The season schedule for a WNBA player is demanding—forty games in four months. Plane rides, bus trips, practices and autographs. But how about playing more than 200 games during a seven-month season, traveling 20,000 miles by car? Playing against men’s teams only and performing a halftime show while the men rested, and then having to wash your own uniforms in a bathtub back at a hotel.
This is the story of the All American Red Heads. The professional women’s basketball team that traveled to small towns all across America for fifty years, entertaining hundreds of thousands of fans and becoming role models for many young girls and boys.
Once Upon a Time
It was 1936, long before Title IX or the WNBA. Women had been playing basketball for almost 50 years, since the Senda Berenson Abbott brought the game of basket-ball (as it was known) to her physical education class at Smith College in 1892. It was typical for women all over the country to get together for fun and play the game in industrial leagues.
C.M. Olson (Ole), from Cassville Missouri had a famous traveling basketball team called The Terrible Swedes. His wife, Doyle, owned a hair salon, and several of her employees played basketball at night. Legend has it that one night her employees dyed their hair red and played against a local men’s team. It was an instant hit, and Ole decided to book the team in games against men’s teams. Women were still playing the six-on-six, half-court game at the time, but the Red Heads would play full court and by men’s rules. The team was originally known as the Cassville Red Heads, but would change their name to “All American” when AAU All Americans like Peggy Lawson and Kay Kirkpatrick joined the team.
World War II
Five years before the attack at Pearl Harbor, these women were getting paid for what they loved to do—play basketball. The early teams traveled all over the country, played in front of thousands of fans, including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. In the early years, the teams traveled by station wagon but would move up to limousines in the early 1960s. Along with playing against men, they performed special ball handling routines and trick shots to entertain the fans as well. The Red Heads were featured in magazines such as Life, Colliers and PIC and became so popular that they created a second team called the Ozark Hillbillies.
