Without the All American Red Heads, there would be no WNBA
The Arkansas-rooted professional team showed the world that women belong in basketball.
by Cheree Franco
Page 5 of 7
After their wedding, she thought she had to be the best, so that no one could accuse Ben of favoritism. She spent long hours practicing in summers, when most of the girls took a break from basketball. As comedienne, she had to pull double-duty on court. "You always had someone on the local team that was a showboat or the people in town loved him. You try to figure those things out going in. He's the one you're going to pick on," Pat said.
Her teammate, Cameron, loved the pinch act. "Pat would back up against somebody and scream, 'he pinched me.' We were playing the professors at College of William and Mary — most of them could stand under my arm. We would pat them on the arm, play with their hair," she said. "And when Pat leaned into that guy and screamed, he ran out of the building and never came back, he was so embarrassed."
Cameron only spent three seasons with the Red Heads before having back surgery for ruptured disks. "Before the Red Heads, I was just a scared little girl. I couldn't have talked to anybody. Now I'll get up in front of everybody. I found out one thing — if you don't think enough of yourself, no one else is going to," she said. When she left the Red Heads, she became the first female salesperson ever hired by Little Rock's D.A. Sparks Inc. She traveled the East Coast representing the company.
In the 50 years of the Red Heads' existence, what it meant to be a woman in America changed more than what it meant to be an All American Red Head. According to John Molina, a women's basketball historian, "When the Red Heads first started, they would pull into town and find that church organizations had covered up their legs on the posters."
The '70s brought changes for ambitious women athletes, and many women found freedom, a college degree and an individual identity more appealing than living by someone else's rules. But the Red Heads remained mostly in the past. "We're no part of Women's Lib, and if any of the girls were to get involved in it — well, they better not let me know about it. I don't want the All American Red Heads tied to any causes," Moore was quoted in Sports Illustrated.
The Red Heads were antiquated in other ways, too. They played plenty of integrated men's teams, but in their entire history, no one remembers a black Red Head. According to Ben Overman, no black player ever approached the Red Heads, and the Red Heads never recruited them. "That just wasn't that time," he said. Moore told Sports Illustrated that, "We've had girls of all persuasions — a Mormon, Indian girls, one Jewish, and I believe there was even one Red Head who did not go along with the existence of the Lord, know what I mean?"
For two years in the mid-'70s, Moore had three Red Head teams on the road simultaneously, and one of them was made up entirely of former college players. But by the end of the decade, Camp Courage was sold and the Red Heads were something akin to kitsch — more wholesome than risque, more of a throwback than a phenomenon. When Moore retired the Red Heads in 1986, they had the notoriety of being the first women's barnstorming basketball team and the last standing. They'd appeared on the "Ed Sullivan Show," "House Party" with Art Linkletter and the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.
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