'75 Wilson Girls Make Oregon Hoops History

 By Paul Danzer

There’s a banner hanging in the gym at Ida B. Wells High School (formerly Wilson) and a trophy on display in the hallway honoring the school’s girls basketball team that won the 1977 Oregon School Activities Association state championship.

That certainly was a season to be celebrated as the Trojans topped St. Mary’s Academy in a highly competitive championship game. But that title win wasn’t the breakthrough moment for the Trojans. That came two years earlier, when Wilson won the city championship in the first year girls basketball was played in the Portland Interscholastic League.

Those Trojans followed up their PIL title by winning the 1975 Class AAA girls basketball state championship tournament. Though not an official OSAA event, that was the first girls basketball tournament to feature champions from all eight Class AAA districts in Oregon.

Led by PIL Hall of Famers Wendy Peterson and Pam Mollet, Wilson won three games over two days to claim the state title. In the Friday quarterfinal round, Wilson buried favored Grants Pass, whipping the Southern Conference champions, 60-29.

In the semifinals, played on a Saturday morning, Wilson rallied from a 20-4 deficit to defeat Valley League champion South Salem. Then in championship game that Saturday night, Wilson needed to come from behind again to defeat Metro League champion Parkrose, 44-39.

“I felt so much joy. We were the first girls state basketball champions,” recalls Joan (Schetky) Ebbeson, a junior starter for that Wilson team. “Wow, what an experience.”

Fifty years later, specific memories of the games are hazy, but a few highlights are found in reports in “The Oregonian” and “The Oregon Journal” (some written by longtime Portland sports journalist and PIL Hall of Famer Dwight Jaynes) and Wilson’s student newspaper and yearbook. Among them: Freshman Ingraham scoring 15 of her game-high 21 points in the second half of the title tilt and fellow frosh Sue McHugh hitting three underhanded free throws and a short second-chance jumper to separate the Trojans from the Broncos in the final moments of the state championship game.

"I just felt like, no matter what, we were gonna win even though we were behind early,” says Ingraham, an all-tournament team selection in 1975. She adds that her favorite memory is of her late brother, PIL Hall of Fame inductee Scott Peterson, lifting her up to cut down the net.

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Wilson Football Coach Steps Up

The Wilson team was coached by the Trojans’ varsity football coach, Stan Stanton who, as Ingraham remembers it, gave up coaching wrestling to lead the girls. With no prior basketball coaching experience, Stanton would turn to boys coach George Crandall for help when postseason arrived.

“There were times where we were telling Stanton what plays to run,” Ingraham says with a laugh. “And he would listen.”

Lucy Bledsoe and Sally Whitten were the only seniors on the 1975 team. Bledsoe’s lobbying was instrumental in Wilson and the PIL adding girls basketball in 1974-75, more than two years after Title IX became law.

An author now living in Berkeley, Bledsoe wrote a fictionalized version of her efforts to establish a girls basketball team at Wilson. Published in 2022, the young adult novel is titled, “No Stopping Us Now.”

“I wasn't very good,” says Bledsoe, who came off the bench for that 1975 team. “I loved being on the team. I just loved the camaraderie. I loved Coach Stanton coaching us. I thought it was wonderful the way he stepped up.”

Mollet was a key contributor to the Trojans’ success. A PIL Hall of Fame inductee who died in 2014, Mollet was dominant around the basket. She was a three-time all-state player in both basketball and volleyball and played college basketball at Portland State and Oregon State.

“I loved to feed her,” Ingraham says. “You could even give her a bad pass and she would grab it and most likely put it up for two.”

Becky Brockway, a freshman member of the Wilson junior varsity team in 1975 who played for the Trojans’ state tournament teams of 1976 and 1977, described Ingraham and Mollet as a “dynamic duo.” She and classmates Kathy (Haas) Belzer and Lisa (Vidoni) Whitaker joined the varsity team as sophomores in 1975-76 and helped Wilson to two more PIL titles and a second-place finish in the first OSAA state tournament in 1976 in addition to the 1977 state title.

 Winning Memories

While the players’ accomplishments stand the test of time, they say it was the moments away from the games that shine brightest in their memories.

 “Our bus rides across town were always very interesting and definitely fun,” Whitaker says. “And, you know, the whole city hated us because we were good.”

Many team members credit older brothers for teaching them the game and for pushing them to improve.

"The guys would teach us how to not be afraid of contact and to use your body,” Whitaker says. “That was something we weren’t used to, especially because of that dumb half-court game that we played in seventh-grade gym class.”

Ingraham says that her brother, Scott, helped teach Linda Waite how to play around the basket. Waite didn’t play basketball until the eighth grade but became a key contributor as a freshman at Wilson.

Just Playing, Not Pioneering

Looking back, team members say they weren’t thinking they were blazing any trails; they were just grateful for the opportunity to play.

“In 1975, I did not feel like I was a pioneer,” Ebberson says. “It wasn’t until my 20-year high school reunion that it hit me.”

She adds that at that reunion, several classmates she didn’t know during high school thanked her for helping pave a path for their own daughters to play sports.

In addition to Mollet, several members of those 1970s Wilson teams moved on to play basketball or another sport in college. Ebberson and guard Dawn Collins played for Oregon State’s first women’s basketball team in 1976-77. Bledsoe played two years of varsity basketball at Williams College in Massachusetts and spent a season on the JV team at Cal.

Whitaker, who played multiple sports at Western Oregon (then Oregon College of Education) on her way to becoming a PE teacher, says she sometimes wonders what it would have been like to compete in sports today rather than 50 years ago.

“I watch women’s sports now and I think, ‘Oh, man, that would be fun,’” she says. “Where the skill and game development in the women's game are now is just phenomenal.”

These days, many of those Wilson women remain active, saying competing is part of their DNA.

“I still love competing,” Whitaker says. “It's just apart of how I get my cup filled, I suppose.”

Brockway, who also played on Wilson’s 1977 state championship soccer team, says finding sports at a young age gave her confidence. “I just knew that I could go and try anything and have a good time at it.”

Belzer, who played college volleyball at Montana State, agrees, saying she’s carried the confidence gained from athletic competition throughout her life.

“It was huge to have that confidence and be able to compete. And I still compete,” she says.

In 2017, Wilson hosted separate reunions for the 1977 girls basketball team and the ‘77 girls soccer team. Brockway says it was during those gatherings that she fully realized how significant those teams were.

“I remember feeling like we had been really part of something,’” Brockway says. “We left an imprint.”

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