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BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

• The Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club (a.k.a the Grads)
• Women’s team founded and coached by John Percy Page 1915-1940
• Started off as a highschool basketball team and later a sporting dynasty
• Winning record still not beat by any team in any sport
• Members: Dorothy and Daisy Johnson, Noel Robinson, Winnie Martin, Eleanor Mountfield , Nellie Perry , Connie Smith

BIOGRAPHY

• The Grads, consisted of 38 players over their 25-year history
• The Grads were forced to break up because of World War II. The last game was played in the Edmonton Arena on Wednesday May 29, 1940.
• Edith Sutton, 101, and Kay MacBeth, 90, are the only ones alive (as of Jan 12, 2012)

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Grads played 522 official games in Canada, the United States, and in Europe, winning 502 and losing 20 for an average of 96.2%
• The Grads won seven of the nine games they played against men's teams.
• Won 147 games in a row
• Won all 21 games in Western Can. Championship
• Won the Provincial Championship during their first year of existence in 1915, and continued to win 23 of the 24 times they competed for it

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Never lost series in Canadian Championship
• Never lost in CAN-US competition for Underwood International Trophy
• The Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame inducted the entire team roster of players in 1980
• Attended 4 Olympics, won all 27 games
• Only gave up the American Underwood Trophy when they team broke apart in 1940 due to WWII

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• In Canadian - American competition, the Grads won every year from 1923 to 1940, when they were presented with the trophy permanently
• The Grads attended four Olympics, although women's basketball was not officially an Olympic sport, and won all 27 of their exhibition games
• They were crowned World Champions from 1937 to 1940.

SIGNIFICANCE

SIGNIFICANE

• Helped ,modernize outdated perceptions of gender
• There was a film made in 1987 by the National Film Board of Canada called "Shooting Stars: The Amazing Story Of The Edmonton Grads."
• a school in Edmonton, The J. Percy Page School is named in the honour of the Edmonton Grads coach
• "the finest basketball team that has ever stepped out on a floor" -Dr. James Naismith (Inventor of Basketball)

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