WHITEHALL — Whitehall's alumni girls basketball game took on extra meaning Saturday afternoon, as it included a pregame ceremony honoring members of the 1974-75 Seaway Conference championship team - the second title team in Viking history - on its 50th anniversary.
Three players on the team - Jane Jordan, Laurie Walsworth-Lemieux and Ruthanne Schmelzer Simila - were on hand for the ceremony, as well as scorekeeper and "bus driver" Peter Warnock, who joked the team's gaudy record was due to his duties as scorekeeper. (The team went 11-4 overall and a perfect 9-0 in Seaway play.)
The trio happily joked among themselves prior to the game and afterward,
showing the chemistry they had "on and off the court," said Jordan, who
was an all-conference pick that year.
Jordan and Simila are both retired; Jordan was an ICU dietitian while Simila taught at Muskegon Public Schools and worked for the city of Muskegon as its first woman firefighter. Walsworth-Lemieux is a physical therapist at Trinity Health, and Warnock is a "semi-retired" college professor and archeologist.
In addition to those four, three late members of the team - Tracy Mahoney Knoth, Laurie Bekius Linard and Shari Peterson Dekker - were acknowledged prior to the game, which the alumni won 55-32 on the strength of a big performance by assistant coach Emily MacArthur, although she was 'traded' to the current team in the fourth quarter.
"The alumni are 3-0. As a coach of the current team, I don't know how proud I
am of that," MacArthur joked after the game.
Whitehall assistant girls basketball coach Emily MacArthur (left) blocks a shot by current player Mansah Waller during Saturday's alumni game.
That the event took place just a few days after the district's celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day was a coincidence, but one happily noted by the three former players. Simila said when the Whitehall team started during her junior high years, she didn't realize what a big deal it was at the time.
"When we were coming up, we didn't know girls couldn't play basketball," Simila said.
"Mrs. Merrifield started this team when we were in junior high, and we
thought nothing of it. That was before Title IX. We didn't know girls
couldn't play sports."
Walsworth-Lemieux said it's a pivotal time for women's collegiate sports, with a coming lawsuit settlement that would result, if approved in April, of colleges sharing revenue with their athletes. The fate of so-called non-revenue sports, many of which are women's sports, has been up for discussion as a result.
Jane Jordan (center) goofs around with current Whitehall players during a pregame ceremony honoring her 1974-75 Seaway Conference title team prior to Saturday's alumni game.
"There's a lot of things happening now that could make things slip back
for women, with the whole NIL business and the way the money is going to
come down and smaller women's teams maybe getting cut in the NCAA," Walsworth-Lemieux said. "You
need to stay on it."
The alumni game has been the project of a different Whitehall player each year; this year it was Drew Buckner, whose sister Lola spearheaded the first alumni game when she was a student.
She marveled at how many alumni came back to play in the game, ranging from players who just graduated, such as Allie Van Antwerp, to Stacy Shepherd, class of 1998, who participated in the opening tip-off opposite her daughter Sidney, a senior on the team, and knocked down a couple of baskets to boot.
"It's just cool to see all ages come back," Drew Buckner said. "It's really
exciting. It's just awesome to see everybody."
MacArthur said the program is building a culture of appreciation for those who came before them, which is boosted by the annual game.
"Realistically, these women who played on the 1975 team paved the
way for my teams to play, and then future teams," MacArthur said. "It's
just really cool to be able to connect with people. It's cool
for our current team to be able to connect with alumni, some they
played with and some that they don't know."
