MONETTA, S.C. (AP) - The Latta girls’ basketball team’s 1932 state championship marked the end of an era in high school hoops in South Carolina. It was the last championship of open play, with South Carolina High School League classification reordering schools based on enrollment the following year.
It also marked the last time the Monetta High girls would lose for another seven years.
Monetta was literally unbeatable during the early years of the newly-classified SCHSL, winning the first eight Class C - the lowest enrollment - state championships and 154 consecutive games.
Those streaks remain state records. The SCHSL recognizes the 154-game winning streak as the longest of all time, 48 games longer than the streak Midway compiled between 1952 and 1959.
The eight state championships are equaled only by Bowman, which wore eight crowns - two in Class C, the first of which came at Monetta’s expense in 1945, six in Class A decades, between 1944 and 1984. And the eight titles in a row are four clear of any girls’ basketball team in state history.
Monetta received plenty of national attention for the streak, too. The program’s 94th straight win, achieved in 1937 over the Thornwell Orphanage for the team’s fifth consecutive state title, was recognized by the Greenville News as the world record.
“And where is Monetta - why, it’s in the land of ’Asparagus,’ designated on the highway maps as a place by the side of the road between Johnston and Batesburg,” reads the article, which ran in the Mar. 19, 1937 issue of the Aiken Standard and Review. “New York knows of Monetta, perhaps, better than Greenville. As the head office of the Monetta Asparagus Growers association, the largest organization of its kind in the U.S.A., it ships asparagus by the hundreds of carloads to metropolitan cities. When you eat asparagus tips you may now think of Monetta as also the home of the world’s record-breaking basketball girls.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations recognizes Monetta’s streak as the second-longest ever for a girls’ team, only behind Baskin (Louisiana) High’s 218 in a row from 1947 to 1953. And only one boys’ team, the Passaic (New Jersey) squad that won 159 in a row from 1919-25, can claim a more extensive run.
Monetta’s streak was nearly much longer; the loss to Latta, by two points, in 1932 punctuated a previously unblemished record of 18-0. Instead, a new one began in the 1933 season as Monetta welcomed and dominated all challengers, regardless of classification or location.
A Rock Hill team found that out the hard way when it issued a challenge to Monetta, stating that they hadn’t faced any legitimate competition, according to a March 7, 2004 story in The State. Head coach George Sawyer toyed with the Rock Hill team, unbeknownst to them starting his second string in the first half. Monetta led by one at the break, and then the starters came in, they won by 60.
Girls’ basketball was the main event in Monetta back then. A Nov. 22, 1933 issue of Aiken’s The Journal and Review announced on its front page a Friday doubleheader between Monetta and Wagener high schools. Girls’ basketball was scheduled to precede football, with the action taking place on the Monetta High School playground because the school didn’t have a gym.
Monetta practiced on the outdoor court - during a daily, 45-minute recess period that also included lunch - and played “home” games a few miles up the road at Batesburg-Leesville. The gym was referred to by many different names in the Aiken Standard archives, most commonly the “Summerland Gym” - likely referring to Batesburg-Leesville High School’s location on Summerland Avenue.
That’s not to suggest the Monetta girls were at a disadvantage; far from it. Behind a head coach many years ahead of his time in Sawyer - though, interestingly enough, star forward Norma Smith is quoted in the 2004 The State story as saying he didn’t know much about the game - Monetta proved to be a wrecking ball regardless of where it played.
Sawyer, an Aiken County native who taught agriculture at the school after graduating from Clemson College, installed at Monetta what was essentially a junior varsity program, with players getting involved as early as the fifth grade. He also put an emphasis on conditioning, holding his players to strict diets and giving them oranges at halftime, so that his teams would outlast any challenger. He even engaged in advance scouting, traveling to watch future opponents to put together a game plan.
He also may have utilized the earliest known use of the “Hack-a-Shaq” technique.
In a Feb. 15, 1987 issue of the Aiken Standard, former Monetta player Leola Yonce Mitchell described a game in which the team was being dominated by Latta. The opposing forwards were simply too tall, and Monetta’s guards had no chance of stopping them. Sawyer called a timeout and told his players to foul Latta’s, because they couldn’t make free throws. From then on, it was all Monetta.
Teammate Dosia Collum described the team’s style of play in which every player knew her role to a tee and stuck to it.
“We could throw a ball and that girl would be there,” she said, as quoted in the Feb. 15, 1987 article. “We had it down. We could depend on one another. We didn’t have any friction, no fussing. It was all team play.”
The means of scoring, of course, were different back then. For starters, girls’ basketball was played six-on-six with the court split into three sections. Each team had two forwards, two guards, a center and a side center, and those players were confined to their sections on the floor.
The forwards stayed in the front court and were the only players who could score, the guards were in the back court and responsible for stopping the forwards - and there was a jump ball after every made basket, during which the center, the team’s tallest player, would tip the ball to the side center, the shortest player, at mid court. Because of this, a dominant center and accurate shooters could deny the opposition from ever having possession.
