The Southern Textile Basketball Tournament

In 1905 Lawrence Peter Hollis went to Springfield, Massachusetts, before beginning his job as the secretary of the YMCA at Monaghan Mill in Greenville, South Carolina. While there, he met James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, and learned of the fledgling game. Armed with Dr. Naismith’s rules of the game and a basketball he bought in New York, Hollis returned to the mill and changed the face of athletics in South Carolina.
Lawrence Peter Hollis was one of the first to introduce basketball south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the game quickly gained popularity in the textile mill villages throughout South Carolina. In 1921 Hollis and others organized a tournament to determine the best mill team, and thus the southern Textile Basketball Tournament was born. Over the years, some of the south’s top cage talent played in the tourney, including “Smokey” Barbare, Lucille Foster Thomas, Bert Hill, Earl Wooten, Billy Cunningham, Pete Maravich, Sue Vickers and Tree Rollins. Decade-by-decade, the history of one of the longest running basketball tournaments is provided, along with profiles of many prominent participants. Full rosters for all teams in all tournaments are given in the appendices, along with all-tournament selections and members of the Southern Textile Athletic Hall of Fame.

Mac C. Kirkpatrick of Greenwood, South Carolina, is an industrial engineer in the textile industry.
Thomas K. Perry is the author of Textile League Baseball (1993). He lives in Newberry, South Carolina.

Mac C. Kirkpatrick and Thomas K. Perry
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 443
Bibliographic Info: 59 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2005 [1997]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2446-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii

Preface      1

The 1920s      3

The 1930s      14

The 1940s      22

The 1950s      32

The 1960s      48

The 1970s      68

The 1980s      82

The 1990s      92

End Notes      99

Appendices

1. Southern Textile Basketball Tournament Rosters      103

2. All Southern (All Tournament) Selections      345

3. War-Time Tournament Rosters      370

4. War-Time All Tournament Selections      373

5. Southern Textile Athletic Association Hall of Fame      374

6. Southern Textile Basketball Tournament Timeline      377

7. Player Profiles      385

Bibliography      405

Index      407

“profiles of many prominent participants, rosters for all teams, all-tournament selections, members of the Southern Textile Athletic Hall of Fame and other data”—Reference & Research Book News.