Staff Writer

For a group of women who played basketball together at Union High School in the late 1960s, nothing can break the bond, not even 40 years and thousands of miles.

Once a year for the past several years, a group of women who played basketball on the 1967, 1968 and 1969 teams gather for a reunion at the home of Sue Haney.

There was one woman the others really wanted to see, but it was hard for Linda Ray Owens to make the trip from Anchorage, Alaska, where she lives after retiring from the Air Force.

Ms. Owens is special to them and to the history of Union High sports. When she came to school in 1967 and joined the team, she became the first black athlete to play for the high school. Her freshman year, the team played for the state championship. During her junior year, she was chosen as the first black homecoming queen.

“We told her if she could ever come, we would base the reunion around when she could be here,” Ms. Haney said.

Ms. Owens was chosen for the Union County High School Athletic Hall of Fame with the induction ceremony held during the Sept. 26 football game. She decided to attend and her former basketball teammates set their reunion.

Ms. Owens said the induction ceremony and the reunion are events she won't ever forget.

“It was awesome,” she said. “It especially gives me insight. I can let my grandkids know that no matter how bad a situation is, whatever is for you is going to be for you.”

Ms. Owens did not want to come integrate Union High. She wanted to remain at Sims High, the all black school, but her father, Clifford Ray, gave her and her sister Sandra - now Sandra Cooper - no choice.

“My parents (Clifford, who now lives in Oklahoma and the late Josephine Ray) told us they wanted us to have a better education,” she said. “My father was one who always wanted us to go to different areas, see how different people live and operate.”

Ms. Owens said her father tried to instill courage in his children - her brother, Clifford, went on to a successful NBA career.

“He taught us to never discriminate against anyone,” she said. “He told us we could make it no matter what. He was always positive.”

Integration wasn't easy, she said, but the basketball team made up for any hurdle she faced.

“We had different shortcomings there,” she said. “We learned to get through it and my team protected me a lot. They didn't want anybody to bother me.”

She was sometimes the subject of heckling when the team traveled to another town to play.

“People would say all kinds of things,” she said. “I remember Coach (Clara Hill Combs) went to the coach of the opposing crowd and said ‘If you can't cease your crowd from saying negative things, we will leave.'”

Later she had a chance to be a coach herself while stationed at Eielson Air Force Base in Anchorage. She was the head coach for the junior varsity girls and assistant coach for the girls high school team.

“I kept everything in mind of how my coach coached us,” she said.

Over the years through good times and bad, she kept in touch with former teammates, including Sandra “Country” Patrick Moss.

Saturday was a dream come true to get to see them again. There were six starters on the 1968 team that played half court ball with Ms. Owens and Ms. Haney as rovers. Six of those seven were there, counting Ms. Owens and Ms. Haney, including Sandra Moss, Cheryl Holcombe Moss, Catherine Johnson Varner and Debbie McNeace Teague. Emma Hodge Nichols, the sixth starter, is deceased.

“There is a bond there that can never be broken,” said Sandra Moss. “It was just like you could breathe the air of 1968.”

Ms. Owens said looking back, she knows now being a part of integration and playing on the team were part of God's great plan for her life.

“God made it possible for it to happen for me,” she said. “The team set a mark for me for the rest of my life.”