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1974 Team: In 1974, PCHS began developing a girls' basketball program. Although the team had a rough start, this team started a long history of girls getting to play ball. -
1975 Team: The 1975 team played a full season, won the District tournament, and also won the first round of Regionals. -
1976 Team: The 1976 Pendleton County High School girls basketball team is pictured in the school yearbook with head coach Herb Owen, who began rebuilding the program, with Owen even venturing into study hall to recruit players. -
Kathy Yelton's great-niece and current Ladycats player Lilly Brown proudly wears her aunt's basketball number and points to a plaque bearing Yelton's name. Yelton helped coach Lilly and other girls for many years. Yelton passed away from breast cancer in 2021.
By Nila Harris
To some of you reading this article, you might remember the year 1974 and may think, “That wasn’t TOO long ago. I mean after all, it was in my lifetime.”
The year 1974, however, was 50 years ago, and some of the things we see as commonplace these days, were not at that time. Girls basketball for example, did not exist at Pendleton County Memorial High School until that year.
PCHS opened its doors to its first group of students for the 1959-60 school year. The brand-new building brought together students from Morgan and Butler High Schools.
Falmouth still hosted its own independent district until the 1968-69 school year when it merged with Pendleton to make one county school district.
As changes in the county were taking place during the late 1960s and early '70s, girls’ basketball was one of those changes.
My friend Mike Moore had told me that his mother played basketball at Goforth (when it was a high school). I also found a Falmouth Outlook photo of a girls’ basketball team in 1929, so my thought was, “What happened to girls’ basketball between the '30s and the '70s?”
According to legislature.ky.gov: “Between 1932 and 1974, women’s basketball was discontinued at high school and collegiate levels in Kentucky.
“Although the sport was popular with males and females, school basketball teams for females did not exist again until Baker’s Bill, named after Senator Nicholas Baker, also known as the Basketball Bill, was passed in 1974.
“Baker’s Bill cited that all schools that have a basketball team for boys must also have one for girls.”
Basketball was thought to be strenuous for boys, which made it “too strenuous for girls” according to some state officials at the time.
Baker was well acquainted with girls’ basketball since his own mother had played on Hazard High School’s 1930 state championship team.
In the 1973-74 school year, PCHS was scrambling to pull together a girls’ team. As the girl’s health and physical education teacher, Jan Eninger seemed the perfect candidate for a coach.
The first year included only four season games and a two-game tournament. The record for the new team was 2 wins, 4 losses.
There was no money for uniforms, so the girls wore white Pendleton County T-shirts and black shorts. The team mothers cut out numbers and sewed them onto the shirts.
Regina Price Groninga, a junior that year, laughingly stated, “You can look at the (yearbook) picture and tell that the numbers are not the same size.”
The next year hosted a full schedule, entrance into tournament play, AND uniforms!
Of the 11 initial players eligible to play that next year, five players came back, plus the two managers. Coach Eninger was joined by teacher Cecil Hellard, and the girls completed an impressive 16 win/4 loss season.
They went on to win the district tournament against Bracken County, then Augusta. To sweeten the season end, the team soundly beat Fleming County in the first round of Regionals, before losing to Bath County in the quarter finals.
After four decades of absence, the Pendleton County girls showed the community the importance of girls’ basketball.
Players talked about how in the beginning, they mostly had just the support of their families. But later, the community began rallying behind them and applauding their achievements.
One of the players on that first team was Kathy Yelton. According to a plaque at PCHS, she scored 932 points in three seasons and is No. 10 in Pendleton County’s history. This was before the 3-point line.
For 22 years, Yelton held the record for the most points scored in a quarter — twice.
Kay Mudd, who played all four years in high school as a starter, and “missed it (1,000 points) by 15” talked about how appreciative she was of her family’s support.
Mudd was a part of the “Girls Rebuild Team” as it is listed in the PCHS 1976 yearbook. This team was coached by Herb Owen and assisted by his brother Bill and by David Tackett.
Bill Owen taught at Northern Elementary and began a girls team at the elementary level.
Tackett, who taught at Pendleton Middle School, coached girls at the middle school level.
As the men were rebuilding the girls basketball program after its decades-long absence, they strove to create a stronger high school team by starting the girls earlier. Several of the players from that early team went on to coach other girls.
And teachers like Omer Bentle and Gordon Staten, who both taught at Goforth Elementary, prodded youngsters like Rella Gregg Keeton to play at a young age.
“Go out there and play with those boys. You’re just as good as they are,” an elementary-age Keeton was frequently told on Goforth’s outside court.
People like State Sen. Nick Baker, coaches Eninger, Hellard, Herb Owen, Bill Owen and Tackett, encouragers like Bentle and Staten, additional coaches over the years at all age levels, and most importantly the teenagers who stepped up and made history, have helped build the PCHS girls basketball program to what it is today.