In 1914, in a high school gymnasium in Edmonton, a small provincial capital in western Canada, a sporting dynasty found its roots. Over the next twenty-five years, the 38 women who played for the Edmonton Commercial Graduates' basketball team played 522 games and lost only 20¹. Just seven teams ever scored more than 49 points against them.

The High School Gymnasium

J Percy Page came to Edmonton in 1912 from eastern Canada where he had held a number of teaching posts, specialising in commercial training. His task in Edmonton was to introduce commercial training into the high school system; while successful in that task, Page is remembered today for being the organiser and coach of a group of young women, students and graduates of McDougall Commercial High School, who would go on to conquer the world in their sport.

Until 1923, the Commercial Graduates confined their amazing talents to city and provincial competitions. Page was unusual for his time in insisting on strenuous practices for the players twice each week. He also set up a training system involving three teams for younger women at the high school. The best of the third training team, the Gradettes, might look forward to a place on the Grads if a space opened. Few spaces, however, opened - only thirty-eight women ever played for the team. Page's devotion to training the team paid off at very nearly every game, but there was a bigger world waiting for the now high school graduate Edmonton Grads.

Into the World

In 1923 the Edmonton Grads burst first onto the national stage, winning the Canadian Championship against London, Ontario, and then onto the world stage with their winning of the Underwood Trophy from the American Champion Cleveland Favorite-Knits. Despite the fact that the Grads wore old fashioned heavy woollen uniforms, and despite the Favorite-Knits' modern shorts embroidered with the words 'World Champs', the Grads defeated the Cleveland team 53-33 in a two-game tournament. The Grads never gave up that trophy and in 1940 it was declared their permanent possession.

Olympic Demonstrations

At the Olympic games of 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1936, the Edmonton Grads represented Canada in the demonstration basketball tournaments². In all of their 27 matches they were victorious. In 1936 Dr James Naismith, the inventor of the game, wrote a glowing letter to the Grads in which he remarked:

You are not only an inspiration to basketball players throughout the world, but a model of all-girls' teams. Your attitude and success have been a source of gratification to me in illustrating the possibilities of the game in the development of the highest type of womanhood.

Elsewhere Naismith commented that 'The Grads have the greatest team that ever stepped out on a basketball floor.' He said of Page that he was 'the greatest coach and the most superb sportsman it has ever been my good fortune to meet.'

While the Edmonton Grads were at the mid-point of their sporting careers, a fellow Edmontonian, Nellie McClung with her partners in the Famous Five, brought recognition to women as 'persons' in English and Scots law. As the Famous Five did with barriers to women's civil rights, the Edmonton Grads shattered long-standing barriers to women in sport, demonstrating that women were every bit as capable as men of being great athletes.

The End

With J Percy Page pursuing a career in provincial politics and World War II raging, the Edmonton Grads retired as a team. They played their final game on 5 June, 1940 against a team from Chicago, winning 62-52. In the stands were 6,200 fans, about 7% of the population of Edmonton at the time.

The players moved on to new careers, for which Page's high school commercial training had prepared them. Page went on to serve as a provincial Member of the Legislative Assembly. In honour of his work with the Edmonton Grads, his services to education in Edmonton and his service to Alberta as an MLA and later as Lieutenant-Governor, Edmonton Public Schools opened J Percy Page High School in Edmonton. In honour of the players themselves, The Edmonton Grads Basketball Centre is being developed.