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Basketball

The first time I ever tackled a historical basketball story was during the winter of 1992. Athol's Greg Gauvin was inching ever closer to scoring the 1,000th career point of his illustrious career and questions started to arise around the Tool Town as to just how many Athol players had actually reached the coveted plateau. While many names were bantered about, the end was result that I discovered only two players - Bruce Boccardy in 1966 and Wayne Saven in 1969 - had scored over 1,000 points in varsity competition.

Almost four years later, I would find myself at The Recorder's microfilm machine researching, once again, 1,000-point scorers. This time would be different, however. Instead of looking up information on just one school, I had to search for players from eight schools. The reason I went into the archives was that four players in 1996 were gunning for their 1,000th points. It was the first time since 1992 that the area had four players reaching the mark at the same time. There were four who reached the mark in 1992, but the Recorder hadn't started covering Athol sports like it did with the other seven schools in the region.

That was why, in 1994 when I went up to Mohawk to see Shane Walters join the historic group, I didn't give it much of a thought. Then came 1996. First, Frontier's "Bubba" Chmura etched his name into the grand record books on Feb. 2. Nine days later, it was projected that Pioneer's Marybeth Baker and Garrett Tillotson would both reach the mark. Because they were both from the same school many questions were coming into the Recorder:

How many others reached 1,000 points on the same night?
How many from the same school?
How many 1,000-point scorers are there around here?

I was one of the first to ask these questions. Since no one had an exact answer, I strolled through history and wrote a story detailing, what I thought, was a list of all the grand members and when they did it. But, as I quickly learned, I had not dug deep enough for my research. More trips to the microfilm machine unearthed several more scorers so again I wrote more. The more I wrote the more people such as Dave Wissman, Sr., Dr. Rab Cross and Muriel Zraunig went into their archives and dug out more information for me. Finally, a week or so after Pioneer's Adam Harrington had scored his 1,000th point on January 14, 1997, I was finally able to create the finalized history of 1,000-point scorers from Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region.

The fun didn't stop there, however. While researching grand scorers, I discovered a plethora of other statistical information I had not heard about before. My pursuit led into obsession and then a passion. Not only could I tell people who scored 1,000 points, I also was able to tell them all kinds of male scoring marks set since 1950. I intended to go back further, but since I had added more categories besides 1,000-point scorers and some seasons were sketchy, I decided to stop at 1950 and make sure my research was accurate.

At the time, I decided not to pursue female basketball statistics for several reasons. Before Title IX became law in 1979, female sports were not covered as in-depth as they are today. This fact was never more evident than in 1973. On Jan. 9, Mahar's Sherry Sanborn registered her 1,000th point. Two days later the Recorder ran a story and photo of Sanborn under the following headline: "Game never stopped as magic mark fell." That's right, unlike her male counterparts before her, Sanborn's mark was never celebrated during the game. She did, however, at least get a headline the day after the game unlike teammate Jen Edminster. The year before, Edminster became the first western Mass. female to score 1,000 points but I could not find any mention of the milestone anywhere until late in the season.

Even worse, in some articles, reporters didn't even use the full name of females. Stories would print "Miss ?" scored 10 points and the like. Also, since most of my research was done at the Recorder and Athol wasn't included full-time in its coverage until 1993 and no scorebooks could be found at the school, the task just seemed too great. Then one day, I walked into the Recorder and on my desk sat a copy of the 1974 Recorder girls regular-season scoring champs. That's all it took to once again send me into the land of microfilm.

So here, after almost 10 years of research, is what I have been able to find.