Those rules partly explain why there were plenty of lopsided scores back then, and Monetta was the team handing out the beatings - they played by the same rules as everyone else, just faster.
Smith, from Aiken, was the team’s first star player, averaging 45 points per game over her two years, according to a March 7, 2004 story in The State. She scored an SCHSL-record 86 points in one game in 1934 - records from the six-player era, which lasted until 1971, are kept separate. Smith set a then-state record in 1933 by scoring 74 points against Salley in a district tournament game at Brookland-Cayce, and she was only getting started.
Some of her greatest hits include: 84 points in a 100-13 win over Dentsville, 81 against St. Angela in a 112-18 blowout and 65 in a half of a 107-6 battering of Ninety Six.
Smith was named the outstanding player of the state tournament in 1934. Monetta rolled through the playoffs, with a 45-point win over Jenkinsville and a 33-point win over Holly Springs preceding a 59-30 win over Dunbarton. That was the team’s second championship in a row, following 1933’s 41-18 win over Sardis.
The 1935 team went 17-0 and won its games by an average of 35.4 points per game, according to a May 12, 1936 issue of the Aiken Standard and Review. That season included a 55-0 blanking of Ward, perhaps the team’s most famous victory, an 80-4 destruction of North Augusta, a 64-15 win over Aiken and two wins over Newberry College by a combined 74 points. The last game on the schedule was the closest, a 38-36 win over Wampee.
Mary Edna Kneece was a team captain during the early years of Monetta’s basketball dynasty; she was also class president and valedictorian of the class of 1935, according to a commencement recap in the June 12, 1935 The Journal and Review.
1936 brought a fourth consecutive title, the capper a 39-31 win over Jenkinsville in Orangeburg. That was Monetta’s third game in three days, and it followed a 19-point win over Hannah - a team Monetta would torment more in the future - and a 72-23 win over Baron DeKalb.
Three games in three days seemed to be the norm back then. According to a Jan. 31, 1936 issue of the Aiken Standard and Review, the team faced a Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday trio of road trips to Pelion, Newberry College and Saluda. Pelion and Saluda called those games off, but Newberry weathered a 50-9 defeat.
The May 12, 1936 issue of the Aiken Standard and Review featured a photo identifying Sawyer as just an advisor to the team, instead calling Miss Ersie Hutto the head coach. This was common throughout Monetta’s run - Miss Elspye Moore was listed as the coach in a March 7, 1934 The Journal and Review front-page story, and Norine Nichols appeared in photos in 1939 and 1941 papers. Sawyer was typically identified as the advisor or principal. That may have been because, according to a Feb, 15, 1987 story in the Aiken Standard, he was pressured by his supervisors to stop coaching, that led to the installation of figurehead coaches.
Later team photos, ones that typically accompanied reports of Augusta Trade District Tournament championships and were provided by the Augusta Herald, didn’t include Sawyer at all.
Monetta won that Augusta tournament, referred to in a 1993 issue of the Aiken Standard as “the toughest test in girls’ basketball”, just as frequently as it did state championships - eight times in a row. And, unlike taking titles in Class C, these tournament championships came against the best teams in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
The Augusta tournament games were much closer. Monetta’s 1938 championship victory, the team’s fifth in a row, was a 21-18 win over McCormick’s De la Howe, according to the Feb. 9, 1938 issue of the Aiken Standard and Review. Marjorie Orander led Monetta with 16 points and helped the team come back from a halftime deficit. The 1940 title game was even closer; a 23-21 win over Columbia County’s Leah High in a game that was delayed more than 15 minutes by a “heated discussion” over which team should have possession with a minute to go, according to the Feb. 14, 1940 Aiken Standard and Review.
Grace Kneece scored 17 of the team’s 23 points in that 1940 championship, and she was a star forward who picked up where Smith left off. Kneece, one of at least a handful of sisters to have played basketball at Monetta, scored the second-most points in a single game in the six-player era: 77, trailing only Smith.
Kneece was averaging 25 points per game and had already scored 72 in a single contest, according to a story from The State that ran in the Feb. 24, 1939 Aiken Standard and Review, by the time the team won its 150th game in a row, a 60-20 triumph over Columbia’s University High. That win, according to the story, was a familiar beating in which Monetta overwhelmed the opposition early and quickly put the game away - the score was 29-4 at the half.
“With unrelenting accuracy and precision sufficient to bring a sigh of envy out of the chest of many a boys’ team coach, the wee lassies from Monetta continue to batter the backboard and sink ’em,” reads the story. “With five minutes left to play they relented and on several occasions gathered about the University girls’ goal and, with as much unconcern as the spectators (they were unconcerned by now) watched their foes striving for a basket.”
Monetta added four more wins to the record streak, including a 79-57 win over Groveland (Florida) in Batesburg. Monetta paid a return trip to Groveland, and that’s where the streak ended.
