Back in the mid ’60s I had never seen a girls’ basketball game. Brownwood didn’t have girls’ basketball. I didn’t go any place that did. I knew the smaller schools did have it and I soon found out they played it kind of uniquely back then. It wasn’t like the boys’ game. It was three on three. Six players on each team and a lot of different rules.

Well, the first time I experienced a girls’ game in person was in the mid 60s. I got a phone call from Burnet, Texas and the Burnet radio station. They said, “Hey, can you feed us a basketball game?” and I said, “Sure.” That means that you send your equipment and your people to wherever and you broadcast the game for them. I agreed to do it.

It was going to be at the Early High School gym, and I’m talking about the OLD gym. I go out there to do the game the next day and it was a playoff game between Burnet, and I can’t even remember who. I didn’t even know it was a girls’ game until I got there. I set the equipment up, I got the lineups, and I thought something was wrong here. I counted them and I thought maybe the coaches made a mistake because they had six starters instead of five.

They tipped the game off, and it starts going and I said to myself, “These have got to be the laziest girls I’ve ever seen in my life! Half of them aren’t even getting to the other end of the court!” Well, the rule was you only played three-on-three on one end and those three couldn’t cross midcourt, so they passed the ball and its three-on-three with six different girls on the other end. You talk about a confused broadcast! That’s as confused as any play-by-play man has ever been in history.

The people at the scoring table where I was set up started laughing because they could tell I was in trouble. Finally, at the end of the first quarter, the horn goes off, I go into a commercial break, and when the officials came over to our table, they were told what was going on. I took my headset off and one of the officials said, “Have you ever seen a girls’ game?” and I said, “First one!”

They called an officials’ timeout and took a three-minute break. I’m not sure either team understood why, but they took that extra time and explained to yours truly how the game was played and what the rules were. I don’t remember which team won the ballgame, but I came out the winner because I got to see my first girls’ basketball game and I learned a few rules along the way. Later, the girls switched and went to five-on-five basketball, just like the boys.

Howard Payne back then also had no women’s basketball and eventually when it came along, I reluctantly started doing the games for the Lady Jackets. I loved doing Howard Payne men’s games, but not so much the women’s, until they started winning and winning big. Then, I fell in love with those girls and those teams.

I had the privilege of calling all of their games until last year. And yes, I got to call the undefeated 2008 National Champions! They were by far the best Lady Jacket team ever and one of the best ever in the nation at that level. I got to call their games all through the playoffs, and all the way to Holland, Michigan where the National Tournament was held. One of the highlights of my life was being able to call those games of that National Championship team.

And it’s quite possible it might never have happened, except for that venture into girls’ basketball when I didn’t even know what the rules were back in the mid 60s.

Until next time, so long everybody.

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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].