SILOAM SPRINGS — Former All-American Red Heads star Willa Faye “Red” Mason of Siloam Springs will get to scratch off an item off her bucket list this weekend.
Mason, along with 60 to 70 former Red Heads players, will travelto Springfield, Mass., to see their former team inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The enshrinement will take place Friday, but there are events all throughout the week and weekend. And it’s a weekend that Masonwouldn’t even think about missing.
“It’s on my bucket list,” said Mason, who played for the Redheads from 1949 to 1956. “We had a (ladies club) meeting about six months ago, and we had to name two things we had left on our bucket list that we would like to see. (Seeing the Red Heads inducted into the Hall of Fame) was number one.”
The Red Heads were known as the female version of the Harlem Globetrotters and the first women’s basketball team, according to the team’s Hall of Fame profile on hoophall.com.
Based out of Oklahoma, the team regularly played more than 200 games per season - all against men - and won 70 percent of them from 1936 to 1986.
Mason, who was an All-State basketball player atSiloam Springs High School and graduated in 1947, joined the Red Heads in 1949 and played seven seasons, including the last two as a player/coach. Following her basketball career she became a professor/coach at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla.
The Redheads will be inducted as a team Friday night, which was what the team requested, Mason said. Former Red Head Tammy Moore Harrison, the daughter of former Red Heads coach and eventual owner Orwell Moore, will represent the team on Friday at the induction ceremonies. Mason said that was what the ladies wanted.
“We asked that if we were ever considered that we wanted to go in as a team,” Mason said. “There wasn’t any way you could pick out one person, because every year you had some different (players) usually. Everybody had a role to play.”
Eleven individuals, including former NBA stars Reggie Miller, Jamaal Wilkes and Ralph Sampson, former NBA coach Don Nelson and Nike founder Phil Knight, will also be inducted. The event will be broadcast live at 6:30 p.m. on NBA TV.
“I consider it an honor,” said Mason, who departed for Springfield on Tuesday.
“I’m very proud, because I know that the Red Heads showed the country that girls can play basketball. They are the ones that did it.”
Sports, Pages 9 on 09/05/2012