Team manager Doris Sawyer detailed the trip in the March 31, 1939 Aiken Standard and Review. She described a gracious welcome from their hosts, a “Welcome Monetta” banner stretched across the main street and Monetta’s colors - garnet and black - flying underneath the American flag.
That all may have been to lure the team into a false sense of comfort.
In the Feb. 15, 1987 Aiken Standard, Mitchell said the gym was similar in size to a family room, with walls forming the boundary of the court. If the ball touched a wall, it was out of bounds. She said they played “on a stage, very narrow and very sharp.”
Monetta led 15-13 after the first quarter despite Mitchell and Katherine Fallaw fouling out, but it was all downhill from there. Groveland led 33-24 at the half, and soon the streak was history. Groveland won, 64-60.
Sawyer and company saw the cramped gym and offered $500 to play the game on a neutral court, Groveland rejected.
According to the 2004 The State story, the teams played by different rules in that game. Groveland’s guards ventured beyond their boundary and brought the ball up to half court, essentially creating two, half-court three-on-three games. When the Monetta players tried the same, they were whistled for fouls. Monetta, not allowed to play by the same rules for a half, faced an even steeper handicap. The comeback in the second half, with the understanding of the house rules, wasn’t enough.
Another loss followed, a Feb. 3, 1940 defeat at the hands of Camden, the reigning champion from the state’s largest classification. According to the Feb, 12, 1941 Aiken Standard and Review, Monetta had two nights before played Greenwood High, Lander College and a team of Greenwood citizens at a charity function, followed by a game the following night against Allendale.
1940 marked the last of Monetta’s eight consecutive Class C state championships, and the following year was the team’s eighth straight Augusta Trade District Tournament title. In both cases, Monetta held each trophy for the first eight years of their respective existences.
The way most scores were reported was much different in the 1930s than it is now. It was rare that the Monetta girls would appear in actual articles, even rarer were ones that included photos, unless they were describing milestone victories or tournament championships. Unlike today’s stories, or even a Local Results roundup, most of these past scores appeared in a section titled “County News Concerning People and Things”, which often ran on page 2.
In that section were briefs provided by correspondents in different places throughout the area. The Monetta girls’ basketball updates were found in the Mt. Ebal section, which was provided by Miss Louise Watkins. Those reports often mentioned which players were from that area - the 1936 team had five regulars on the Monetta squad, for example - in addition to the upcoming games and even some occasional spirited words.
“Oh, by the way, I see where Salley girls have defeated Batesburg-Leesville twice. I just know those were interesting games,” reads the Mt. Ebal section from the Jan. 24, 1936 Aiken Standard and Review. “Say, Monetta, how do you like that. You’d better look out Salley is gonna beat you yet. Is Salley stepping out? Oh boy, and how.”
Other correspondents reported from places like Montmorenci, McLaurin, Monetta, Windsor, Edisto, Round Top and Bethcar. These sections typically recapped meetings, identified who in town was ill or had died and even mentioned who was present at social gatherings. The Mt. Ebal section, unlike the rest, included hoops.
The school names provide a glimpse of history. Most of the schools defeated by Monetta no longer exist in the same form; they either merged with others, typically due to integration, or ceased to exist altogether. Baron DeKalb, for example, was a Kershaw County school that in 1979 merged with Mt. Pisgah and Midway - the same Midway that authored the 106-game win streak - to form present-day North Central High. Hannah High, which ascended the Class C throne after losing three consecutive state title games to Monetta, merged with rival Pamplico in the 1960s. Wampee, the 1935 runner-up, merged for the 1970-71 school year with Chestnut to form today’s North Myrtle Beach High.
Dunbarton, runner-up to Monetta in 1934, is one of those schools that no longer exists. Nor does the town, for that matter, as Dunbarton, located in Barnwell County, was moved in the 1950s to clear the way for the Savannah River Plant.
Monetta, of course, is now Ridge Spring-Monetta, a school that has more than once been on the verge of reclaiming the girls’ basketball crown. RS-M is consistently ranked among the top schools in Class A, and the Lady Trojans played in the Upper State final in 2002 and ’03 and were a double-overtime loss away from doing the same in 2014.
The gym at RS-M was named after Sawyer in December 1962, according to his obituary in the Sept. 27, 1979 Aiken Standard.
A large banner hangs above the gym entrance, behind one of the baskets, boasting of eight consecutive state championships and 156 wins - two more than the SCHSL and NFHS recognize - in a row. That serves as a daily reminder of the program’s record-setting domination, and that unbeatable attitude resonates in Watkins’ words in the Mt. Ebal section of the Feb. 3, 1939 Aiken Standard and Review:
“Jump on the grand stand,
Beat on the tin can.
Who can? We can.
Nobody else can.
___
Information from: Aiken Standard, https://www.aikenstandard.com
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