 to 33. The Grads never relinquished the Canadian Championship and only returned the Underwood Trophy when the team disbanded in 1940.

In addition to dominating their sport in North America, the Grads also took on the best teams in Europe, ultimately defeating challengers in Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin. The Grads swept four consecutive Olympic Games from 1924 to 1936, winning all 27 Olympic matches they played and out scoring their opponents 1863 to 297. This achievement was unrecognized on the medal podium as women's basketball did not become an official Olympic sport until the 1976 summer games in Montreal.

Page's coaching philosophy emphasized the importance of physical conditioning and prohibited any performance-inhibiting activities such as smoking and drinking. As a result, his players often outlasted their exhausted opponents in particularly grueling matches. Page trained his girls to play as a unit and, above all, to take their sport seriously. "You must play basketball, think basketball, and dream basketball," was his adage. Players were not allowed to marry. The reward for the unpaid players came through a chance to travel and see the world, a rare opportunity for single, unmarried women during the Depression. As a consequence the Grads were perennial provincial, national, and continental champions.

Decline

Page tried to find suitable competition for the Grads but the problem was that women's clubs in different parts of the country played under different rules. By 1940, the Edmonton Arena, home of the Grads, was taken over by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The Grads disbanded in 1940 after the outbreak of the Second World War. At that time, the team held 108 local, provincial, national, and international titles and had been the undisputed world champions for 17 years in a row. Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, called the Grads the "finest basketball team that ever stepped out on a floor."(Hall, p. x)

Legacy