Those Girls Could Play

I personally think it all started on the playground at Reynolds Elementary School. Or maybe it started as we watched our heroes play basketball for the Reynolds High School Tigers. We wanted to be able to play like just like them.

One thing is for sure. For a group of us, a pickup basketball game on the playground at Reynolds Elementary School was what we did almost every day.

I can still hear the chosen student of the day standing at the door of the north wing of the school yelling at the top of his or her lungs:

“Third grade coming in!”

Words like that were the final buzzer for many a basketball game at Reynolds Elementary. The game was over and it was time to go back to the dreaded classroom.

Billy Bell and I would usually be the captains for the playground games and we would choose the teams. We would flip a coin to see who would choose first. The winner of that coin flip already knew who would be chosen first to be on their team. The loser of the coin flip also knew who would be their first choice.

It was always the same. Bunny Fuller was chosen first and Sandra Arnold was next.

Then we started choosing the boys.

Make no mistake about it. Those two girls could play basketball. And we watched them get better and better as time went on. I like to think that playing with a bunch of boys on the playgrounds in Reynolds in their early years didn’t hurt their abilities in the later years. I am certain they made us guys much better than we would have been if they had not played with us.

Although I attended a different high school I always kept up with them as they went on to become superstars on the basketball court.

I looked for Bunny and Sandra in the box scores in the sports pages after every game. I also read about them often because they were written about often. I felt like they were my family and for some reason I thought our playground group at Reynolds Elementary somehow contributed to their success.

How good were they?

Let’s just say the teams they played on from the 8th grade until their senior year in high school never lost a basketball game. The Lady Vikings of Taylor County High School in Butler GA won 132 straight basketball games and five straight state championships. Bunny and Sandra starred on four of those.

That state record of 132 consecutive wins still stands today. Check it out for yourself.

For the record Bunny and Sandra led teams that actually won more than 132 straight games because of their undefeated 8th grade season. I think their total is 146.

It didn’t hurt that the legendary Norman Carter was their high school coach. He was a master motivator and teacher of the game. No matter how good the talent, you have to have someone great at the helm to have that kind of success. And you have to be able to take the good players and mesh them with the great players. Norman Carter did that as well as anyone. Anywhere.



As with any championship team there were many who contributed. In fact the girl who would later become my wife played on a couple of those championship teams and was actually on the starting line-up during that last championship year (#25 above). Being on the starting line-up on that team was no small accomplishment.

Bunny went on to have a great basketball career at Middle Georgia College and the University of Georgia. Bunny was named Scholar Athlete at the University of Georgia in 1976. You will find her name inscribed at the top of a list on a monument behind the Coliseum in Athens among such names as Hershel Walker and Ray Goff.

There should be a monument somewhere in Taylor County about the greatest athletic accomplishments in the history of the county.

I have no doubt that the names of Bunny Fuller Harris and Sandra Arnold would be inscribed at the top of that list.

But if that monument is never erected their names will always be indelibly inscribed in the minds of those who saw them play.